My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer who has

published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.

                    When I lived in Seoul, one thing I came across were a number of students in my 

English classes who had serious mental problems. They were either slow, or they were very, very

good at learning English but talked almost non-sensical outside of class. Other students explained

that they were on powerful medications for their condition, and that they may have suffered a mental

breakdown due to extreme stress at work, an unhappy relationship, family problems, or the death of

a loved one. These things I have seen back in the United States as well. One of the saddest things

in life is the fact that some people snap and may have suffered serious mental trauma that makes them

either unable to deal with life or be far from rational. Normally such people are harmless and are no

threat to anyone. Sometimes though, they can become a threat to themselves or to others. There was

one person I knew who had snapped and who committed suicide. It was a very tragic circumstance for

his family. Another case was a lady my wife knew who had lost her husband (he died in a tragic accident)

and was never the same again. To this day she has to take a variety of medications to prevent her from

suffering serious depression and having suicidal tendencies. In the case of a man named Stephen

Paddock, he decided to kill innocent people. He did succeed in killing 59 people and wounding 500

more. Had emergency and police not responded sooner he might have killed way more. As I have

learned from experience, mental illness is not easily detectable, and a person might seem more or

less normal in everyday life. Unless someone has frequent or intimate contact with them then it is

likely that most people may be unaware of what a mentally ill person might do (or that a person is

mentally ill at all). This was equally the case of Kim Dae-han who started the fire in a Daegu subway

that killed 192 people. The truly sad thing is that even with all the advancements that have been

made in helping the mentally ill, there is still so much we have yet to do.