Anyone can understand why school authorities would be jumpy, after the recent mass shooting at Newtown, CT.

But the recent suspension — and possible expulsion — of San Francisco high school student, Courtni Webb, is a fine example of how not to deal with suspected school violence.

Ms. Webb was suspended, according to news reports, for writing a poem about the Newtown killings, which apparently violated the school’s policy against threats of violence.

Poets, of course, have been deemed a threat to society ever since Plato banned them from his ideal “Republic.” Poetry, Plato argued, spoke to the heart, not the mind — and thus encouraged rebellion against the natural order of things.

But having heard Ms. Webb read her poem in its entirety, I found little in the way of violent rebellion, and certainly no overt threats to her classmates. Yes, the poem might be called self-absorbed — but isn’t that part of normal adolescence?

On Friday, the National Rifle Association, a special interest group of 4 million members, released a statement about the Sandy Hook tragedy that occurred a week earlier. In that tragedy, 20 children were murdered by 20-year-old Adam Lanza. Few details have been officially released yet about Lanza’s life, because he had few friends, was shy, and apparently was socially awkward.

However, that hasn’t stopped the news media from focusing on some statements of relatives who believe Lanza either had a “personality disorder” (says his brother), “was autistic” (again, his brother), or had Asperger’s syndrome (told by an unidentified member of the family).

This second-hand information is then held up by both the news media and now by the National Rifle Association as evidence that Adam Lanza must’ve been “crazy” or “insane” to have killed 20 innocent children, and six adults who tried to protect them.

After all, who would do such a thing but someone who’s crazy?

After the tragic shooting in Newtown Connecticut last Friday, many have good reason to feel anguish, despair and misery.

These events touched many families personally. For those of us not directly affected, they can still leave us with feelings of horror and wanting to hold our loved ones near.

As a nation and as individuals, we could not possibly have anticipated or planned to have to deal with the emotional consequences of such an event. And yet here we are… many of us saddened, enraged and overwhelmed.

In rearing my kids I always told them that ‘hate’ is a strong word. Don’t use it lightly, I advised. Don’t say, “I hate this tuna casserole!” Instead say, “Gee Mom, I strongly dislike this tuna casserole. Could I have a hot dog?” Save ‘hate’ for when ‘hate’ is the only word that can describe how you feel, when it counts.

I hate so much of what has happened recently.

I hate the senseless loss of the innocents. I hate the loss of good people who cared for the innocents.

From there it gets a little murky.

I hate that I have to separate myself from this tragedy in order to survive it. This is happening to them, not to me. I am safe, my children are safe.

I have a poster in my office from the 1950s. It’s yellowed with the passing of years, but it still makes me smile. A man is changing a tire in the snow and the situation isn’t going as planned. He has a  grimace on his face and tire chains are wrapped around his wrists like shackles. A woman is standing over him with a pack of cigarettes. The text reads:

“When tempers need to be controlled… Why be irritated? Light an Old Gold!”

Times certainly have changed. Societal views on cigarettes, and toward those who smoke them, have been flipped upside-down. Smokers are segregated. They must stand fifty feet away from shopping centers, hide in a bush when they see a child, douse themselves in perfume or cologne before leaving their homes.

Sarcasm aside, smoking isn’t popular anymore, nor is it attractive.

Sadly, the lynch mobs were out in full force on Friday on Twitter and other online media, threatening the radio show hosts after a prank phone call they made to a nurse who took the call later committed suicide.

Lost in the tragic suicide is the likelihood that nobody would even know or care about this incident were it not for the fact that the nurse was on reception duty for Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, who put the call through to Kate’s nurse. In the U.S. alone, over 30,000 people commit suicide each and every year. Some of them are nurses.

Also lost in this tragedy is any sense of perspective — as though a single action, incident or behavior could lead someone to end their lives. While I’m sure it could happen in some fictional world, in the real world most people choose a suicidal act only when at the end of a long, desperate rope of depression.

So while haters will hate, anybody hating on the DJs — who had no way of knowing the mental state of the people they were contacting for an otherwise harmless prank — has completely lost it.

With anything that changes, especially an important reference manual, people are going to be confused about what those changes actually mean. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

As we noted yesterday, the final revision was approved for publication. The DSM-5 is how clinicians and researchers diagnose mental disorders in the United States. A common language is especially important when conducting research, to ensure treatments are actually working for the symptoms people have.

One of the changes getting a lot of attention is the “doing away” of Asperger’s Syndrome. But to be clear — Asperger’s isn’t being dropped from the DSM-5. It’s simply being merged and renamed, to better reflect a consensus of our scientific knowledge on the disorder as one form of the new “autism spectrum disorder” diagnosis.

So while the term, “Asperger’s” is going away, the actual diagnosis — you know, the thing that actually matters — is not.

But you wouldn’t know it reading some of the mainstream media’s reporting on this concern.

Flipping through one of Psychology Today’s recent issues, my eyes focused on a short article “Just Give In. Five Indulgences that actually boost self-control” by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

What are these five indulgences? Personally, I was hoping chocolate was on the list. (Unfortunately, it’s not!) McGonigal narrows it down to these five things: a single espresso, an afternoon nap, a snack, YouTube and reality television.

The author writes that “Willpower diminishes as the day wears on, but anything that reduces stress, boosts your mood, or recharges your energy can also reboot your self-control.”

Even “reality TV?”

There is a lot to be learned from history.

And with the 2012 U.S. Presidential elections now in our past, I believe the campaigns have taught us a few new things that hopefully the new President and Congress can take to heart.

1. The American people don’t want finger-pointing and blame — they want bi-partisanship.

Nobody likes a government that is so polarized that it can’t agree on anything. Even during the Reagan (with Democrats having a majority in Congress during some of that time) and Clinton years (with Republicans having a majority in Congress during some of that time) things got done.

A Congress that can’t get things done demonstrates a significant lack of leadership and a spirit of good government among both parties in Congress. The people have spoken — they want that leadership and compromise moving forward.

As a child, growing up in the ’70s and still feeling the nearness of the civil rights movement of the ’60s, I believed that as time progressed America would become more and more open as a society and less prejudiced against people who are different from ourselves.

But, in his new book, Race-Baiter, media critic Eric Deggans calls into question my assumption that in America intolerance and narrow-mindedness are on a slow, but constant decline.

Instead, in an interview with Neal Conan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, he suggests that modern media outlets, including 24-hour news programs, reality TV and even scripted television exploit prejudice and bias to build audience and sell advertising.

Sometimes I’m not so sure what the point of democratic elections are.

After living in one of the largest democracies in the world all my life, I get more and more disillusioned with each passing year.

Why? Because each year the same pattern repeats itself. Endlessly.

This is especially true every four years when we go to the polls to elect our next President. Presidential candidates regularly make promises and pledges about what they can do to “fix” every problem afflicting us today.

I have to wonder how helpful it truly is to be playing armchair psychiatrist, when you’ve never personally interviewed the person under discussion. Imagine all the things we could just hypothesize about any celebrity, based only upon a snippet of their public behavior (a snippet we carefully choose, of course).

There’s a profession that does something like this. They’re called publishers, and they publish tripe such as “Us Weekly” and “Star” magazine. They take a piece of gossip and write an entire story based upon nothing more than speculation, imagination and hype.

So I found it more than a little disappointing (but perhaps not surprising) to find a representative of the mental health profession, Dr. Keith Ablow, on Fox News Sunday night doing just that. He spoke during a “Medical A-Team” segment where a group of doctors talked about the vice-presidential debate.

Should a psychiatrist be discussing differential diagnoses of the Vice President of the United States — especially if they’ve never even met the man?