Solitary Confinement

I found this article in the New Yorker about the effects of solitary confinement on human beings. I've never been a prisoner but I wonder if some of this applies to me based on isolation during my adolescence. Some of the spree killers who turn up now and then all seem to have led extremely isolated lives, with little normal contact with others. Certainly the guy at Virginia Tech seemed to be totally cut off from anybody. I'm not sure why this happens since these people were not forcibly put into a cell and physically cut off from everyone else. In America High Schools though some kids are just treated like shit and socially isolated from everyone else. It's gotta to have some impact on them, even if it is not as extreme as the prisoners in the story.