NISB - National Individual Safety Board

I explain the name changes from SIPC to VIPC to NISB at the end.

The Violence Escalation Chain
Domestic Violence, Suicide, and Mass Murders do not start with a catastrophic violent event like killing a spouse or oneself or shooting up a school or a work place. It starts slowly, and progresses through a series of very predictable stages, similar to developmental stages, separated by critical thresholds or intervention points. The earlier we can intervene, and break that chain the better.

Lack of respect for each individual, or the self, or a group or so-called class.
Examples: The US Congress, and many media reporters.

Verbal abuse of that individual or group, or extremely negative self-talk.
Examples: Bullies of all types.

Physical abuse of that individual or group
Examples: Hitting, slapping, spanking, punching & tripping.
- This is often made easier by popular approval or permission, ignoring, or minimizing the violence, abuse or neglect.
- This can be sanctioned, or worse encouraged by the violence in advertisements. It makes the violent behavior socially acceptable.
  So far I've only spotted one TV advertisement that, in my opinion, crosses this critical threshold, thus encouraging personal violence and that's the ads for V8, where several people hit others because they disapprove of their dietary choices!
  In the fall of 2008, they suspended these ads for a brief period. Then in January 2009 they resumed, and the latest ad has an infant, about 1 yr.old, in a high chair, hitting his mother because she is eating a french-fry.
- Bullies, when caught always say, "It was just a joke"; but it wasn't!
Individual severe Violence
Examples: Maiming, Suicide and Murder.

Group violence
Examples: Abortion clinic bombings, homicide bombings, and mass murder!
(These are, unfortunately, increasing in both number and violence.)

Pre-Violence - Nurturing violence from inside the individual. This is where disrespect for others starts.

Creating Powerlessness.
Every Individual needs enough personal power to obtain the necessities of life: shelter, food, companionship, etc. If that personal power is denied or frustrated the individual will be ill equiped to survive. It is also the first step in being on the receiving side of disrespect from others. Some religions and parents, using religion as an excuse, see this personal power or energy as 'spirit' or spunk and actively try to kill it, leaving their children less able to survive.

Strong individuals do not need to bully or threaten, or intimidate others, only the weak do that.
And severely weakened powerless individuals, turn to weapons to augment their diminished personal power.

Voice - The need to impact and make a contribution to one's community is as important to us humans, as food, shelter, loving and being loved etc.

Voice or Impact requires Power, Personal Power.

There is an excellent description of our need for 'Voice' in Dr. Richard Grossman's article: "Giving Your Child "Voice": The 3 Rules of Parenting":
The need for Voice

The Critical Thresholds between the Stages.
Between each of the above stages is a critical threshold, a point where effort is required to move from one stage to the next.
Some thresholds are easily crossed, but most require a significant amount of energy to cross, and often even more energy to cross back. (See the example of Water crossing from Ice to Water to Steam: it requires a LOT of energy. (Dynamic Thresholds) The same is true of human growth.

This project was originally called:
SIPC - Suicide Investigation and Prevention Center, then renamed to:

VIPC (Violence Investigation and Prevention Center)
because the dynamics of personal violence seem the same whether one directs that energy outwards towards others, or inwards towards the self.

Finally, I changed the name to switch the emphasis from violence to Safety, hence
NISB - National Individual Safety Board.

The primary purpose of the NISB is to understand the sequence, in detail, of the predictable, detectable stages leading up to violence, and the critical thresholds between them, so we can intervene earlier in this chain thus preventing the end state of violence.
The model I follow, which I consider the gold standard, is that of the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) which investigates every disaster, even near disasters, thoroughly and completely from many, many points of view to find, if possible a guideline that will prevent similar disasters from occurring in the future. This is not what I found in psychology. When there is a disaster, a suicide, or a near disaster, an attempted suicide, the victim is buried and little if anything is learned to prevent future suicides, or other mass murders, such as shootings in schools and work places.

Related pages:
To help you find your way around this site, three pages may be helpful:

An outline or summary in slide format is at: Overview Slides
A Narrative Description is at Founder's Narrative
A mind map of the various Paradigms, Models, related articles etc. is at: Sitemap

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Certified RFR - Rat Free Research:
All my studies have been conducted by Individual humans, with Individual humans, and for Individual humans.
No rats have ever been harmed or even inconvenienced.

Last Updated: Saturday, May. 9, 2009 1:13 PM

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