Virginia Tech Massacre, Part 2

[Kuciwalker]

Please don't quote moby, Geronimo.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Drivel

You're a ****ing bore, who can't give it up. Welcome to the ignore list, asswipe.

[SlowwHand]

That doesn't work. Eventually, curiosity will kill you. You'll wonder, WTF now? Takes a manual effort.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Nothing to be curious about. The name is perfect - a one dimensionally shallow object wrapped endlessly around itself.

The posts are so predictable they could come from a bot. Not even a good bot, but something ELIZA vintage.

[Straybow]

lol ELIZA LOL

[MRT144]

Dude, there are more important things than this. Im over it. get back to fighting against real problems in the world.

[Pekka]

I have to say it in this thread as well, I don't think there's much we can do to stop these things from happening. Someone will always go insane and try to kill a bunch of people. Gun control, videos, none of these will help.

He needed help, mental help, so what could have helped is if they had the time and resources to help him with that earlier. That's it.

I think people have a difficult time to accept that some things just happens and we have very little control over it. This will happen again, over and over again, the numbers will be smaller but these kinds of things will continue to happen.

[Dr Strangelove]

Actually in this case the one thing which most likely would have prevented this incident was ..................... .................. ..................... ................................. .................. ........... speech therapy. The kid had a terrible speech impediment. I'm not sure if it was due to not having learned to speak English properly or if he had a true speech defect, but his history is marked with repeated incidents of humiliation from students because of his speech. These incidets occurred in high school and continued in college. It is possible that his depression and hostility stemmed from this strain on his ability to relate to other kids his age.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Actually in this case the one thing which most likely would have prevented this incident ...

There are alot of things trhat could have helped. The women pressing charges for stalking, the university pressing the arson charge, the court ordering an involuntart commitment rather than a voluntary one when they declared him an imminent threat to himself and others. Any one of those might have kept him from getting the weapons in the manner he did or at all.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
There are alot of things trhat could have helped. The women pressing charges for stalking,

The woman admitted he didn't actually make threats.

the university pressing the arson charge, the court ordering an involuntart commitment rather than a voluntary one when they declared him an imminent threat to himself and others.

The psychiatrist marked him down as a possible threat only to himself, then during the next session Cho apparently denied suicidal intent. In the US it's standard that once a person declares himself no longer suicidal he can no longer be detained against his wishes.

Any one of those might have kept him from getting the weapons in the manner he did or at all.

In the past decade we have had several tragic suicides in which the deceased had been brought to psychiatric attention only to be released and then to committ suicide within days of his/her psychiatric interview. From a legal standpoint a psychiatrist can not choose to use his judgement as to the patient's probable intent to override the patient's expressed intentions. If a teenager presents to the ER screaming "Oh God I want to kill myself" then gets cold feet an hour later, decides that he/she doesn't want to spend sometime in a psychiatric facility and then says to the doctor "I don't really want to kill myself" they have to let him/her go.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
The psychiatrist marked him down as a possible threat only to himself, then during the next session Cho apparently denied suicidal intent.

In another part of the form, Cho was described as "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/

That seems like a line crossed that requires involuntary commitment to me, Dr. S. How about you?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
The woman admitted he didn't actually make threats.

I don't know about Virginia's statutes, but many state stalking statutes do not require that the stalker make explicit threats, and others do not require any form of threat. All that's necessary is for the victim to be fearful, or in some states, to feel harassed by the stalker's activity.

Unless there is trespass, some form of assault, or violation or terroristic threat statues, typical stalking behavior won't result in criminal prosecution, but they can result in restraining orders (domestic violence prevention or prevention of civil harassment), which do go into a federal database, and are supposed to prohibit firearm purchase during the life of the restraining order. Keep it up in violation of a restraining order, and you can be in a world of hurt, but the initial restraining order should be sufficient to prohibit firearms purchase.

In California, once a DVRO or CHRO is issued and served, even attempting to purchase a firearm in violation of the order will earn you a trip in front of a judge.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by DinoDoc

In another part of the form, Cho was described as "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/

That seems like a line crossed that requires involuntary commitment to me, Dr. S. How about you?

Strange, other reports have stated that the only box checked on the form was "presents an imminent danger to himself."

Read the rest of the post. In this part of the country psychiatric care is virtually inaccessible to a large part of the community. I'm utterly certain that one of the first things St. Albans did when he was presented to them was to conduct a "wallet biopsy", i.e., a search for his insurance carrier to determine what sort of insurance coverage he had. Around here most private insurance policies don't cover psychiatric care, and most public (welfare) policies don't pay out the sort of cash that psychiatric facilities expect. As I said in my post I've witnessed a number of tragedies resulting from a failure to commit a patient who was seriously depressed. In this area there has never been a successful lawsuit against a medical facility for failure to commit a patient even if the patient committed suicide or homicide within a matter of hours of being released.

I'm not defending this situation, it is a constant aggrevation to me. I have a number of patients who are seriously mentally ill and beyond my skill to help, but as far as getting psychiatric help for them I face a solid stone wall. I'm not going to say much more on this topic. You have no idea how things work in this part of the country.

[DinoDoc]

I'm curious, Dr. S. What are your responsibilities if you believe one of the patients you described to be an imminent threat to others?

[Dr Strangelove]

Under such conditions the healthcare provider is mandated to notify both the authorities and the person being threatened.