'An Imminent Danger to Himself'

How does society protect itself when we can't force someone to get mental health care? I know a man in New Hampshire who had mental health issues but no health insurance. He rapidly went downhill and no one could force him to get help. Then he assaulted his girlfriend and was sentenced to prison for 20 to 40 years. Turns out he also had brain cancer. Heart breaking for all concerned.

Tell me how a person can be a threat to themselves and not to others?? Wake up America! If a person is deemed mentally ill and a danger to himself why in the world would he not be deemed a danger to others.Danger being the key word here!!

Shame on you. It is absurd and ignorant to contend that the gunman was schizophrenic. A primary symptom of schizophrenia is disordered thinking; an individual suffering from psychosis would not be able to orchestrate or carry out this act, given the high degree of deliberate preparation evident here. A violent individual acting under the effects of psychosis (and individuals with schizophrenia are not significantly more violent than individuals without such illness) might act in a violent burst of amassed rage, but would not have been able to stage a plan of this magnitude over the course of months.

The reader who called is correct that individuals suffering from schizophrenia are abandoned by our public health system, and indeed, by us, the public. However, though the caller decries the criminalization of individuals with mental illness in this country, his baseless assumption (and, indeed, an assumption contrary to the available evidence) that the gunman did suffer from schizophrenia, irresponsibly amplified by you here, is precisely the attitude he condemns.

i propose mental health testing for people applying to buy a firearm, to screen out people with mental illnesses and those people with anti-social or aggressive tendencies. the person applying could fill out a questionnaire that would be evaluated by 3 independent psychiatrists, at least 2 out of the 3 would have to judge the person to be not a threat, for the application to be approved.

the usa could also try gun legislation such as exists in the uk and australia. those countries function ok under such legislation, why should the usa be any different?

Hi,

It seems from the manifesto and the comments made on the video broadcast that he was frustrated from being teased by other students. It seemed like he felt he was the 'poor' kid on campus and some upper, rich, classman may have pushed him too hard.

What really should be done is examine virginia's policy on mental health and to conduct an investigation of those who said hard comments or teased others.

To me, this will be more of an occurance as our society chasm deepens between the haves, have mercedes, and have nots, drive used cars and never owned a new car. So, we need to monitor this type of teasing behavior if we are to hold the country together.

I appreciate NHGanite's words. Cho is a poor young man with mental illness. In US society, he has been ignored without care. Many others suffer the same problems may be around you without notice. We should ask social works taking this as a case study, how to prevent incidents happen again. If someone said that he is pushed to the corner. Are we safe? In 2002, a sniper killed a few people in MD, finally the police found them homeless in an used car in the chilly days. The more defense the more terror. Our altitude is not to defense but to care. It is a pity that the gun advocates do not know the best defense is nobdy owns arms.

From the material revealed yesterday, it's clear that this troubled individual was mentally ill, and it's also clear that the systems designed to identify, diagnose, and treat mental illness failed him at almost every turn. Although this doesn't excuse his actions, it does provide a degree of insight into the causes of his irrational and deliberately harmful acts. I simply fail to understand how someone who has been judged an imminent danger to himself would be released with no one considering the possible consequences, both to him and to anyone he comes into contact with. We as a society seem to have made great strides in treating mental illness, but we haven't done so in ensuring that people who need that treaatment receive it.

After listening to the comments regarding Cho's mental state at the time of the killings,it became clear to me that various people were trying to help, but it was "too little, too late".
I feel that if these aggressive, inappropriate and delusional charachteristics were showing up in his college years, then why didn't a teacher or counselor pick up on this way back in the middle school years, and take actions to change it, and follow up on it....I have to imagine most trained professionals (teachers and administrators) should be able to identify warning signs and hopefully would do all they could to try to "turn it around". I hate to say it, but I think the break down of many of these kids starts in the middle school and high school years. Do something for the child before they turn 18, or else you don't have a leg to stand on...The majority of the teachers I have delt with could care less about the individuals psyche they are teaching....they just want the kid to pass their class so they can get their bonuses. My thought is this...when a child reaches middle school, (and again every other year) they should be given a personality assesment to determine their strenghs, weaknesses, learning styles, and potential charachter "flaws" in order to give the teachers some guide lines as to how to bring out the best in every child...not to mention, possibly avoiding what happend in Virginia.

I agree that a person's ability to arm themselves is much to easy in this country and yes this young man had a mental illness. But to keep mentioning that he was teased in school is irrelevent because of his mental ilness. I was ostrosized (spelling?) and teased horribly throughout my school years but because I did not have a mental illness I never even thought about hurting people. The fact that he was teased is irrelevent even though he mentions it in the videos. He was mentally ill and he did not get the help he needed. Period.

His own mom it seems was always worried about him. We need to educate people about mental health. We don't need to CUT mental health programs, which has been done since the Reagan administration, with obvious disasterous results. We are in desperate need of mental health outreach programs in our schools, workplaces, churches, hospitals, anywhere where we can connect with those who most need the service. We need MORE service not LESS.

Odd, indeed, that a child's physical health is assessed all the way through primary and secondary school, at least, but not their mental health. Maybe some of these problems would surface or be detected earlier if, along with the school nurse, there was an equivalent position for a psychiatric nurse.

give people the rite to bare arms and expect to get shot

If you take away the right to bear arms, you're treating the symptom and not the cause. The cause is people. If you take the arms, you also have to take the cars, hammers, chain saws and, well you get the idea. As far as cars go (no pun intended) there was an incident here in Reno some years ago where a woman jammed the accelerator to the floor and drove down a crowded sidewalk. See? No smell of cordite, just exhaust fumes and a lot of blood was spilled. Insanity has a way of conferring resourcefulness on its victim.

First, let me say I think this was a horrible horrible thing that happened and I am not making any excuses for anyone. I have read several of these postings and I have no idea what type of mental illness Cho had or if he was just evil.

But I would like to make a comment regarding the schizophrenia (mental illness) issue some folks are commenting on. As a sister of someone who suffered from mental illness, I definitely have an insight to what goes on. My brother was diagnosed in 1994 with paranoid schizophrenia. He had no insurance and it is not as easy as you may think to get help for someone. He was hearing voices so we took him to a local hospital where they had him sign himself into a mental health hospital. When they "stabilized" him, he was released to come home and it was left up to us to figure out how to pay for his care and where to take him for help. Now, you would think that if someone is unable to work and needs immediate help, that you would be able to get it right? Oh, how wrong you are! It took months to get him onto any kind of assistance, we had to fill out several questionnaires, get people that knew my brother to sign statements that he was having problems and so on. So the mental health system in our country definitely needs severe upgrading to get these people who don't have money the help they need. Because after all, they are all human beings too just like the rest of us, only they need extra help.
You also have to realize, someone with a mental illness sometimes fights against admitting they have a problem. Their is such a stigma in this country about someone having mental problems, people don't want to seek help sometimes for fear of being labeled. My brother was a good peron. He didn't ask to have a mental illness but for whatever reason, that's exactly what happened. He did not want to take his medicine because it made him feel "doped" up and he couldn't think clearly. But he had us by his side supporting him and talking with him and hopefully helping him to understand he was still a good person, he just had a bad thing happen to him and it wasn't his fault.
Now, I don't know about Cho and what problems he had. But I did hear someone on TV state that the college couldn't contact his family due to privacy issues as he was over 18. That's ridiculous. If they knew by an assessment and had several people stating he was having problems, someone should be able to step in and get an individual like that some type of help.

Maybe, if we all start trying to work on our mental health system in this country and quit stereotyping people with mental illnesses, we can can get more people to try to get help. And no, I'm not saying what someone does is society's fault. Because you always have a choice to walk away. But some people are not able to reason things out like we can. And shouldn't we try to help those people...they are humans here just like us with rights to. Maybe these things that are happening in our world today should be a wakeup call. For we all to tend to judge other people whether we mean to do this or not. Maybe we should start trying to be kinder to each other and not label people just because they don't have the same money we do, the same clothes we do, the same way of thinking we do. Because whether you will admit it, we all do it some way or another.
Thanks for listening.