10:35 a.m. update
AURORA | A psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia told jurors in the Aurora theater shooting trial that James Holmes’ inconsistent behavior for different doctors made sense considering his changing mental state.
Raquel Gur said Holmes was a markedly different person from one interview with doctors to the next, a common issue with mentally-ill people undergoing treatment.
“The psychotic state is a fluid state,” she said.
When she first interviewed Holmes in November 2012, Gur said it was “like pulling teeth” to get more than a one or two-word answer from him.
Holmes seemed to be looking through her, Gur said, and when he did become emotional when asked about his life in high school, his face got red and he started to pant.
But in later interviews — with her and other psychiatrists — Gur said Holmes was more forthcoming and moved his hands when he spoke, something he didn’t do in the first interviews.
Because Holmes started being medicated in November 2012, and he had spent several years in the jail before the later interviews and likely was more comfortable with his surroundings, Gur said it makes sense that his psychosis had waned.
“People can change sometimes in remarkable ways,” she said. “Medication can have for many people a big effect, and it had a beneficial effect for Mr. Holmes.”
Still, Gur said, Holmes hasn’t been cured of his schizophrenia. The medication has only lessened the symptoms, she said.
9:45 a.m. update
AURORA | The defense’s star witness in the Aurora theater shooting trial testified Tuesday that James Holmes’ schizophrenia had taken over his mind in the weeks before the July 20, 2012, shooting.
Under questioning from public defender Daniel King, Raquel Gur, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, said Holmes’ delusions dominated his thinking in July 2012.
“Gradually over time they did. They became the major preoccupation and force in his life,” Gur said, pointing to his writing leading up to the shooting.
Gur said there was a “bizarre quality” to Holmes’ delusional thought and his thinking was not organized.
After his arrest, as he sat in a police interrogation room with paper evidence sacks covering his hands, Holmes seemed to play with the bags, closing his hands over and over and making a popping sound.
Gur said that behavior is evidence of his mental illness.
“This is not purposeful behavior, it’s bizarre behavior,” she said.
Gur said schizophrenia is often misdiagnosed as depression because patients sometimes don’t share details about their psychosis.
“At times, even professionals can miss it,” she said.
8:49 a.m. update
AURORA | Day 44 of the trial of Aurora theater shooter James Holmes began Tuesday morning in Arapahoe County District Court with an expert on schizophrenia resuming her testimony from Monday’s proceedings.
Raquel Gur, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatry professor, found Holmes insane and said he suffers from schizophrenia after she examined him in 2012. Holmes’ defense team have said Gur is a world-renowned expert on schizophrenia.
Gur testified for about three hours Monday, and much of the focus was on her credentials.
According to her university’s website, Gur is a professor of psychiatry, neurology and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She also directs the Neuropsychiatry Section and the Schizophrenia Research Center.
Gur said she was part of a workgroup that wrote the schizophrenia section in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the go-to reference of mental issues that has been mentioned several times at the trial.
She said schizophrenia has long been her area of expertise and said the disease is a particularly complex one, with “overlapping clinical features.”
In some cases, people can appear to be living normal lives but they are actually in the throes of schizophrenic delusions. In one case, Gur said she had a patient who seemed fine — he was dating, working, driving a car — but he was completely convinced that the government was poisoning him through tap water.
Schizophrenic symptoms are caused by gluten sensitivity. That’s why Schizophrenia is not a disease, is “particularly complex” and has “overlapping clinical features.” Gur may be an expert but she’s not up to date on the cause and treatment of schizophrenia. Also, you can’t drug someone out of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Keep them safe from harming themselves and harming others while taking them off of ALL things GLUTEN. Dairy makes people crazy too. What a shame that psychiatry is still in the dark ages; trying to treat the mind separately from the body when they are one. The gut bacteria is the first brain and the brain in the head is the second. The gut bacteria can function without the brain in the head but the brain cannot function without the gut. It’s the gut bacteria that produces many of the chemicals the brain needs. Drugging someone in a gluten psychosis is like putting water in a car, neither will work and cause much damage. Holmes was mis-diagnosed and given the wrong treatment. Psychiatric drugs themselves cause delusional thinking, hallucinations and murder ideations. Holmes was a disaster waiting to happen. He is the poster child for the psychiatric mis-diagnosis, wrong treatment and more of a reason why mental health drugs are unhealthy.