shootings and mental health

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Does anyone else agree that the USA needs to get their act together on all issues of mental health? The lastest shooting could have been prevented if only the perpretrator could have been treated properly. He refused, and no one could do a thing about it due to his rights. Well he violated 33 peoples rights to live when he snapped. What can we do as health professionals to educate the public and change some laws in the favor of treating these troubled souls.

Mental illness remains a "closet illness".

Maybe what I should have pointed out was that the courts had deemed him a danger to himself in Dec. 2005. The thing that I didn't understand is that information should have popped up when he tried to purchase a gun. I am not saying that a person who had voluntarily committed themselves at a low point in life not be able ot purchase a gun. The privacy laws ARE in place for a reason, but when it goes through the court in Virginia there is a frame of time that a gun can't be purchased.

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We were discussing that guy in my Psychology class today.

Our professor is an LCC...and he said in our state, if you have ever been declared at ANY point in your life, mentally incompetent in a court of law, you are forever banned from owning a firearm.

He also mentioned...that Virginia isn't one of those states, considering hunting is a huge industry there.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Cardiac, ICU.

This is just another reason to tell your kids NOT to pick on the kid that is "different".

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

I just have to wonder, where were Mr. Cho's parents?? I do not know if they tried to help him & couldn't or if they missed the warning signs or what. What a sad story any way you slice it.

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Specializes in ICU, L&D, Home Health.
We were discussing that guy in my Psychology class today.

Our professor is an LCC...and he said in our state, if you have ever been declared at ANY point in your life, mentally incompetent in a court of law, you are forever banned from owning a firearm.

He also mentioned...that Virginia isn't one of those states, considering hunting is a huge industry there.

Just to clarify, being declared mentally incompetent is a different process than being held for a 72 hour hold "for danger to self or others" or even to being probated to a psychiatric facility. Both 72-hour holds and court-ordered commitment are temporary in nature. A court-ordered commitment in my state is for 90 days and is reevaluated at the end of that period. If at any point before the 90 days a psychiatrist deems the patient to have recovered enough to be discharged, they are released. To be declared incompetent is not something a court takes lightly and is actually quite difficult. Even when I worked in MR/DD many of my clients were their own guardians. Courts are reluctant to take away the right to make choices when it comes to health decisions, where a person will live, and the right to vote. This is what you lose when you are declared incompetent and assigned a guardian.

I used to work doing mental health outreach before I was a nurse. I had one client whose schizophrenia was refractory to treatment. Over the decades just about everything was tried yet she continued to be very psychotic at baseline, wandering the streets in her underwear, leaving the stove on and setting fire to her kitchen (we had her stove removed), leaving her door open 24/7 to the point where the neighbors came to me worrying about the men coming into her apartment. She was in another world, with constant visual and auditory hallucinations, and was incontinent of bowel and bladder. We tried to get adult protective services involved and they refused. Her son attempted to declare her incompetent and be named her guardian and the probate court was reluctant to do so, despite the fact she was unable to manage her own daily needs, finances, or decisions, never mind the danger she inadvertently placed herself in.

Would I say that there is more of a need for adequate mental health education and services everywhere, including on campuses? Absolutely! When I worked mental health, we were chronically underfunded. The team I had worked on was considered best practice in my state, but was cut 2 years ago due to underfunding. Boo!

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HOW DO PSYCHIATRIC NURSES react regarding the vt massacre in relation to the james town massacre in Guyana south america .

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Specializes in neuro, trauma, med-surg.
I just have to wonder, where were Mr. Cho's parents?? I do not know if they tried to help him & couldn't or if they missed the warning signs or what. What a sad story any way you slice it.

Interesting that you mention that...I guess in my experiences and what I have learned in reading is that the South Korean culture is very closed to mental illness. That was something I thought of right away when it turned out that he was a child of an South Korean family. Of course, I am not trying to stereotype. But read the article, it does shed some light on the problem. They consider mental illness to be a real stigma and sign of weakness. This is now being discussed on the news tonight. I did find an interesting article online discussing this:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=390145

By the way, I feel that before laws need to change regarding guns, we need to see what really happened with this guy, and the type of surveillance and help he actually received. Apparently, the university police report stated that he was a danger to not only himself, but others as well- but the judge decided to check only the danger to himself box! What I'm saying is, that, combined with the university's ineptness in not expelling him/demanding treatment, is what probably lead to this tragedy. This guy was on a mission, delusional, psychopathic, and I bet he would have used anything in his power to wound others, if he couldn't get a gun.:o

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everyone can poke holes in why he did this, how he got the guns. I belive the bigger problem is people don't talk anymore. Really talk. that get in your face I''m worried about you are you OK kind of talk.I am not saying he had a reson to do what he did. reading and knowing what i can people tried passivly to talk to him and were satisfied with his one work comments. Everyone needs someone to talk to even if it is on the internet with someone you don't know. I would like to propose that everyone and I meen EVERYONE who reads this challenge themselves to really connect with a stranger every day. Not just small talk but really connect. Ask how someone is doind while your in line in a register listen to their response and comment on it so they know you heard them. It is the little things in life that make us human. We cannot afford to let the humanity run out of people. We have to constantly and consistantly replenish it.

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I'm not a psych nurse but I think this Cho fellow had possibly ASPD - antisocial personality disorder (sociopath, psychopath), maybe some psychosis. (maybe voices told him to do this, who knows?).

I am really sick about it, feel so angry at him, yet sorry for him and his family and for everyone else involved - the dead, the maimed, the terrorized, the families of all of the foregoing, the community, just everyone, including the school officials, who had to make some tough calls.

Who I do not feel sorry for is the @$^&*++= TV news people, playing those videos over and over and over, sticking microphones in people's faces and asking, "How do you feel?" How the hell do they think they feel? I'd feel like smashing them with their galldarn microphone if they stuck it in my face. Yeah, I know, they have to fill air time.

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Specializes in Psych, education.

Any time a tragedy of this nature occurs, the quest for information and prevention of similar future events is exhaustively searched. The fact is that the mentally ill population has a lower incidence of violence than the "normal" population: 3% compared to 3.5%. Cho may have had Anti-social Personality Disorder such as you run-of-the-mill serial killers, or he may have benn having a first psychotic break of Paranoid Schizophrenia. It's difficult to say.

When getting into the ethical dilemmas of forcing treatment, you have to look at the essential character of our society. We believe in freedom. Should there be a limit to that, and for who? We could force meds on a mentally ill person because he/she could possibly pose a threat to himself or others. Can we do the same for a cardiac patient, or someone with diabetes? If someone refuses theri cardiac meds, aren't they a danger to themselves? Do I think they missed the boat with Cho? Yes. There seems to have been plenty of warning signs of impending danger. But then again, hind-sight is 20/20, and frankly, people are excellent at hiding things when they want to do something: suicide/murder/etc. What is clear to us now may have been completely hidden then. We do not know.

There will be times when one's individual freedom will spill over and effect others' freedom such as this. But that is a minority of cases. The essential aspect of democracy is majority rules and that majority protects the minority. It would be very easy to infringe on peoples' freedoms, but at what cost? Power corrupts, we know that. The last thing we need is to become a police state. We cannot account for all of human nature.

This was a terrible tragedy. But there have been others in the past. There will, unfortunately, be others in the future. I do not think we should change the US Constitution because of it. We would all lose that way.

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I think it is a matter of balance.

At this time we don't have the facilities to care for those who are a danger to others oe to themselves.

We didn't have the will to do so.

Maybe after this tragedy we will begin working on ways to protect people from psychotic potential killers.

The balance come in ensuring people who do not pose a threat are declaired incompetent so relatives can have their property and money.

I posted what happened to Martha Mitchell, wife of the attorney general, because when she tried to warn the public about the Watergate break in, theft, and cover up she was characterized as mentally ill.

She was telling the truth. It just sounded crazy to us.

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We need better mental health funding nationwide and reduced budget cuts. Has anyone seen NAMI's report card on our mental health system??

"NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, presents this first comprehensive state-by-state analysis of mental health care systems in 15 years. Every U.S. state has been scored on 39 specific criteria resulting in an overall grade and four sub-category grades for each state. The national average grade is D. Five states receive grades in the B range. Eight receive Fs. None received As."

Check out your state:

http://www.nami.org/gtstemplate.cfm?section=grading_the_states&lstid=682

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