Adolescent Murderers and Their Treatments

ENG 101
Prof. Dowling
Lorita Zhen Chen
Research Paper


The day of April 16, 2007 was a nightmare for all students and faculties on the Virginia Tech campus. Thirty-two people were killed, along with a gunman, and at least 15 injured in two shooting attacks during three hours. After the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, had been identified, he was declared mentally ill. The Virginia Tech shooting is not the only case of homicide involving a psychotic murderer. In recent years, many adolescents who murder are affirmed as having psychopathic disorders. To treat those mentally ill youths is not only to help them to regain self-esteem, but also to help a society, especially schools, to reduce violent behavior.

First, we need to know the characters of different types of homicides. Two categories of homicides are preteen homicide and juvenile homicide. In the juvenile homicide category, there are three main types of homicide. The first type of juvenile murder is parricide. Parricide, which is similar to over-controlled aggression is to kill one’s parents. The second type of juvenile murder can be described more or less as an unintentional one. There is no apparent thrill involved in the homicide, because in this type of homicide, a murderer feels his is in “kill-or-be-killed” situation. The third type of juvenile homicide is called “thrill killer”. The actual murder is preceded by repeated fantasies so he kills people who are totally stranger. (Agee 90-91). According to the report, in the case of Virginia Tech shooting, the gunman left a video after the first shooting. I believe he was using the tape to satisfy his fantasy of being a hero. Thus, this case can be characterized as the last type of juvenile homicide.

Various factors affect these three different types of homicide, either the family backgrounds or society’s environment. Adolescents who commit parricide usually have a history of severe family-abuse, an extreme sense of desperation, a generally passive approach to life, and a typically good prognosis. (Heckel 28) When adolescents finally cannot bear the mental affliction, they explore the extreme violence. Youths are more likely to conduct the unintentional homicide if they have a long history of criminal activity and habitually carry weapons. Wherever a situation makes those youths feel they must defend themselves, the weapon, usually a gun, will be used. Moreover, the reason what leads to “thrill killer” is the result of many years of an extremely disturbed fantasy and chaotic lifestyle. During the fantasies, the victims are increasingly depersonalized. Also, because of the years of fantasizing, a murder is able to become quite emotionally detached. (Agee 90-91). This type of murderer is also by far the most disturbed one.

It is important for family and society to consider child psychology healthy. Children who cannot be cured of their psychological problems will aggravate their personality disorders in adulthood. Several studies have demonstrated that personality disorders are traceable to childhood and adolescent emotional and behavioral disorders.

Lewisohn et al. (1) found that adolescent disruptive, anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders were associated with elevated personality disorder dimensional scores obtained at 6-year follow-up in a young adult population. Cohen (2) found that disruptive behavior disorders and affective disorders measured in childhood and adolescence increased the risk or personality disorder symptoms in young adulthood. Rey et al. (3) demonstrated that disruptive behavior disorders in adolescence were associated with a wide range of personality psychopathology in adulthood. (Helgeland 1941-1945).

For those psychopathic adolescents who commit homicide, what can people do to prevent their violence? Normally, people believe that to effectively stop psychopaths’ vicious behavior, the only way is to send them to a psychiatrist. However, the new research found,

Some mentally ill adolescent can be mean or bad like anyone else. They can be a relationship between nastiness and mental illness. Because some therapists assume that when patients are mentally ill and mean, the illness is probably the cause of the ill temper. But human meanness is far more common than the mental illness in the population combined, so the contribution of mental illness to this essential human trait must be very small ideal. (Friedman F5).

This explanation illustrates the restriction of Psychiatry. For those youths with personality disorders, psychiatry can only do so much. Thereby, the classical psychological therapy might be the right treatment which those with personality disorders finally go back to seek.

Before introducing psychopathic adolescents to the processes of psychological treatment, we need to understand the goal of therapy’s treatment. The main goals of treatment are to develop sufficient levels of impulse control, which is also called self-control, to prevent the recurrence of murderous behavior and other violent behaviors; to raising the level of moral judgment and behavior. Therapists may be able to shape, extend, and broaden the youths’ perceptions and proclivity to show empathy to others. Other specific goals are raising self-esteem, maximizing use of personal abilities, developing effective communication skills, developing a more objective, deeper understanding of one’s life experiences, and engendering a sense of acceptance and understanding of one’s role in life events. (Heckel 124-126).

Then, we will study the treatment processes. “Admitting responsibility,” “grief work,” and “ego rebuilding” are three essential phases for the murderers’ treatments. The first phase is “admitting responsibility”. When the patient enters the treatment, murderers might first attempt to deny what they did. Some of them exaggerate this response to the point of denial. Some murderers will not dwell on the details of the incident but may only say something offhand like “I killed a guy.” Furthermore, if denial is difficult, murderers will rationalize the crime. Treatment cannot occur until full responsibility is verbally accepted in front of a therapist, because at least with adolescents, they cannot trust their therapists at the beginning of treatments. Nonetheless, this does not mean that therapists should accept the denial. Instead, therapists will give the clear message that they expect the youths to learn to identify their problems and accept responsibility for their actions, but they will have some time to get adjusted to the therapist. (Agee96-97).

The second phase is “grief work” which is designed to amplify emotional suffering. After the first admission of guilt, the youths usually promptly rebuild their defenses and begin again to justify their own behavior in their minds. These defenses must continually be confronted, and feelings, particularly of remorse, must be encouraged to emerge. The therapist will help youths to achieve a feeling of true remorse and encourage them to do grief work. As various feelings are being expressed by youths during this period, which my take as long as two years, murderers are able to separate self from then object of hostility. In this phase, therapists are also sensitive to when there has been enough grief work, and a major catharsis is necessary. (Agee97-100).

The last phase of treatment is “ego rebuilding.” Patients will be constantly encouraged to be inner directed, to completely analyze their behaviors and how they hurt people. In this process, the emphasis is on taking action. The youth who thinks he has been completely rejected by society must learn how to earn readmittance. This often involves education in social skills. It also includes complete education in the myriad of skills necessary for basic functioning in society, like earning a living, shopping, budgeting, transportation, finding housing, recreational activities. Another strong emphasis of the rebuilding phase relates to one’s peers, particularly helping those undergoing a crisis similar to the one they went through. In addition, the rebuilding process also takes a long time, since the youth has to be prepared to work harder to earn acceptance in the community than the others will face. (Agee 101-102).

Helping youths who are mentally ill to be re-accepted by a society is not only the responsibility of youths’ parents. The society also needs to open arms to those psychotic adolescents, giving them another chance to be cured. Also, schools need to concern students’ psychological health as well as their academic tasks. The result of all the efforts for the psychotic adolescents above will be that parents whose children are normal will be relieved of their worries, and put their children in a school with rarer violent records.





Works Cited

Agee, Vicki L. Treatment of the Violent Incorrigible Adolescent. Publisher: Lexington, 1979.

Friedman, Richard A. “About That Mean Streak of Yours: Psychiatry can do only So Much.” The New York Times 6 Feb. 2007, F5.

Heckel, Robert V., and David M. Shumaker. Children Who Murder. Publisher: Westport, 2001.

Helgeland, Margareth I, Ellen Kjelsberg, and Svenn Torgersen. “Continuities between Emotional and Disruptive Behavior Disorders in Adolescence and Personality Disorders in Adulthood.” American Journal of Psychiatry. Vol. 162, 16 Oct. 2005: 1941-1947. American Journal of Psychiatry. Nassau Community College Library, Garden City, NY 2 May 2007.