Science may be helpful in crime prevention

In reading of the four dead and five wounded on Memorial Day and May 31 here in the Conejo and Simi valley areas, this information screams at me: he who did the killing and injuring had a history of violent behavior. He should have undergone a court-ordered brain scan years ago.

Why?

I spent 47 years with difficulty focusing, utter incomprehension of teachers’ and employers’ instructions, repeated abandonment of goals and careers, misreading and thus misbehaving in social situations and chronic underachievement. Low-grade depression developed. My self-esteem and confidence withered with every year.

Then I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD), began medication and coaching.

A few months later I found the book “Seeing and Healing the Six Types of AD/HD” by Dr. Daniel Amen. It described six sub-types of ADD, two of which involve antisocial or violent behavior.

Crumpled on the bookstore carpet, sobbing quietly, I recognized everything I had lived with: temporal lobe ADD and “ring of fire” ADD; auditory, visual and tactile hallucinations; self-isolating, explosive, meaningless rages; hypersensitivity to light, sound and touch; and extreme moodiness.

Most of my abusive behavior was verbal, maybe because of the cultural conditioning of girls and women. My parents had sadly explained my personality changes as “adolescence.” My head got slammed by a teacher, twice again in accidents, each time marked by dizziness and nausea. It’s how temporal lobe damage occurs. No visible blood, concussion or unconsciousness––just an internal, silent and profound change.

Environment and moral failure play their parts in abusiveness. But if, as Amen advocates, everyone who commits a violent crime is required to undergo a brain scan on their first offense, and a significant number of other offenders got diagnoses, medicine and information about themselves, how many prison cells would we not fill? How many loved ones would not have to endure the worst news of their life and the greatest losses?

Knowledge has spared me a downward path of pain and despair.

What might it have spared the families so ravaged in late May?

Joanne Ellis Thousand Oaks