Don't Keep Students From The Help They Need

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/05/20/a1e_Lisnoff_commentary_0520.html

The Treatment of Mental Illness

The Treatment of Mental Illness

A recent discussion on the killings at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007 by Seung-Hui Cho, a student, raised the topic of the treatment of mental illness in the United States.

Cho was not unknown to the mental health or justice system in Virginia. He had been referred for mental health services and to campus security for a host of aberrant behaviors including harassing women on campus and extremely bizarre writings and actions in literature classes. He frightened both former students and professors to the degree that referrals were made and acted upon.

The problem is that the mental health system failed. Despite being diagnosed as a danger, Cho was allowed to remain at the university without ongoing treatment and bought weapons and ammunition both on the Web and at a Virginia gun shop because of a loophole in Virginia law. While that loophole has now been closed, someone with serious and debilitating mental illness can still buy guns at gun shows in Virginia. He also bought additional ammunition at two well-know retail outlets.

But the issue of the access to guns in Virginia and in the larger United States does not begin to address the issue of why Cho’s mental illness was not treated properly.

The treatment of mental illness in the U.S. remains poor. One-to-one and group counseling and therapy are often not available, and if they are many insurance plans limit the amount of time a person can continue to receive treatment. While drugs can assist with the treatment of mental illness, often they are administered without ongoing counseling or therapy.

Dealing with the mentally ill in the U.S. continues to be problematic. Many families cannot cope with a family member who has mental illness. Communities are so dispersed that people with mental illness who may have been accepted to a degree in the past no longer find the cohesive setting in which others care for them and interact with them. Large mental institutions were largely closed during the decade of the 1980s, and the numbers of people living in their alternative, community homes, is infinitesimally small.

One mental health writer, a psychiatrist, held that the most beneficial kind of interaction for people suffering with mental illnesses was interpersonal communication from custodial staff in a hospital that treated these diseases. The latter is a profound observation on the care that the mentally ill receive in this society. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1994) is in its fourth edition, with some categories of mental illness broken down into several subsets, yet the tragedy of Virginia Tech has many precursors.

The great tragedy of Virginia Tech will not soon recede in public memory. The poor quality of mental health services will continue.