Mental Health and Tragedies

When any tragedy occurs we wonder how it happened. This becomes an especially relevant question when considering mental health. I will use three cases to detail what role the mental health profession plays in these events and what keeps it from being more effective. I will consider the 20 April 1999, Columbine High School shooting; the 26 April 2002, Robert Steinhaeuser, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school in Germany; and the 16 April 2007, Virginia Tech shooting. These cases were chosen based on time from each other in years and seeming differences in motivation, the fact that all three occurred during April is not significant.

The Shootings – Quick Facts

Columbine High School: Two shooters, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 students, one teacher, wounded 23 others and then killed themselves. The whole attack lasted one hour. The shooters were or felt alienated from other students and have been reported to have been influenced in some fashion by neo-Nazi ideology. In this case the warning signs were abundant; however, no decisive action was taken for intervention prior to the shooting.

Johann Gutenberg School: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, killed 13 teachers, two students, and one policeman. 10 others were wounded. Steinhaeuser had been expelled October of the previous year, revenge for this seems to have been the motive. The event lasted only 20 minutes. There were some possible warning signs before the shooting. Steinhaeuser killed himself after being trapped in a classroom by a teacher.

Virginia Tech: Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more 2 hours later in a classroom building, 15 others were also wounded. Cho has been cited as being very mentally unstable. He was legally required to go to counseling sessions for his sexual assault or stalking of other female students. The warning signs were numerous and action was already being taken.
Dates and general information taken from Infoplease, other information from Wikipedia and other media sources.

We have the range of revenge killing motivated by a simple expulsion to a clearly disturbed young man who was already under the watch of the mental health community. How can we deal with this range of difference in personalities with similar violent results?

How Mental Health is Relevant

The Columbine and Virginia teach cases both involve clear mental health warning signs and are the best cases for us to learn from. The German case presents the exception to clear mental health problems and shows clearly where mental health communities cannot help.

The Columbine shooting is a tragedy in every way. Not only was the outcome of the event terrible, but it demonstrates a true lack of ability by the school, parents, and community. In this case the theft of weapons, Nazi memorabilia, extreme anti-social behavior, disturbing writing, videos of intent, and verbal warnings about violence should have been noticed and reported. The blame here mostly rests on the parents for grave indifference to very clear signs of danger. The inability for a psychologist or counselor to predict or stop this event is evident in the general lack of motivation by all parties involved to take action.

Specific to mental health, the school guidance counselor should have been the frontline defense. However, with generally only one counselor available for all students we encounter a problem of resources. Even very adept professionals can fail when under such substantial case loads. In this case the very aberrant behavior should have caused enough red flags to have some action taken. However, Virginia Tech shows us why even when direct action is taken our system prevents possibly violent people from being stopped.

Cho Seung-Hui has problems with women and rejection. His lack of any social graces led to a vicious cycle of rejection due to his own violent or troubled approaches to women. After having charges brought against him he was ordered into a counseling program. So why wasn’t he stopped or put away before he could hurt anyone?

Patient rights prevent us from preventing violence in most cases. The restrictions of forcibly committing a patient are vast. The most common standard is that a patient must directly state their intent to harm themselves or others. This results in either a person being committed to a secure facility or these threats being directly reported to police (to avoid putting the professional at risk). If the patient does not make a specific threat, little can be done. A doctor can recommend in-patient treatment, but they cannot force it. This is for a good reason.

A patient must have a deep level of trust with a psychologist to disclose anything. If you knew that any statement that might worry your counselor might land you in a state hospital or a police station you would probably never say anything at all. The long history of forced committals and degrading or dangerous facilities has also been a deciding factor in this history. The problems with state treatment have mostly been solved, but the standard remains a good one.

The mental health system is not designed to catch criminals. The burden for prevention of violence should not be placed on these professionals except in the cases where they are already compelled and willing to participate as were mentioned above. Enlisting psychologists to prevent crime in their practices would be much like preventing office crime with a secretary. You may get numerous reports at first, but the real relevance to crimes committed would be very low. Over time the reports would simply stop, either because there are no patients, or they never talk about anything of real consequence because they know the result. And it still does nothing to prevent our last case.
Steinhaeuser was never on the mental health radar. He legally owned guns, stockpiled ammunition, and then took revenge. He had no history of mental illness and no outward signs of instability. He rationally made a plan, committed to it, and carried it out. His violence is no more or less reprehensible. And it likely could not have been prevented by any health professional.

Psychologists are not a valuable prevention resource like law enforcement. They should not be overlooked, though, as being one of our best sources of hindsight information. That said, we should inherently distrust any “subject expert” who offers quick explanations. The field of psychology does a tremendous job of doing detailed research to help explain violent events. They do not do a good job at predicting events which have astronomically low probabilities of occurring.

It has been said that if given 100 people and asked to predict who will commit suicide, the psychologist has only one good answer. That is to predict no suicides. Suicide is a much more common event than school shootings, but without long case histories and knowledge of a client it is almost impossible to make a prediction. And even when we do have enough knowledge to make a prediction, a good social scientist will not give a yes or no answer; they will give a percent chance. Despite this we often blame mental health for not doing more. However, at the same time we are willing to take one shot easy solutions from hired-gun professionals.

The mental health field has a great deal to offer, but we have to be careful how we use it. Patient rights and peer reviewed studies exist for reasons. Psychologists are also wonderful to help individuals overcome a variety of disorders or life problems, but they serve the individual and are not there to be watch dogs on behavior. Be a responsible knowledge consumer and learn from the history of tragedies.

Mass Media and Violent Events

The media is our resource for fast and informative news. With a growing number of 24 Hour networks to cover domestic and international news things are rapidly changing in the media world. This is especially true of media coverage of violent events, in particular those of large scale, is ever present once the story breaks. The question remains, is this helping our hurting us as a society?

The first part of this broad question is as follows: Does the media hinder our knowledge of the truth?

By most, the media is seen as a fast an accurate way to learn about events. However, events like the Columbine High School and Virginia Tech shootings call into question the media’s ability to contribute anything to our knowledge.

In these two events within minutes of media reporting conclusions were offered. There were hours of expert testimony, and detailed information given about who the offenders were and what turned them from model citizen to depraved murderers. The problem was the veracity of this information. The Columbine shooters were described as Goth, avid Marilyn Manson listeners, and obsessed with violent movies and video games. Seung-Hui Cho of Virginia Tech was also described as being obsessed with violent video games and movies. In both cases all details provided by the media were either completely false or gross exaggerations. The problem is the media rarely retracts any statements in these situations.

In the case of Seung-Hui Cho, it was his roommate who provided the contradictory details. We were lucky that in this case the interview with Seung-Hui Cho’s roommate was also on live national television. He specifically repudiated the claims that Seung-Hui Cho watched violent movies or played violent games. The roommate went so far as to say he did not remember Cho really being interested in either in any way. Despite this, many experts continued to rail against these two items as a primary cause for the tragedy. Not only did the experts continue, but show hosts actively encouraged the experts and disregarded the contradictory evidence. Why? Other entertainment scapegoats get people to watch.

This warps the ability for actual fact to come out. The media does not care what the truth is; the media cares about getting you to watch. In this line you will also rarely hear much about when the wrong suspect is caught in a case. The first arrest or theory of motive is sensational, anything that takes away from that “credible event or statement” will receive significantly less time, or none at all.

What we have come to rely on for our information has become a consumer product. 24 Hour news has caused the most damage. Not much actually happens each day that can be covered and be interesting. If they can keep one event interesting and consistently advertised to you, you will keep watching to learn what they present to you.

The people we are taught to trust for knowing our “up to the minute world” are not sustaining accurate knowledge. We need responsible media that does not cater to corporate sponsors have only profit as a requirement for success. Our ability to think depends on it.