MENTAL-HEALTH TREATMENT: State Laws Come Under Scrutiny Cho’s Case Raises Questions About How His Condition Might Have Been Better Addressed

By Bill McKelway, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Apr. 20–Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui, a deranged, raving and violent man who burst from a shell of secrecy to end his life and the lives of 32 others, has hardly revealed himself as a sympathetic figure.

But as the world focused attention this week on the slayings, attention is also focusing on the extent to which Cho’s mental condition might have been better addressed or recognized.

This is an issue with which thousands of Virginians with mental illness and their caregivers can sympathize.

Only the barest of details are known about Cho’s past.

But court documents obtained by The Times-Dispatch and interviews this week show that Cho was assessed as an imminent threat to himself and others more than a year ago. He was released after only a day in a mental facility and for the following months presented himself to roommates as an annoying, though seemingly innocuous puzzle.

Virginia Tech officials and law-enforcement officers acknowledged yesterday that they were not aware of the extent to which Cho followed a court order that demanded adherence to a treatment plan.

“There is really no mechanism in the law that mandates a follow-up,” Paul Barnett, a Christiansburg lawyer who served as the special justice in Cho’s case and ordered him released, said in an interview this week.

Such safeguards — as well as controversial matters dealing with mandatory, involuntary procedures for getting care to mentally ill people — are undergoing their most thorough scrutiny in a generation in Virginia.

Some 200 experts, under the direction of the state Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr., have been reviewing Virginia mental-health laws since last year.

“We cannot discriminate against the mentally ill nor do we want to,” Christopher Flynn, the director of Tech’s counseling center, told reporters yesterday, voicing the need to respect Cho’s privacy and liberties after his release when there was no overt cause for alarm.

Even Cho’s roommates were never so concerned about his behavior that they alerted authorities, he said.

Barnett released Cho despite concluding he “presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.” Barnett said he was obligated to provide the least restrictive, medically acceptable environment under Virginia law and was convinced that Cho could be adequately cared for on an outpatient basis.

The new commission appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will look closely at the role the state’s mental-health laws may have played. The panel will include an adolescent psychiatrist and a retired judge with expertise in mental-health law. The commission’s chairman, former State Police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, said yesterday that a person’s documented mental problems should be considered as part of the criminal background check for purchasing a firearm.

Roy Crouse, the psychologist whose diagnosis helped support Cho’s release, declined to see a reporter yesterday. An assistant said he has been busy counseling students and families affected by the tragedy.

Steven Bard, a Richmond-area social worker, knows well the difficulty of predicting behavior. “You make the best decision you can based on what you can see at the time and pray that you don’t pick up the paper some day and see that person’s name on the front page.”

For Hanover residents Kathy and Barry Harkey, Virginia’s strict imminent-danger threshold for care and the failure of state law to mandate outpatient medication and care has been a horrible tragedy.

“I cry every day over what happened to us and our son,” Kathy Harkey said yesterday.

As their son fell deeply into mental illness and despair, they spent thousands of dollars for private help. They found that state care was all but impossible to access because there was no clear evidence that their son Josh was a danger to himself or others.

Privacy laws prevented their intervention because their son was over 18. Sometimes Josh was admitted for temporary care but only after Kathy Harkey said she lied that he had threatened her.

After four years of denials by their son that he was sick; his refusal to take medication or eat; and a succession of closed doors from health-care providers, the struggle came to an end.

Josh died in a farm field from a self-inflicted bullet wound through his mouth on Jan. 6, 2006.

Contact staff writer Bill McKelway at bmckelway@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6601.

Times-Dispatch staff writer Michael Martz contributed to this report.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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