As a mental health professional and researcher, I am motivated to try to dispel some of the confusion coming from the MSM concerning the diagnosis of Seung-hui Cho.
The essential question is:
What could have been done in the past and what should be done in the future to prevent tragedies like the one that has befallen the students, their families, and the faculty and administration at Virgina Tech, not to mention Seung-hui Cho and his family.
And yes, Seung-hui Cho is just as much a victim in this tragedy as the 32 innocents he killed.
Mr. Cho has the classic signs and symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia: paranoid ideation, disorganized thinking, an impaired ability to differentiate between fantasy, and reality (impaired reality testing), and feelings of persecution. Less apparent but probably present were auditory hallucinations.
He had the classic prodromal symptoms of an acute psychotic exacerbation: severe withdrawal and a self-imposed isolation from peers and family, impaired peer interactions, violent fantasies, unusual personal habits, and a monotonic voice and flat affect.
Where did "the system" go wrong?
He was hospitalized at the behest of Virginia Tech but he was NOT monitored carefully after discharge. As a condition of readmission to school, Virginia Tech probably could/shouuld have mandated weekly counseling sessions with a mental health professional. Failure to follow through with treatment is more easily mandated and monitored at a university than it is in society at large.
Given his history of a psychiatric hospitalization, which was known to some elements of the Virginia Tech administration, his teachers, peers, and dormitory resident advisors should have been alerted to his fragile psyche and a system should have been in place to intercede if he began to show (as he did) signs of decompensation.
His family should have been apprised of his psychiatric state AND given contact numbers at the university to voice their concerns.
The American legal system, with respect to the grounds for involuntary commitment/hospitalization and mandated outpatient treatment needs to be revised, to take into account the needs and rights of the patient BUT BALANCED against their capacity for self-harm and harm to others. We could learn a lot from the system in other liberal democracies, such as the UK and many of the Scandinavian countries, which permit and encourage more rapid intervention and treatment while preserving the dignity and rights of the mentally ill.
We have many effective treatments for the hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized and dangerous behavior of the severely psychotic patients, but these individuals MUST be recognized by their families, peers, teachers, and school administrators. Long-term monitoring is essential.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
We need better public education about the signs and symptoms of severe mental illness, mandated for high school students, college students, and all high school and college faculty and administrators.
We need an intervention paradigm IN PLACE in all high schools and universities to get the Seung-hui Cho's of the world the help they desperately need.
We need to review the current American conglomeration of rules and regulations regarding involuntary commitment and mandatory aftercare for the severely mentally ill.
We need to make sure that there is a system in place to provide access to mental health care for the poor and uninsured.
We need to make sure that there are mental health professionals who are familiar with different cultures and are fluent in different languages, to make sure the millions of immigrants in this country have access to effective and compassionate care.
We need NATIONWIDE SYSTEM of mandatory reporting of those individuals with a history of severe mental illness, not to mention those with a criminal history, for real-time mandatory background checks before the purchase of ANY firearm in ANY venue. That means gun shops, gun shows, and person-to-person gun sales.
WHAT SHOULDN'T WE DO?
Try to make sense out of the psychotic ramblings of a paranoid psychotic young man to find out "clues" about why he did what he did.
Pontificate that "nothing can be done" so lets all just throw up our hands and walk away.
Claim that if everyone walked around with firearms locked and loaded in our briefcases, purses, and backpacks, we all would safe from Seung-hui Cho and similarly afflicted individuals.
Blame "popular culture", "violent video games", "hip hop music", and his grieving Korean immigrant family ("it's those damn immigrants again ruining America").
Claim it was all the fault of those two dastardly souls who commited the killings at Columbine.
Let's hope something AFFIRMATIVE comes of these senseless deaths.
UPDATE:
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PSYCHOPATH AND A SOCIOPATH?
Briefly: a psychopath lacks the capacity to recognize what he/she is doing is wrong or he/she is operating under the influence of an irresistable compulsion. They are unable to conform their behavior to legal and cultural norms.
A sociopath, in contrast, knows what the laws, rules and regulations are in contemporary society, but feels that either they do not apply to them, or they can get away with circumventing or violating them.