Tragedy in Kazan: a young man opened fire on students of his former school

On the morning of May 11, at Kazan school No. 175, 19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev opened fire on students. As a result of the shooting, 9 people were killed, including seven eighth grade students. More than 20 victims were taken to the hospital with injuries of varying degrees of severity.

It is known that Galyaviev had official permission to own weapons, which he received quite recently, on April 28. The shooter graduated from this school 4 years ago and until April 2021 was listed as a student at TISBI College. In January, he stopped attending classes and cut off contact with the group’s curator, and was expelled in the spring due to academic debt.

At the same time, Galyaviev had a good characterization: “During his studies, he showed himself to be a quiet and non-conflict student. He was always neat and calm, respectful of fellow students and teachers.

A few days before the attack on the school, Galyaviev started a Telegram channel, which was blocked by the administration of the social network after the shooting. There he wrote that he was a deity who came to earth in human form, that all people are his slaves and must obey his orders. And on the morning of May 11, he made the last entry: “Today I will kill a huge amount of bio-garbage and shoot myself.”

Later, during interrogation, the shooter said that he hated people: “I did not realize myself as a god right away, about two months ago. And in the summer, a monster began to wake up in me, specifically. I started to hate everyone. I’ve always hated everyone and started hating it even more.” In addition, he renounced his parents, saying that “the woman who gave birth to him is not his mother.”

It is too early to draw any conclusions about what caused the incident. But, as always in such cases, we ask ourselves: could the tragedy have been prevented? Were there any signs that the future shooter is approaching a dangerous line and becoming a danger to society?

“We see a person in a psychotic state”

Alexander Meshcheryakov – psychiatrist

Men get into crime reports more often than women, especially when it comes to such serious incidents. This is probably due to the hormonal background, the level of testosterone in the blood – after all, men in general are more prone to aggression. In addition, the shooter is 19 years old. It is believed that men mature only by the age of 30, and before this age they are more suggestible and the manifestation of mental illness is more characteristic of them.

Therefore, in our country, so often there are young criminals, with a still fragile and unformed psyche. With age, the frequency of serious crimes in men decreases – it is rare to hear about a person who has committed something like this after 60 years.

If we talk about the manifestation of mental illness, then in the arrow we can certainly see a person in a psychotic state. And this is very similar to acute schizophrenic psychosis. Not for substance intoxication and not for delusional disorder.

It is unlikely that he could imitate the norm, being sick, therefore, if we are talking about a disease, then it manifested itself after his studies. But if you analyze his life, you will surely remember some special features, oddities. Maybe classmates or classmates will remember that he was somehow not like that. Or maybe even it turns out that one of his relatives was registered with a psychiatrist. But, of course, it is too early to draw conclusions about the diagnosis and the reasons for the actions.

“Such tragic stories rarely have anything to do with adequacy”

Irina Belousova – psychotherapist, psychiatrist

Aggression does not know gender, everyone has it in principle, but boys have more biological aggression on average. Therefore, if aggression is not directed in the right direction, for example, in sports, in business, in healthy competition with other men, if it is suppressed, then it will find some other way out.

If we talk about age, then the point here is not in the numbers in the passport, but in the mental, biological and social processes of the age period. A teenager, a young man is like a pressure cooker: an incredible strength of sexual and aggressive attraction is faced with social prohibitions and a lack of suitable ways to realize it.

The child should have a sufficient measure of independence, freedom of choice and support from adults in the matter of exploring the world. Only then will he have the opportunity to realize his desires in a socially acceptable way. I have not seen any research on this topic, but the age of about 25 years is empirically the time when it is possible to achieve compensation.

But such tragic stories, after all, rarely have anything to do with adequacy. In my opinion, it is always a pathology. This only means that a person in illness needs timely and adequate help. Regardless of gender and other characteristics. And I hope that a number of subtle issues of social, medical, pedagogical monitoring and support will be raised, which turned out to be a failure, since such a tragedy happened to us.

In this case, we can talk about a number of pathologies, including schizophrenia. The nature of the person’s statements is megalomaniac (with a grandiose idea of ​​uXNUMXbuXNUMXbits own significance – ed.), affect – hatred. A person in his head is fundamentally different from others, he is out of touch with reality, and this is similar to psychosis. But only “looks like” – because so far we have not been given the data of a comprehensive forensic psychiatric examination.

And here there are no contradictions with his biography: a person can be closed and show the society something completely different from what is happening in his soul. This is what happens in people who have a pattern of life characteristic of endogenous mental disorders.