It is regrettable that almost all the information that people get about schizophrenia occurs when someone with this disease commits a violent act. And most perpetrators, if not all, are untreated. It is now coming out that James Holmes, the alleged Colorado shooter, had been seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia. No one knows his diagnosis, if there is one, but he seems to have all the hallmarks of someone with active psychosis.

Due to the recent surge in gun violence in Toronto there have been numerous discussions about how best to address this problem. I firmly believe that low and negative expectations are at the heart of what leads many black youth down paths that are lined with little more than underachievement, impoverishment and predatory violence.

I never met her in person, but I feel as if I knew her. Jessica Ghawi, known professionally as Jessica Redfield, was a Denver-based hockey blogger and aspiring sportscaster. She died in the Colorado theatre shooting, in which 12 people were killed and 59 people were injured. She was only 24 years of age.

In the wake of the "Dark Knight" shooting, there is the inevitable and understandable desire to seek an explanation -- to make sense of the senseless. Somehow this monstrosity might have been averted -- if gun laws were different, if someone who knew the killer could have stopped the crime in advance, if social welfare programs to treat such sociopaths were improved, if movies didn't encourage such violence. And those thoughts may feel even more urgent to Canadians as our week began and ended with horrific shootings -- on Monday, two people were killed and 24 injured at a Toronto block party.

UPDATED: Canadian Press has identified Jessica Ghawi's boyfriend as minor league hockey player Jay Meloff, from Markham, Ont. Ghawi was in Toronto...

"Oh God, I don't know what to do." It was a tweet sent out by a woman named Caitlin in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a "Batman" movie premier...