Views By Two Series
“School Shooting Rampages:
A Columbine-Inspired and Anger-Fueled Contagion”
featuring
Dr. Park Dietz &
Professor Ray Novaco
Please join us for the fourth and final event in our 2015-2016 Views By Two series. Views By Two pairs a Center researcher with a prestigious practitioner to discuss hot topics in the field of psychology and law. By providing both a researcher and practitioner viewpoint, we hope to start a dialogue that will bridge the gap between scientific research and policy.
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments and wine will be served during a reception following the event.
RSVP here by May 11!
Date: May 12, 2016
Time: 5:30-7:00pm
Location:
University of California, Irvine Campus; Education building, room 1131 (building #3 on campus map). For an interactive map of the parking structure and venue, click here. Parking is available in the Social Sciences Parking Structure. A parking attendant will be available until 6pm at the Campus Drive entrance. Please follow the signs from the parking structure to the Education building.
Abstract:
Rampage shootings in educational settings have proliferated in the United States and other countries and have garnered the attention of the FBI and the US Secret Service. Although mass murder in schools preceded the 1999 Columbine tragedy, that episode is a landmark event and inspired subsequent school mass killings and planned attacks. Dr. Dietz, who with his associates conducted a psychiatric autopsy of the Columbine High School massacre for the District Attorney, will present an analysis of the risk factors, psychosocial processes, and preventive strategies that they uncovered, along with extensions to other cases in his renowned forensic psychiatry work. Dr. Novaco will highlight the involvement of anger as a driver of violence in such attacks, with illustrations beyond the Columbine tragedy, including the reciprocal links between anger and imagined violence. Multiple influence channels affecting the disinhibition of violent behavior in these rampages will be reviewed. Open discussion will follow, with an eye toward prevention and mitigation of these tragedies.
Speaker Biographies:
Park Dietz, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. – President, Park Dietz & Associates Inc.
Dr. Dietz founded Park Dietz & Associates, a forensic consulting firm, and Threat Assessment Group, the world’s first workplace violence prevention company. In 2009, Dr. Dietz was named one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Security Industry” by Security magazine. In 2010, he was awarded the “Seymour Pollack Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education in Forensic Psychiatry” by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. In 2014, Biography.com listed Dr. Dietz among the 10 most famous psychiatrists in history.
Dr. Dietz has testified and/or consulted in all 50 states, participating in such notable cases as those involving the assassination attempts on President Reagan and on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Jeffrey Dahmer and more than 25 other serial killers, the Unabomber, the DC sniper cases, the school shootings at Columbine, and civil suits against churches, schools, and youth-serving organizations for the sexual abuse of children.
Educated at Cornell and Johns Hopkins, Dr. Dietz simultaneously earned an M.D., a master’s degree in public health, and a Ph.D. in sociology. He was a psychiatry resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Chief Fellow in Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and as Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He is currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine.
Dr. Dietz is a Past President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Trauma Research and the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. He has served as a forensic psychiatrist for both the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and the New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit. He has authored more than 100 publications on sex offenders, mentally disordered offenders, violent criminals, and forensic psychiatry. He directed a five-year study for the National Institute of Justice on mentally disordered offenders who threaten and stalk public figures and headed a two-year privately funded study of risks to the children and families of executives and other public figures.
Ray Novaco, Ph.D. – Professor of Psychology & Social Behavior
Professor Novaco’s current research remains dedicated to the study of anger and violent behavior, especially with regard to their therapeutic regulation. Present projects continue to focus on the assessment and treatment of seriously disordered persons having histories of violence. This research is being conducted at both the clinical and epidemiological level, involving studies at forensic facilities. The general objective is to further refine and elaborate cognitive-behavioral intervention for anger dysregulation and to better understand its context-based implementation. As well, attention is being given to the interrelationship of anger with clinical disorders, such as psychosis, PTSD, and intellectual disabilities. The connection between anger and trauma is being examined in research on war veterans (Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan) and on people in long-term care institutions who have traumatic life histories.
Other aspects of Dr. Novaco’s research on anger, trauma, and violence are projects on domestic violence. His domestic violence research has primarily concerned women and children served by emergency shelters and transitional living programs, giving attention to the effects of traumatic exposure to violence and of community-based services on women’s psycho-social adjustment and child behavior problems. His ongoing work with forensic hospital patients has included research on how family violence exposure (“volatile parents”) is related to the patients’ anger and assaultiveness.
Environmental determinants of human stress remain a core interest, such as transportation conditions (i.e., traffic congestion and high impedance commuting) and war-related stressors, examined for impacts on health and well being. Dr. Novaco’s other environmental stress research has been on aggregate-level economic change, testing a model of the net effect of provocation and inhibition linked to economic downturns on various forms of psychogenic violent behavior.
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