To be genuinely scared of the world we live in

I’m not buying todays is a psychotic attack. I have had psychosis & I have been sectioned for psychosis.

This person got a taxi, got out the taxi, went into a pregnancy centre, up a flight of stairs and then committed this attack on 6-11 year old girls. What is making you think that is psychosis as first assumption.

YANBU. I'm also fearful.
Southport is only a few miles the road from me and I have a 6 year old daughter, I could easily have sent her to a summer dance club like that.
It makes your blood run cold.
Awful.

Well a hundred years ago if your DC died and you could afford to pay for the burial you kept the dead rotten body in your house till you could.

This would generally affect deprived families who often lived in one room. Abd who often sublet space in their room

The dead child would be in the bed during the day then moved to the table at night

People sold their DC or killed them if they couldn't afford to feed them

Plop yourself into any point in history and it's shit.
11th century Vikings
12th century civil war
13th century plague
14th century 100 years war
15th century war of the roses
16th century sweating sickness plus added risk if you're married to HVIII
17th century civil war
18th fairly quiet actually
19th century children up chimneys, down mines etc
If your land owner decides he's raising an army you've no option but to fight.
Add in the risk of: small pox, dyptheria, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, measles and ever present plague. Never mind 1 in 6 women dying in child birth.
I think we're ok.

I agree.
I grew up during the Cold War. People were scared of nuclear war, which was a very real threat, not a remote possibility. We had some very close calls.

There was the IRA bombing campaign. I lived in London when there were several bombings. I heard two of them from my home.

Lockerbie. Dunblane. Peter Sutcliffe. Fred West. The Moors murders.

It's always been happening. Because of the Internet and social media, we hear about more and they're discussed more.

I'm guessing you're from Bolton OP. I'm not far away and I remember what you're referring to. I'm scared too.

We live in one of the safest countries on earth. If you want to make it safer, worry about the unsafe countries in this world.

Wouldn’t this random crime fall under untreated mental health condition? where I live most totally random murders are committed by people experiencing psychotic episodes. The public are successfully challenging current treatments which don’t include facility care.

And they were right. As were the millions of families it didn’t happen to.

It was very unlikely. Just as it’s very unlikely you’ll win the lottery, but most weeks someone does. That someone wins the lottery doesn’t mean they were likely to win. They weren’t. And neither are you. In the same way, the children this happened to were very unfortunate - it wasn’t likely to happen to them and it isn’t likely to happen to you.

I think the most worrying thing is there seems to be a huge lack of respect for other people at the moment: you see it in day to day life, people getting cross with people in the traffic, people having no patience in queues / with shop staff etc, even the recent incident with the police man stamping on the man’s head - the footage before that showed these lads just laying into the police, no respect for authority. I find that really worrying as we’re moving towards a society where it really is every man for themselves- in more ways than one: violence against women in particular is dreadful. I think the terrible events of today are an amalgamation of all of that.

I sympathise with you OP, I really do, but this is where you need to look at facts and statistics. I ruined the whole of my childrens' newborn stage by believing that they would die from cot death. It happens to a small number, and we're all human and so can all feel some degree of their pain, but it's statistically so unlikely. You wouldn't get in a car or cross the road if you didn't take into account statistics.

I felt this last year when me and my dd went to watch the local fireworks In town. About 3 hours later a local lad of 18 was stabbed to death in a ridiculous fight that occurred between them and some lads from a different town. The boy who was stabbed to death wasn't some down and out trouble maker, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It made me feel sick to think that night that lad was watching the same fireworks as us then a few hours later lost his life because some dick head was carrying a knife.

I agree. Was just thinking of this. I also suffer anxiety. I was planning to put my kids in a holiday camp but I am too scared. I know the chance of this happening again are very very low. I feel so bad for the parents, I cannot imagine how they are feeling right now, I would be devastated.

Obviously OP has a unique case but to answer the question…no, it doesn’t terrify me, the world doesn’t scare me and I don’t fear for my kids. I could get wiped off the road on my way to work by a truck or another driver, or slip and break my neck out running. You can’t live your life petrified of things that are extremely unlikely to happen.

No they won't have. But as someone who has anxiety and agoraphobia in the past you can't live by the negative what ifs. Anxiety always makes you forget the positive what ifs, which is what happens for the vast majority of times. You don't live or enjoy life if you hide away scared of all the bad things which might possibly occassionally occur.

The homicide rate in England and Wales has pretty much halved between 2002/3 and 2023/24.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/318385/homicide-rate-england-and-wales/

In 2002/2003 the murder rate was 20 per million population.

In the 1500s it was 20 per 100.000 population.

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA177954050&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00182753&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Efa169654&aty=open-web-entry#:~:text=Evidence%20from%20England%20suggests%20that,that%20of%20the%20nineteenth%20century.

In terms of murder rates of the world, the UK is no.142 of a list of 202 countries - where no.1 has the highest murder rate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listoffcountriesbyyintentionalhomicidee_rate

We are living in very safe times in a safe country.

Try not to worry.

When you decided to create more humans did you think the world was a safe place and they'd be free from intense suffering? 🤔

Stop watching the news. Seriously.

If you left your kids outside your house permanently, it would take more than 10,000 years for them to be abducted, on average.

The stuff on the news is there because the events are so rare.

With your update I can see why it hits home for you. However, life can't be lived in a state of high anxiety. You can avoid certain things but you can't avoid everything.

I agree OP, it is going to have brought back some horrible memories and feelings for you.

The majority of people are good, that's why they don't make the news.
The people that tried to help today were amazing from what I saw on the news, there's more good than bad

No wonder this has hit you so hard. I’m sorry for your loss, I can’t even imagine.

It's probably due to the news being 24/7 nowadays that we hear it more. But I've felt more scared about the world in general. All the bad things going on around the world, it was easier to duck my head and feel further away from it. Wars and killing people in the news, I just can't cope with it.

I have to keep myself from reading the news too much as I absorb it too much and end up down a rabbit hole reading too much about it. Don't know if it's because I'm ND, it hurts my head and especially when I can't do anything about it. I get too stressed and mentally involved.

However, there have been 2 instances too close where I live that have been on the news. Big riot and then a shooting. I do feel it so much more in the last few years.

And hearing horrors of this. Remember that awful stabbing of the children in France, was it in a park? I felt horror reading that too. So bloody sad. :-(

It's not a regular occurrence OP, if it was, it wouldn't be in the news.

The world is dangerous and always has been. You can't sterilise it. Horrible things used to happen to children in the past too, in fact, many children didn't see past their 2nd birthdays.

I know that sounds awfully harsh and insensitive but it wasn't until I started putting things into perspective like that, that I managed to control my own anxiety.

What has happened to these poor children today is horrific, there's no other word for it, and god help their poor families in trying to deal with it, but it's highly unlikely to happen to you.