The nominee on the other side ends up being donald trump, the potential is he ends up making the case for her. That certainly has been, if you you look at the polls in recent, they voted last week and she won all five. It surprised me that her campaign was based off of women moving toward hillary. We will have to see if she can actually make that case. I think the bottom line is, if youre willing to go for the jetski, how are you going to pay for . There is nothing that outlines things from an Economic Policy standpoint. Theres nothing that connects all those dots. Does the expectation for equality have a larger push for more women in power . Are they going to be giving up more . Thats an interesting question. So this generation is actually frighteningly doesnt run for office. They dont vote, they tend to vote less, they definitely do not get involved. They are very civic in the generation and that the hallmark of their generation. But they dont get involved in Public Policies and decisionmaking. Build a lot a nonprofit stuff and working for a green company. They really disdain washington. I think thats a real problem for the gains women have gotten in washington because of you dont have a next generation that believes that you will see those gains retreat. They are much stronger in the private sector, the millennial woman than they are in the public sector. Maybe we will see more gains in that sector. They are much more vocal and upandcoming. Taylor swift is standing up at the grammys saying i want my recognition and Jennifer Lawrence is standing up saying i want equal pay. There are women finding their voices and thats very helpful, but it is striking there are so very few Millennial Women in public life. Millennials in general, especially College Students have been hesitant to go vote. Theres a fundamental shift looking at all the ones that are actually in interested. Stay involved, stay tuned, volunteer on campaigns because if you get that buzz early on in a campaign, you are going to be hooked. You really can make a difference. Any other questions or should we call it a night . Thank you, i thoroughly enjoyed being with all of you. She is a great friend. I think you so much kay for coming tonight. It was great to have your insight. [applause]. Thank you all. [inaudible conversation] this weekend on after words, the mother of one of the columbine shooters discusses a junction between violence and Mental Illness. Shes conversations the organization on Mental Illness. In 1999, your son dylan and eric harris took the lives of 12 students and one teacher in their high school and then their own. Twentyfour others were wounded. It devastated those families and affected really the whole nation. I think one of the questions people have is why did you decide to write this book now, 17 years later . Well probably because it took me that many years to try to understand it and feel that i was ready to write a book. There was much learning that had to go on my part and healing and i just think it took that long. Its a very powerful book. It covers such a range of emotion, grief and anger and fear. You talk about those emotions and was their progression . It seemed as you learned more things changed for you. Could you talk a little bit about that . Yes, there is always a progression after after a loss of any kind. The progression that i am most aware of in looking at it from the distance, from the distance of time was in the beginning i was certainly feeling very much a victim of the tragedy. I was bewildered, i didnt understand what had happened or why. I couldnt make sense of any of it. I was humiliated and grief stricken. I was terrified. As time went by and i began to understand a little bit about how he died, a little bit about his own suicide, i learned that i became more of a survivor. Identified with other survivors of loss from tragedy or suicide or murder suicides. I became a little more active and interested in all of our welfare together. I began volunteering and trying to raise funds for Mental Health and how to prevent suicide. As time went on i became an advocate. I became someone who was determined to make a difference to write some of the wrongs, to use funds to try to make it possible so we could have Brain Research to occur. There really was a progression and im sure im still in it. There are things you talk about in the book and people want to know, how could you not know. Then over time you come to say there were some warning so signs that had you known what you know now you mightve picked up on that. Can you talk about what you knew then and what you came to know . Right. Unfortunately i had no idea. I had no idea he was suffering and having suicidal thoughts and that he was cutting himself. He wrote about that in a journal entry that i read long after his death. He did have some trouble in junior year of high school. They had stolen something from a parked van. He was assigned to a juvenile Diversion Program and at that time i was baffled. I couldnt understand why he had done such a terrible thing and i remember asking the diversion counselor, does this mean something . Does this mean he needs help her counseling and at that time, nobody seemed to think that he did. He was given an assessment which was the only tool they had at the time to use. Dylan was asked to check off his own feelings about himself and he checked off nothing about feeling suicidal or homicidal. The only thing he checked off was that he needed the job and had financial concerns. We spoke with him and had the support program in place. Dylan promised us he would get his life on track and he did. That is what was so confounding about all this. He continued to go to school. He had a job, he applied up for colleges and was accepted. Over the next 1414 months of his life, he did demonstrate to us that he was doing okay and doing well. There were times when he was moody. There were times when he spent time in his room, but he continued to function during all that time and he had friends. He did activities. We had no idea of the level of suffering and this disorientation, this filter through which he was seeing the world. We werent aware of that until long after his death. What are some of those warning signs now that you would tell other families to be looking for and watch out. I would say a change of behavior for someone or something that seems out of character. At the time, friends friends and Family Member who knew him didnt believe that was significant because they believed so much in his goodness and the fact that he was a teenager and he was experimenting and things would be fine. That is one thing that i would say to people, if suddenly you have a child who gets in trouble as dylan did, he also got in trouble at school about the same time. Those are warning signs that something could be terribly wrong. We have to do a much better job, certainly i wish i had done a better job of asking more probing, openended questions and to listen without judgment or trying to fix things, but to really try to listen to understand what he was feeling. I think some people would say these are typical teen behaviors. How do you think people should look at it to know the difference between a typical teen behavior and what needs to be looked into more carefully . Thats the conundrum. Typical teen behavior can often be the same behavior that one might have if one is depressed. Sleeping patterns that change, eating habits that change, behaviors that change. Its very difficult sometimes to tell and thats why, as parents, we cannot operate under the delusion, as i did, that everything is fine because we have a child that we love and we trust. We believe in their goodness, we believe in their health and ability to make good decisions. I think all of us have to be aware that someone we love may be struggling, struggling with life and death thoughts and they are working very hard to hide those from us. Simply that awareness will change us as parents and the way we interact. I think thats the question people have. Why . Why did dylan do this . I know you talk in the book about lots of theories about that, media and others, but im interested on how you would respond to that question. A child that you have that could take part in a school shooting, the chances are one in millions. This is not something that every parent needs to be worried about the far more dangerous thing for our children is how many of them have thoughts of suicide and selfharm . If we look at a murder suicide, such as the columbine tragedy, murder suicide is a small subset of suicidality. My recommendation is that we focus vy much on trying to understand suicide and trying to prevent suicide. We dont want these things to abrupt into a terrible tragedy. You talked about why it happened and in the book i asked what i think is a more effective question and that is how did this happen. How does ones thinking deteriorate. The way i have come to explain it to myself is a medical model. If we look at suicide inconsiderate to be a health risk, as we would Heart Disease or diabetes, we know there are many factors involved that our personality and how the person interacts and views the world. There are biological factors. It can show that someone has a tendency to think or act or eat or live in a certain way. There are environmental factors and thats not just the home, but it can also be the School Culture or the national culture. Especially with suicide, there are are triggering factors. There are things that occur in ones life such as bullying or arrests that can impact the thoughts that one is having. What happened to dylan is a very rare set of circumstances that overlap perfectly if you want to look at it in a diagram of overlapping circles. Everything came into play of meeting a friend who was very disturbed and very controlling and very angry. Allens own vulnerability and his own wish to die. The pain that he was in, his psychological pain, bullying that they experience together in school, all of of those factors came together in what turned out to be the horrible perfect storm. You talk a little bit on the book on this issue of Mental Health and you call it brain health you say he was experiencing depression and this contributed his desire to die by suicide. You also talk a lot about something that concerned me as someone who advocates for families affected by suicide and Mental Health and that is the stigma. The view that somehow there is a link between Mental Health and violence and that prevents people from getting the help they need. You say here that you do not mean to imply that dylans brain Health Issues made him capable of the atrocities he would enact but to be aware of the millions of People Living with depression. You go on to talk about the research around violence and Mental Illness that it is a very small risk. You talk about dr. Jeffrey swanson and his research. Can you talk a little bit about the research you documented in the book and why it was important to you to point out that this link is not generally accepted as if you have a Mental Illness you would be violent. In fact, the general rule is people with a Mental Illness are not violent. Its 4 of people with serious Mental Illness have a risk factor. Its a risk factor in 4 of incidents. Can you talk a little bit about that . Yes, im glad you asked that. Certainly. This is one of the most difficult things about writing this book. I didnt want to make it any more difficult than it already is for anyone who is struggling with a Mental Health issue. There is certainly enough stigma. There is certainly enough fear and i didnt want, in any way, to make anyone assume that someone who is even feeling suicidal is necessarily a risk to other people. It isnt true. They are a risk to themselves. I have said before were really talking about a small percentage of someone who is suicidal, who might then go on and kill other people. I feel there is a very delicate balance in this discussion. This is one of the most difficult things in writing this book cause i believe someone who is struggling with the Mental Illness is really at greatest risk to him or herself. Knowing that someone is having thoughts where they are in pain or wish to die and they want the pain to stop, this does not necessarily make them dangerous to other people. When all of these factors, as i mentioned before, are happening in such an unusual way, then they can become a risk to other people. That is not the case. That is not what happens most of the time. What i would love to see is, i think in the Mental Health community, there is there is almost a fear of having this conversation of when does violence against oneself or others play a role when someone is ill, when someones brain is not working properly. They dont have the tools for selfgovernance. What is that place where violence becomes a reasonable option . I wanted to raise that discussion simply because i feel too many people do harm themselves when they are feeling badly and they are suffering and in distress. We have to find a way to help people and also acknowledge that sometimes suffering does lead to violent acts against oneself in particular, but also against others as well. We cant be afraid to have that conversation and try to understand what is happening and intervene before it comes a stage iv situation where somebody dies. You talk about how the media talked about the story and of course it was a story, it was something that was news worthy and you talk about why its important to talk about this responsibly. Can you tell us a little bit about that . The media, i feel, plays a huge role in inadvertently perpetuating violence. Even we know with reports on just suicide, there are protocols that schools can follow so they dont increase contagion. I believe we really need to have much clearer standards on how to report on violent issues. When columbine happened, it was a world phenomenon. One of the reasons it was perceived to be a phenomenon was that it was beginning to be more news coverages with images of people running from the school and images of dylan and eric wearing their clothing, wearing guns, showing their names and faces. There was a fight to let people observe what they planned and what they said. They indicated to me and certainly i support this and believe us that this is very dangerous. When we disenfranchised youth who are observing these events and seeing all of the attention that the perpetrators get, it is titillating and something that makes them want to do this more. One of the things people tend to forget about columbine is that columbine itself was a copycatted situation. Dylan and eric referred to this event in their own communications with the each other as an bk which stands for Natural Born Killers and it was a movie. They were doing a lot of modeling off the movie they had seen. I think these images repeatedly showing these images and talking about them is very irresponsible on part of the media. The book itself is about your journey and your thinking over time and reflecting on it. Can you talk to us about the journey and your reflections you said in the beginning it took you 17 years to process what had happened. Talk about what you learned and what you want people to know that youve learned from the journey youve been on. Well, this is going to sound fragmented but they are somewhat disjointed. One of the things i learned is that love is not enough to protect someone we love from illness and that illness might be a Mental Illness or a brain and homeless. I think i always believed in my heart that you could love away someone bad thoughts. That was very naive in my part but there is something that i believed. That is one of the lessons i took away. We have to do much more than just love someone and be there for them. Much more has to be done in how we communicate and how we support. Also how we can find access to good health care. Another thing i feel i learned is bad advice but that is never trust what you see. What you see might be a lie. Someone you love might be working very hard to wear a mask that hides what youre thinking and feeling. Always be aware of that. I think things i learned about myself, perhaps more than anything else, i learned from the nature of a tragedy such as this one. It was very hard to focus on the loss and peer grief of my son. That was something i had to work very hard for in their p. Dont focus on your humiliation and your fear of being sued by all these families dont focus on your life changing and coming to an end as you knew it. The real work in all of this is to find your way back to the person you loved who did such a terrible thing. Ive found that focusing on that love, the important thing is to remember that the way they died is not who they were. You talk a bout a lot of mail that you got, boxes and boxes of mail. You talk about how it really helped you to have letters from people, families who families who had a loved one who died by suicide. Hearing their stories really helped you. Can you talk about why that is helpful to you . After Something Like this happens you dont understand whats happening to you. I felt like i was living on one planet and everyone else was living on a different planet. When i spoke to people who lost children to suicide or had loved ones who were incarcerated incarcerated, it was comforting to me to know that i wasnt the only one trying to sort that out. To see that they were going on with their lives and productive human beings, they had not let this destroy them. It was very heartening to see that was possible and maybe someday i would have a life to. I might have a normal life again, whatever that means. You talked about how you could give back by listening. Can you talk a little bit more about that . We find that too, when we listen to someone else and help someone else it can heal them. Can you tell us how that affected you . That was, to me, and important marker of my own healing. After a traumatic loss, we have a need need to talk about it. We all do. Its like that old poem, the rime of the Ancient Mariner when the old man wants to talk about what he experienced and tell everybody, i think by retelli