Deborah Weisbrot MD was quoted in a front-page article in the New York Times
titled “Warning Signs of Violent Acts Often Unclear.” The article,
written by Benedict Casey and Anemona Hartocollis, addresses the hazards
involved in identifying potential mass murderers and reporting them to
authorities.
Dr. Weisbrot, who is the director of the
department’s child and adolescent outpatient clinic, is a nationally
recognized expert in the psychiatric assessment of students who threaten
violence. Her article “Prelude to a School Shooting? Assessing Threatening Behaviors in Childhood and Adolescence” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
(JAACP) in August 2008 is one of the only articles in the medical
literature to present an evidence-based approach to the topic.
In the New York Times
article Dr. Weisbrot described the characteristics common to people
whose threats of violence should be taken most seriously. “What they
have in common is a kind of magical thinking, odd beliefs like they can
read other people’s minds, or see the future, or things happening in
their dreams come true,” she is quoted as saying.
In her JAACP
article, Dr. Weisbrot described the same signs in more technical terms,
noting that clinicians should be alert to “signs of the student's dark,
inner rage, particularly in the context of social isolation from family
and peers as well as the student's emotional disconnection during the
interview. Furthermore, intense immersion into fantasy combined with
less-than-secure reality testing should also arouse concerns. When an
adolescent's odd beliefs or magical thinking are combined with
suspicious behaviors and/or paranoid ideation, an intensified perception
of dangerousness may occur.”