DAYTON, Ohio (NYT Syndicate) - The murdered children at school desks and locker bays are only the most obvious tragedies when kids open fire on their classmates. Squinting through the horrific gunsmoke, experts on the feelings of children can also see teen-age alienation, loneliness and depression in frightening numbers.

"That's what people aren't willing to talk about yet," said Kettering psychologist Dennis O'Grady. But while student gunmen in seven United States schools have killed 29 people in the past 19 months, the American Psychiatric Association has noted that 5,000 teen-agers a year die when depression leads to suicide.

"There's probably no feeling more painful than loneliness and alienation," said John Baren, a Centerville psychotherapist and former mental health consultant to the Dayton police SWAT team. "In fact, it's the area in psychiatry that the least is written about, and one reason why is that it's pretty painful even to write about."

O'Grady, Baren and many other professionals hope the national grief over last week's massacre in a suburban Denver high school will focus attention beyond metal detectors to deeper problems. They see a widespread inability to express hatred and anger constructively. They see more tolerance of bullying than of individual differences. And they see a pervasive reluctance to acknowledge and treat even low degrees of mental illness.

But they recommend far more than hugs and smiles for alienated children. In fact, they trace much of the problem to misguided attempts at waiving children's personal responsibility and at bestowing self-esteem without requiring them first to accomplish something.

Alienation is the common thread connecting the kids who have shot up schools, experts say — not drug use, not pierced eyebrows, not poverty, not violent juvenile rap sheets. The incidents are revenge of the spurned.

"There isn't anything mysterious about it," said O'Grady, who often gives hourlong seminars on the progression from rejection to resentment to revenge. "You talk to a lot of shrinks in general practice, and everyone's seeing three or four alienated adolescents who are talking about things like going and shooting people. They feel there is nothing to live for."

Kids will always be bullied and ostracized, of course. But that doesn't mean the psychological costs always have to be so steep.

After John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate President Reagan, his father started a foundation encouraging public recognition of mental illness. "Their slogan was "Learn to see the sickness,' " said Dr. William Klykylo, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Wright State University School of Medicine. But 18 years later, Klykylo is still bemoaning the absence of mental health services for kids.

Adolescence is a hard time for everyone, certainly. It is when kids begin feeling emotions they haven't learned to express or control, "and they're kind of left on their own to figure it out," said Kim McElroy, a licensed clinical counselor at Samaritan CrisisCare.

It also is a time when kids fight contradictory battles to assert their individuality and to be part of a group. "Even getting glanced at funny can be very upsetting," McElroy said.

So any teen with a heartbeat will feel some alienation, she said — even a popular one. The trick is identifying and helping those not-so-few who "spend their whole teen-age years feeling nothing but sad and alienated and strange and rejected."

They are becoming more prevalent, said Centerville psychologist Kathy Platoni. She sees hatred surface far more often among "even the good kids, the bright kids," especially where divorce has left them feeling abandoned. "They're so filled with anger and they have no way to express it, because no one's listening."

Quality time isn't enough, O'Grady said. Parents need to be available repeatedly, too. "Listen to their music," he urged. Instead of blaming Marilyn Manson for being popular, ask why he's appealing. That doesn't mean parents should treat junior to Manson's latest CD. It means they should find another way to address the need he's filling.

"Kids tend to have much fewer restrictions today," Baren said. Most young children need to hear "no" more often.

From athletes who blame someone else for their drug addiction to presidents who didn't inhale, Baren said, "We've become a nation of people who never take responsibility for their behavior, and that plays a big role in why kids behave the way they behave."

Their "moral development" is arrested, he said. Few seem to go to church anymore, and he sees a surprising number who have never heard the classic fables and fairy tales. Those morality plays have been replaced by Gameboys and Nintendos, "where so much time is just spent obliterating things, starting at a very early age."

Those early ages are when alienation and depression begin. It's nice to know that kids who start fires, hurt animals and socially withdraw are more likely to snap, but a parent noticing any of those warning signs in a high school sophomore is too late, McElroy said.

"I think a lot more could be done when children are younger," McElroy said. Grade schools, for example, could teach kids how to value their differences, how to solve disagreements without fighting, how to be likable to other kids.

Even without overhauling their curricula, schools can show all kids that they'll punish bullies for tormenting them and they'll offer an activity they enjoy, whatever their interests, said Barb Murphy, the Ohio Department of Education's Safe and Drug-Free Schools consultant. She said research shows that kids stay out of trouble when they feel someone cares about them at school and at home.

As publicity emphasizes the repeated role of outcasts in school shootings, professionals worry that unconventional kids will be further stigmatized instead of nurtured. They also worry that understandable fears will lead to disciplinary crackdowns that leave more kids feeling they have nothing to lose when they need to feel they have somewhere to belong.

"We've heard too many politicians and commentators using this to advocate for their own pet issues," Klykylo said. He hears talk of making it easier to sue or prosecute parents, of raising more money for training teachers, of putting tighter controls on guns, drugs and Hollywood — as if laws can shape attitudes instead of the other way around.

"My fear is we're going to fluff the pillows, beat our chests and cry some tears, but we're not going to do a doggone thing to change violence in our society," O'Grady said. "And it's my fault. I'm an adult. It's the adults' fault."

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Syndicate. All rights reserved.