This is my personal opinion. Not a case study. (4k words)

bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47558141

The media does a poor job at covering school shootings and massacres. They are very quick at going after the mother of the perpetrator(s) and asking questions such as "what did you teach your son?" as if the mother is to blame for not teaching their son to not kill. There was a case in Brazil that the media did exactly that. They went after the mother of one of the attackers and accused her of not properly educating her children. There is always an outburst of rage directed towards whoever was a relative to the attacker.

One of the first things that always happen is for the media to investigate possible causes. One of my beliefs is that there is no such thing as teaching your children to be a mass murder killer or a serial killer. You just can't teach that. It's something that begins somewhere inside (whether this is genetics or not is a matter of dispute) and under the right conditions can bloom out. There are parents who are drug abusers, sex offenders, beat their own kids but those kids don't become criminals. There are also those cases of parents who are very religious, no alcoholics or sex offenders and nonetheless, have children who become serial killers. I think that more important than teaching something is what is learnt and what message is passed through. Sometimes teaching is not what you say, but rather what you show and do.

To give an example. If you go through all personality disorders and beyond, there is a lot about behaviors and beliefs. I don't think any parent teaches children to be paranoid for example. Suppose some parent is paranoid about a nuclear war and lives in a house where his/her own room is locked with a keycard lock. What message is that parent passing to his children? I once heard on a radio program that parents may be inadvertly teaching children to lie by just telling them lies in a multitude of contexts. It's not a concious decision, it's learning by seeing it. There are also those stories out there of mothers who fits all the criteria for NPD, but a daugther of such mother may develop as a very shy girl or may become another NPD monster. Either way, I don't think that an NPD mother is willingly raising a dauther to be a narcissist or not. Most of the time the mother itself is not even aware of what NPD is in the first place. Going back to the paranoid example, the parent might even be unaware of his own delusion. One thing that I read about BPD is that often you have a parent that praises his child as being the best in the world but that comes along with criticizing everything the child does, which is rather confusing from the point of view of the child.

healthcare.utah.edu/publicaffairs/news/2018/11/lying-patients.php

I follow youtube channels about body language (don't lie to me), facial expressions, BorderlinerNotes, Tracey Marks, Dr. Todd Grande and the psychology of abusive relationships (Alan Mocellim). The channels about body language and facial expressions are almost 100% dedicated to detecting lies and deception. I can only imagine that if your children is somehow thinking about doing it, they are going to deceive and lie to you. When I read the news about school shootings there is a lot of speculation and very shallow descriptions of behaviours or language. More oftenly the press is very quick at blamming parents, drugs, depression, psychopathy, violence or something along those lines. It's never one factor alone.

Sometimes the parents have already taken their children to psychiatrists or psychologists but didn't find anything that would turn on a red alarm. Are those psychiatrists and psychologists reading the body language? Are they seeing the bigger picture and not just the symptoms? Are they being deceived? Lies in this context could be as simple as somebody lying about what they eat, what they do, just because they want to avoid medication for example. I can imagine children not telling the truth and maybe parents that are also hiding the truth. That or the perception of what is and what isn't is biased. The youtube channel about body language that I follow isn't just about the body itself. There is also information that can be gathered from the place where the person is going to, the place where the person is recording their videos, the furniture, clothes, hairstyle, a lot of information can be read from the surroundings. For ex: if a particular interest in fighting games is combined with watching Big Brother and acting, it's one thing. The same interest in fight games combined with watching the Saw movies and reading about serial killers, that's another thing.

The channel about facial expressions (metaforando)  does videos where he analyzes videos of other people, trying to find lies and truths. The creator of that channel is a follower of Paul Ekman and Joe Navarro. For ex: was that person lying about being raped? Let's analyze their voice, their story, the facts, the facial expressions, what the other people involved have to say and then we can come up with a conclusion. Taking Sue Klebold's as an example, she tells how she missed some obvious signs that something was wrong with Dylan. Did she really miss or she just could not belive in the signs themselves? In spite of the science behind facial expressions and body language, there is also the bias factor. Sometimes a facial expression does not represent what the person feels, but rather what the person wants to express. Smiling like this, moving your eyes like that, speaking quieter, speaking faster, it's all dynamic and there isn't a single pattern that perfectly catches all lies. In addition, the emotions themselves can only be identified. Knowing the emotion itself is one thing, what is behind the emotion is another thing. Whether you are smiling because of this or crying because of that, there is no such thing as the power to read minds.

freegameguide.online/2020/05/25/after-controversy-channel-bel-para-meninas-removes-videos-of-the-protagonist-on-youtube/

What you see is, sometimes, what you want to see and not what is really happening. The media often helps to spread missinformation or theories that are just not right. This has happened with a mother in Brazil. She has a youtube channel where she records her daughter eating food, going to school, swapping roles, shopping clothes, etc. She has millions of subscribers. Due to some videos she was accused of being a narcissistic mother and of child abuse. There was a mass commotion with people seeing her as an evil mother. In the end, no signs of abuse were found and the channel is still there with millions of subscribers and new content every week. Even the guy who follows Paul Ekman recorded an analysis where he finds some subtle signs of abuse, such as "Look, in this video the older daughter seems to be the scapegoat whereas the younger one is the golden child. It's strange to see the mother smiling while her daughter has an expression of fear". That analysis is gone, probably taken down upon that family's request. People were saying "How evil, she is recording her daughter crying after a math exam at school. Much worse things must be happening when she is not recording". I don't have an opinion on her because I don't follow that channel and know nothing about that girl.

The channel about abusive relationships does an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of such relationships. It scrutinizes what people feel, both the abuser and the victim. What is going in the mind of the abuser and the victim. A narcissist lover or parent for example. Narcissists are very good at conceiling their actions. They can put all the blame on the victim and destroy their minds in a process called gaslighting. They are called vampires for a reason. I don't think that having a narcissistic parent can explain a school shooting for instance, but narcissistic parents are real monsters that ruin their children's lives. At school, at work, a narcissistic parent put on a mask that hides much of the truth. A narcissistic girl might not be a killer, but some stories out there depict pure evil that is very much going uncovered and causing a lot of emotional damage.

What if the principal is a narcissistic woman for instance? What if a teacher is a narcissist? What if a boy with suicidal tendencies falls  in love with a narcissistic girlfriend? What if the psychiatrist is a narcissist? The people themselves may not be narcissists, but the sum of everyone in school, family or society itself may form a narcissistic environment.

A common trait of all personality disorders is a severely distorted perception of reality and projection. Maybe Adam Lanza projected his younger self on the children he shot. Or maybe it was his own fears related to children. Maybe some parents project their inner demons on their own children. Maybe some parents project their unfulfilled dreams on their children, such as being a doctor and that is combined with a lot of pressure. Maybe a teen that goes on a killing spree has some emotional scar related to women, certain colors, hairstyle or something and when they do it, their targets happen to be women or people wearing a certain color. If a teen writes that he wants to end society itself and really feels that they have super powers, that's not reality.

Another trait of all personality disorders is self awarness. Sometimes people are fully aware that they have a disorder and seek help. Other times people are not aware and even have it reversed, seeing everybody else as abnormal people. I've seen videos describing narcissists as master architects that are fully aware of everything they do and are pure evil that want to gaslight you because they want to. That's simple not true. One of the reasons a narcissist is a narcissist is a heavly distorted perception of themselves and the world, such that their actions are perceived in a way that may be the complete opposite of the perception of everybody else. In school shooting cases I belive that the perpetrator is fully aware of what they are doing, but they are unable to control their instincts. They must have enough congitive functions to choose the time of day, to choose a special date, to choose a place to attack, to aim and open fire.

Related to awareness is willingness. I've read a bit about depression and there are myths surrounding it. One is that a person with depression isn't willing to get better. Depression changes your mental state in a way that you can very much have the desire to get out of it, but your mind is unable to do so. A neuroscientist that I follow says this about depression "Imagine that you have broken both of your legs. If somebody tells you to get up and walk you are unable to. That's why telling a depressive person to be happier is nonsense". Some theories about personality disorders tell that they are a way that the mind has found to protect itself. Others tell that they are about maladaptative behaviors. To put it in another way, be it depression or personality disorder, there is something about not having a choice playing its role.

I don't remember where I saw this, I think it's from the neuroscientist that I follow. He said that there are scientific articles that show that if you write positive phrases, it can positively affect your mood. Such as writing "today I woke up early", "I said thank you to the police", "the sky is beautiful". Now reverse it. Imagine that you write negative phrases such as "I want the world to burn", "I have dreams about setting up the school of fire, people screaming, running in despair", "I want to die". Writing such things everyday is going to negatively impact your own mood. Are people such as Dylan, even if unintentionally, negatively reinforcing their own mood with writing or games?

I didn't research on this, but body language and personality disorders have a cultural aspect that can make disorders be missinterpreted due to a cultural bias. I learned from a teacher of chinese on youtube that in China, sometimes you are expected to show emotions in a way that, from I could understand, would be confused with BPD. In Japan, some cultural aspects could be mistaken as schizoid personality. That teacher traveled to India once and learned there that indians say "yes" with their heads in a way that is totally incomprehensible to western cultures. If I remember correctly, during the Russian world cup I read that the russian police does not like when people smile in public. That's another thing that the media can be very missleading because they can intentionally be biased in regards to cultural aspects of other countries.

In some left behind journal there may be descriptions of how some bad buy was doing this or that. How his parents were this or that. I think that very often jounalists confuse personal opinion with facts. What you think about a person may be off by a tiny margin or by a large margin. Taking Sue Kebold as an example, she was very much perplexed when she came to known what Dylan was doing with Eric outside of her view. One important lesson from the youtube channel about body language is the bias factor. If you strongly belive that Michael Jackson was a pedophile, you are going to judge his interviews with a strong bias. This can happen to psychiatrists as well, miss diagnosing conditions because of a gender bias for instance. This is specially dangerous as the person may be intentionally missleading the psychiatrist in some cases.

heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-crisis-fatherless-shooters

I've read that divorce can trigger OCD, ADHD, PTSD, in children. That alone wouldn't cause a mass murder act, but it may play some role in it. In the case of Adam Lanza, it was reported that he was diagnosed with OCD and his parents did divorce. About OCD, did the psychiatrist asked if washing hands too many times a day was caused by emotional pain? Investigating that cause might have had uncovered some serious abuse for instance. There is a famous woman in Brazil (Xuxa) that tells the story of being raped when she was a child, which triggered in her a fear of adults and the urge to take many baths a day. She worked on a TV show for children and told that working with children felt much safer than with adults.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Rage

Have you ever heard about Beth Thoma's case? She was adopted and had violent outbursts similar to those of Nikolas Cruz at a very young age. It was found that she had been sexualy abused and that trauma was behind her behavior. Ricardo Ventura did an anlysis of her facial expressions and body language in her interviews and noted that she was desperate for control or to be contained. Are the psychiatrists and psychologists seeing the bigger picture? I read some magazine article about children who are aggressive, violent, bite, kick, push other peers, have evil eyes, lie, etc. Those might be signs of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ADHD, psychopathy or something else. But there is also another way of seeing it. It could be a form of communication or emotions being expressed. Are they studying what is behind the behaviors? The magazine's article completely ignored context as if the children was just born like that. What are the behaviors of the parents? What do the parents belive in? It was reported that Adam Lanza had frequent tantrums but were they intentional? Because being intentional is completely different from non-intentional.

newsweek.com/gamer-admits-killing-his-rival-chilling-whatsapp-video-confession-1571960

I can only imagine that the relationship between Adam's parents wasn't good. I also read somewhere that among school shooting cases there is a high percentage of divorces or fathers that just abandon their children. If those divorces are being caused by abusive relationships I didn't research on that. In Brazil there was a recent case where a teen invited a girlfriend to his home, tried to persuade her to follow him on a crazy mass murder plan but she refused to do so. In response he murdered her in his own house, published a diary filled with hate, crazy ideas and a profound hate towards his own dad that he never had the chance to met. He wrote that if he could create laws, he would create one that forbids fathers from just abandoning their homes and children. He recorded himself confessing his murder and due to his laughts in that recording the press was quick at labelling him a psychopath.

Peter Lanza stating "I wish he had never been born" about Adam. The first interpretation is of this statement is hate or regret. But one must not forget that it was said with a huge emotional burden on his shoulders. Adam killed his mother for some reason that can never be fully explained. Going back to the body language, I think that one important detail is the dynamics of the relationships. The documentary "American Tragedy, when love is not enough" makes me wonder "what does love mean for parents of mass killers?". Maybe the root of the evil is not love itself, but a missconceptualization of love, which can include loving too much. For ex: borderline people tend to have serious issues related to love and being loved. What a borderline thinks about love largely deviates from what most other people would think.

crimereads.com/suzane-von-richthofen-teenage-romance-teenage-killers/

There is a famous case in Brazil of a girl (Suzane) who orchestrated the murder of her own parents. She was rich, lived a luxurious life and had a relationship with a much lower class boyfriend. She manipulated her boyfriend to murder her parents. For reasons that nobody knows she didn't want to kill her own brother, driving him to another place to not have him at home when his parents were murdered. When the police uncovered  that she was the mastermind behind the deaths there was a mass commotion, with everybody calling her a psychopath. Nobody knows what was her relationship with her parents like. It's only known that her mother was a psychiatrist and her father was a rigorous german father. I just can't belive that her being a psychopath (I've read that her official diagnosis is NPD) explains everything, that she was born and destined to do that. Almost two decades later and she is very happy without her parents, despite being in prison. I don't belive she was born with the intention to murder her parents. There must had been a process that took years to reach that point. For some reason (her dad did not like her boyfriend but that alone doesn't say much) she saw her parents as enemies or evil, but not the school or her brother. An interesting fact is that forensic psychiatrists tell that her ability to deceive and manipulate is a matter of survival in prison. She'd have been dead otherwise.

I follow a neuroscientist on youtube (Pedro Calabrez) that made a video to discuss a simple question "What is harder to change: belief or behavior?". He says that most people answer "behavior". Why? Because behavior is what you do and changing what you do is hard. A good example is a diet. You've just been eating what you eat in the same way for as long as you can remember, you can't change it in a few days. Beliefs on the other hand are inside your mind and changing what you think might appear to be easier. Let's take a look at faith. Depending on which religion you follow there are behaviors associated to it, such as praying. To stop praying means that you have to stop beliving in something. Depending on what you belive you might be a strong willed person that wouldn't fall easily. Or it could be opposite, your beliefs could be hindering you and even causing a disorder. I see beliefs as a double-edged sword. If you look at suicide bombers, they are all driven by very strong beliefs.

From what I read about personality disorders in general and other types of disorders, they all share a serious issue with beliefs. When a person commits suicide they pretty much do not belive in life anymore. Are teens who murder many students and then suicide beliving that guns bring salvation? Are they attempting to end a threat that only exists in their minds? Ricardo Ventura has an interesting thing to say about fear. He explains that some people fear touching cables or anything electric because at some point in their childhood they learned that electricity is dangerous and you might die because of it. That is pretty normal in everyone's life, but if that is extreme, it might be behind a phobia. Can the same principle explain fear, shame, love, hate that are core issues in personality disorders? The channel about abusive relationships tell how some people associate love with pain, which is something that happens with BPD for example. Undoing that connection in one's mind is really really hard. In extreme cases such as serial killers there is no known method to undo such connections. Or, thinking in reverse, the connection itself is not present in the first place and there is no known method to estabilish it.

A famous brazilian forensic psychiatrist (Guido Palomba) that has over 10k cases in his curriculum says this about mentally disturbed criminals: "You have the daylight and night time. Normal people are under the sun's light. Crazy ones fall under the night time. Between day and night you have the dawn and that's where those criminals fall in" The neuroscientist that I follow says that some people are really scared because they think that to have thoughts about jumping off a window or killing somebody mean that they are not normal persons. Those thoughts are part of the human mind itself and you aren't dangerous or in danger because of them. The real threat is when there are certain malfunctioning process in your brain that can, eventually, cause disorders (or is the malfunction a consequence? Somethings are yet to be fully explained). Most people can have a dream about killing but have no real intention of ever doing it. Malfunctioning brains have, somehow, lost the ability to suppress such dark dreams. I belive that is one of the explanations for psychopaths for instance.

medium.com/chameleon/child-accused-of-killing-relatives-and-committing-suicide-may-be-innocent-d8aacd03ffe8

Brain damage is the argument that Guido Palomba used to explain a 13 year old boy that murdered his own family followed by suicide. For some reason the boy was obsessed with the game Assassin's Creed and talked alot about killing with his peers, who would just dismiss his fantasies. But one must consider that his family was a family of cops and that guns and talking about deaths were present in his home on a daily basis. Years later and some relatives still can't belive that a 13 year old boy did that, beliving that there must be some unknown adult that did it. One of the arguments was that the boy was right handed and the gun was found in his left hand. Before the CSI team went in a lot of other people walked into the family's house, which obviously spoiled the crime scene.

BTW, Guido Palomba calls out the ruin of psychiatry. If one reduces it to medication and checklists, one is failing and causing massive damage. Another point that he makes is that if one hires a clinician to assess criminals, one is under the risk of overlooking the threat they impose, putting everyone in danger. Assessment of dangerous minds should be made by forensic psychiatrists who have a much better understanding of such cases. He goes as far as calling bad psychiatrists that miss diagnose as criminals. TV can be very missleading when they call out a psychiatrist who has no experience with criminal minds to comment on a case for example. Ricardo Ventura analyzed the last interview given by Ted Bundy and made many remarks about how that serial killer was trying to manipulate the whole interview in an attempt to convince everyone that he was a better person.

One thing that the media does is to try to do diagnoses "in reverse". You have the description of the disorder, if you take it and then compare to the case, you are going to find what you want. Real psychiatrists assess the other way around. It's the description of the symptoms, behaviors, feelings, that must be compared against the description of a disorder. Very often cause and consequence are reversed. Very often all disorders are used as an excuse. Psychopaths for instance, being evil in itself isn't a criteria for being a psychopath.

In conclusion, I think that every mass murder act is a complex web where many events converge to that crime. Knowing the disorder is less important than understanding all the factors that contributed to the tragedy. I've learned that the same knowledge that is applied to manipulate and deceive can also be applied to properly assess mental health. It's already the same knowledge that brands such as Apple or Coca-Cola use to "rule" the world.