The Unthinkable Shame of Untreated Psychosis at Virginia Tech

I am anguished about what happened at Virginia Tech University Monday. I'm sickened both as a mother and a professional. This is every mother and father's worst fear. No, I take that back. What happened Monday is so heinous that no parent even allows the possibility of the occurrence to enter his or her mind. It's "the unthinkable".

This shooter was obviously paranoid schizophrenic, untreated, unrecognized.

From the various media reports, it seems clear that his behavior, at first dangerously strange became simply, dangerous. It's high time we advocate for improved mental health services at colleges and universities. The shame is, that during his years at Virginia Tech, this guy gave multiple warning signs, causing at least one teacher to report him to both the police and the university counseling services. At most colleges the mental health services have a reputation of being woefully understaffed and underfunded.

Insurance companies put parents through inordinate amounts of stress in order to get psychological/psychiatric services covered for their children.

Usually the insurance companies find a way to either stall payments, or make it incredibly difficult for any normal person to figure out how to get insurance to cover mental health situations. The parents then either ignore the problem or hope that the mental health services in college will catch their child if he or she falls ill. All this systemic inadequacy must stop. The stakes are too high to be screwing around with the mental health of our kids. If one is destined to be schizophrenic, he or she usually has a "first break" in their late teens and early twenties, right about the time they are college bound. Same applies to bipolar illness and many other major mental illnesses. If the problem is addressed in these first years of illness, the prognosis is far more promising and lives are spared. Perhaps the lost lives of these most precious young students at Virginia Tech can serve as a wake-up call. Perhaps pressure can start to be applied to our government and the insurance companies, to make certain proper services are available and accessible to our youth. Perhaps.