As 32 families mourn the loss of loved ones from the tragedy at Virginia Tech, a lot of red herrings are popping up from all quarters of the media regarding what could have prevented this. From Fox News, predictably, we get a wish to arm every college student in America. From Dr. Phil, we get the Liebermanesque/Hillaryesque blaming of the video game industry. From a good portion of my side of the aisle, we get calls for gun control.
None of these are the most important issue.
The issue, once again ignored in our society, is the substandard recognition and treatment of the chronically mentally ill in this country and the consequences of inaction.
In October of 1985, I lived in Philadelphia. One afternoon, a woman named Sylvia Seegrist walked into a shopping mall in the suburban community of Springfield and started shooting up the place with a .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle, killing three people. As the story began to unravel, we learned that Seegrist had a long history of mental illness going back a decade to the age of 15. She had at least a five-year history of fantasizing about shooting people with guns. Many in the same shopping mall knew her based on previous visits she had made in which she regularly harassed customers. She was able to buy the gun at a department-type outlet store simply by lying on a form that asked her whether she had a history of mental illness.
The mental health system in place at the time in the state of Pennsylvania failed Seegrist and the three people killed that day. 22 years later, it has failed the campus of Virgnia Tech, with the consequences being displayed now in the news for all the world to see.
Cho Seung-Hui had been identified as exhibiting anti-social behavior in 2005. He had been evaluated by mental health professionals and found to be at least a threat to himself during one evaluation. Unfortunately, based on campus policy, he had yet to make an overt threat to himself or others, despite a litany of disturbing writings turned into his English professor. So he remained on campus, without needed treatment, slowly getting worse.
Now we are treated to pictures and video of Seung-Hui brandishing firearms thanks to a package he mailed to NBC in a two-hour window between shootings on Monday. The videologue shows a mentally ill young man so full of anger, incoherence and misdirected hatred that the mind begins to wonder why a person in this condition was allowed to walk the streets, let alone mix with a college campus population.
I don't pretend to hold the answers to mental illness or to what should have been done to avoid what happened at Virginia Tech. I just hope that this case is used as a starting point to have a dialogue about mental illness that has somehow been avoided for so long. Thirty-two bodies in Virginia serve as a stark reminder that this dialogue is best started sooner rather than later.