I think I know now how insanity, in it's most trivial and common form, emerges.

First and foremost, it comes from not being able to receive any substantial informative valid feedback to what you do. Week by week you do something (might be a repeating action, but different approaches), and expect to see a result... and the result does not come. No result you were hoping for. Neither attempt is no good or no worse than any preceding or subsequent one.
Am I going the right way at all?
Is anything going on here at all?
Hello? Anyone out there?
And so it goes: week by week, and if objects started talking to you suddenly, or if you started hearing voices in your head - that would have been a better sign than no sign at all. Day by day - seeing all your energy being sucked into the void. And then, at some point, something just shifts in your head...

Meine Uni periodically issues email warnings of crimes occuring on campus.

About once a month a report is emailed describing the evens where people got stabbed near the Light Rail stop, harassed with an attempt to be kissed and chased into a ladies' room, punched, robbed. The most recent incident involved 3 people being shot in the neighborhood, although near a different campus.

Today's crime warning email talked about an attempted robbery of a backpack by a Hispanic guy of aprox. 180cm and 100 kilos. Not only did he target a victim walking along with friends; after an unsuccessful attempt to get the backpack - he apparently fled being chased by the victim's friends and lost his shoe.
....

I immediately start picturing in my mind a big gloomy guy in a hoodie, picking out of all passers-by on a dark evening and throwing himself into a middle of a group of people to pull off a backpack, after a few seconds realizing something had gone wrong, and continuing to realize something had gone wrong as he is now being chased by just the recent victims up the street so quickly a shoe slips off his foot and quietly escapes the scene.