Mother and 12yr Old Daughter stab each other?

These kind of news stories are so unbelievably hard to understand! How on earth can a Mother stab her 12yr old daughter and as equally shocking, how on earth can a 12yr old get into a stabbing fight with her mother, both are in hospital in a critical position more bbc.

This reminded me very much of the Fordingbridge, New Forest incident a couple of weeks ago. It is so sad and hard to understand what can make these things happen, but I did hear a very good doctor on the radio a week or so ago and have tried to summarise what I heard the specialist says makes these things happen.

Apparently it starts as a mild form of depression, the kind that we all can get, the depression worsens over time, at each of these levels of worsening, different people deal with it in different ways, by talking to people, counselling, or just pull themselves out of it, so the numbers of people that get to the bad state is minimal.
It is 3 times more common in men than women, as men whether rightly or wrongly tend to take on and in turn burden themselves with the responsibility of taking care of themselves and their family, this more often than not in a financial way. So at the moment, with the longevity and constant media discussion of the recession and how bad it is and how long it may be till it all ends etc etc, this just makes the whole situation worse for them.
As the level of depression gets quite bad, so it starts to physically effect the person, anxiety, panic attacks, unable to sleep etc, then all of these things make living normally even more testing, and also when it gets to this stage the rational and irrational parts of the brain can gel into each other making it almost impossible for the person to see the difference between them, all these things add to the confusion and emotional state.
Apparently its also very difficult to understand these people to help them because you need to get to a similar level to be able to understand their rationale to help etc. A bit like if you were diving in the sea, and all your breathing gear etc was set to a max depth of 150ft and so is everyone else's on the boat, as you go deeper, the other people on the boat cant get you and also then risk the same dangers by going deeper than the 150ft.
So as this very low self esteem and depression is reached the triggers that set people off are more and more minor. There are then basically 2 ways the person reacts, they are either inwardly destructive (suicide) or outwardly destructive (murder or attempted murder) or in the cases that have been on the news recently both.

Holiday is Looming!
Only a week to go now and we will just be taking off from Southampton airport to Malaga! Kids are getting very excited having never flown before and we are pretty much organised, although I am sure the anxiety will increase through the week. Most disappointed I wont be able to see Liverpool's first game of the season Live, but the villa does have a British sky box with freeview so Match of the Day it will have to be!