Justin Mohn has “been ranting and railing about the government for 10 years now and how they’re out to get him,” a childhood friend told NBC News.
The man accused of killing his father and displaying his decapitated head in a macabre YouTube video has long been obsessed with conspiracy theories, say those who knew him.
Justin Mohn, 32, was arrested on charges of first-degree murder and other counts after his father, Michael Mohn, was found beheaded in their family home in Middletown Township’s Levittown section Tuesday evening, court records show.
In a video that was removed by YouTube hours after it was posted Tuesday, the younger Mohn described his father as a federal employee of 20 years and referred to him as a traitor to his country. He also called for the death of all federal officials while allegedly displaying his father’s head.
“We’re all just in shock right now,” John Prickett, 68, who lives down the block from the Mohn residence, said Wednesday.
Justin Mohn has “been ranting and railing about the government for 10 years now and how they’re out to get him,” …
And
Justin Mohn, 32, …
He was at least 22 when this started, maybe earlier. That’s kind of the prime time for symptoms of schizophrenia to appear, and it can happen to anyone, even you.
It is no secret that culturally approved magical thinking can mask those symptoms at best, and encourage them at worst. Religion is magical thinking, and for the last several years, so is right wing politics.
No matter who or where you are, especially when you’re in your 20s, please take note of magical thinking in your own head, and check in about it with professional mental health care. This is doubly important if you are also surrounded by and influenced by other kinds of magical thinking.
Mohn is absolutely responsible for his own behaviors and actions, as are we all. But it would be irresponsible to remain blind to understanding the circumstances that brought him to those actions, so that we can take preventative measures to avoid this in the future.
The mean thing about psychosis is that you don’t realize it. For him it was reality. Mental health education is key. If you notice someone in their early or mid twenties become reclusive and feel paranoid, notice a professional. As his friends should have done in college.
Btw, under psychosis people are unfit to plead, if that’s the right term. So it’s difficult to call him responsible.
Mental health education is key. If you notice someone in their early or mid twenties become reclusive and feel paranoid, notice a professional
Is that a thing in America? I’ve never seen anyone struggling with mental health get forced treatment short of a suicide attempt.
If there is evidence that a person is a danger to themselves or others the a police officer can forcibly take that person to a hospital for evaluation and the hospital can hold the person involuntarily for 72 hours. To hold the person for longer than 72 hours the hold must be reviewed and approved by a judge. As you might expect the system is subject to significant abuse.
Is “becoming reclusive and paranoid” sufficient for that? Or do they actually have to make some kind of threat.
For the 72hour hold they either have to make a threat or be acting irrationality while interacting with the officer. For a court ordered hold initiated by a family member or social worker becoming reclusive and paranoid can be enough if it rises to the level of the person neglecting their own basic needs.
I just want to pint out the role parasociality likely plays in all this. You see it to a lessor extent in fandoms like Marvel or Star Wars, but these people have their identity all wrapped up in the things they see and hear, the talking heads and the talking heads problem.
We didn’t evolve in a world of screens and taking voices. We only have so much of an ability to contextualize that the people on screens aren’t us. So when some one had their entire being wrapped up in a parasocial relationship with Alex Jones or whoever, they lose the ability to distinguish what’s happening to the characters or themselves. It’s all the same.
Yup. The cries of “identity politics” from the right was just more projection. Because of course it was.
Between Regan wrecking the USA’s mental health care system & Trump encouraging violence & conspiracy theories, this is all on the GOP.
The Democrats certainly have their share of the blame to bear. They never did anything to really oppose them fundamentally. To this day they’d rather make a deal with the Republicans (where they are always on the losing end) than do anything that might be seen as promoting progressive causes in the US.
Reagan ended federal funding for state psychiatric institutions and then was almost assassinated by a schizophrenic. Didn’t change his mind after that though, why?
Because the man was an idiot.
Why in the world does it follow that his assassination attempt was caused by his poor mental health policies? That guy would have tried to kill Reagan regardless of what he did
“bUt mY bOth sIdEs!!”
Some of yall will do any gymnastics you need to shoehorn in “Dems too!”
Nah bro this is on the GOP, these are their followers, they’re the stochastic terrorists.
I also can’t stand when GOP is in control of one of the houses and people “why isn’t Biden getting anything done!!” Take a damn 101 class already. Then they complain about executive orders. The fuck do you want him to do??
Oh, so then I should start cutting off republicans heads and displaying them in YouTube videos?
Glad to have your support, comrade
Sounds like a good fuckin’ time to me
IIRC everyone on the left was in favour of shutting down the mental institutions and putting the mentally ill into the community because the instititions were cruel. They thought they were helping people.
Yeah… People put all of the blame on Reagan, and yes he is mostly to blame, but I believe JFK was the one who started shutting down government-run asylums. And yeah, at the time it may have been the humane thing to do given what kind of shit went on in those places (and specifically, what happened to his sister Rosemary).
Unfortunately, they were never replaced with anything better.
(FYI, I’m not a conservative trying to make Democrats look bad. Check my comment history if you don’t believe me)
You are absolutely correct despite the downvotes.
All it takes is for good people to do nothing.
If the good people are doing nothing or only passively opposed, they aren’t good people.
Democrats are complicit in the modern state of society. They had their roles to play in only ever offering paper resistance while occupying the seats where real change could have been pushed for.
Democrats aren’t the good guys. They aren’t your friends. They are the second and fourth steps of a dance that has us waltzing into facism, and they are responsible for the role they’ve played.
Should we vote strategically to avoid fascism this year. Fucking obviously. But the principles of bipartisanship and incrementliasm are what brought us to this point. Democrats occupying seats like Pelosis and Feinsteins when we could have real progressives I. those positions. RBJ in her arrogance refusing to allow another justice to be seated. Democratic insistence in decorum while the other side is literally engaged in insurrection.
Yes. Thank you. Perfectly said.
And I should add that this is the exactly the kind of nuance that keeps thinking people out of the grips of fear-based, black and white propaganda that exists solely to move us ever closer to an authoritarian state in the US.
I’ve been off the rails for a long time. I’m not violent though I’m just crazy. I like puking and screaming in a circle.
