Conservative Libertarian Outpost

 Context matters.

Seung-Hui Cho’s violent and disturbing play, Richard McBeef, tells a disjointed story of a broken family and the murder of a 13-year-old boy. The writing is childish and unimaginative; the scene is surreal. How does this differ from movies like Saw or Reservoir Dogs? Context.

Many aspiring authors invent horrific scenes. Some progress to successful writing and directing careers. Most linger in obscurity. A minute number go on to commit violent acts. For those few, writing is less an act of creativity than an expression of anguish and rage. Knowing the difference before the fact is sometimes impossible. It’s a question that mental health professionals have wrestled with for decades.

Perhaps one of the distinguishing marks of writing-as-a-cry-for-help is the context in which it occurs. By all accounts, Cho was an isolated individual who behaved in a bizarre fashion. From an early age, he was described as uncommunicative and brooding, and his stalking behavior speaks of a young man who was baffled by the rules of normal social discourse.

So why didn’t someone stop him?

Sadly, they tried. In fact, several individuals correctly read the signs and tried to intervene. Professor Nikki Giovanni reportedly insisted that she would resign rather than continue to expose herself and her students to Cho’s threatening behavior. Giovanni’s department head, Lucinda Roy, was so troubled by Cho that she reached out to him, offering individual lessons and reporting his behavior to campus police. Another of Cho’s professors, Lisa Norris, is said to have approached her Dean regarding Cho’s behavior. Norris also reached out to Cho, referring him to the university counseling center.

Others did the right thing, too. After Cho was arrested for stalking, campus police took him to a psychiatric facility rather than the county jail, which might have been easier. Later, a judge recognized the signs of mental illness and ordered Cho to participate in outpatient treatment. Both the police and the judge could have let him slip through the cracks entirely.

These are cynical times for some people. In the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology, author Mary Pipher laments that, “we no longer live in a culture where we know most of the people we encounter.” The article was titled, “America: A toxic lifestyle?”

But many of the individuals who crossed paths with Cho responded appropriately – even compassionately – to a very troubled young man. If a finger of blame can be pointed in any direction, it is at the paradoxical notion of the collective “we.”

It is the collectivist’s willingness to trade individual liberty for the illusion of safety that has created gun-free zones that are so very attractive to killers like Cho. And, ironically, the same government that intrudes too far into our lives has withered in one of the few areas where one can make a strong case for government intervention in the lives of individuals: responding to the severely mentally ill.

According to a 2004 study by New York University’s Michael Almog, mental health care is difficult to obtain for “a population that is disproportionately and increasingly male, younger and of non-white race-ethnicity…. Psychiatric inpatients are overwhelmingly discharged to ‘the community’ and with a diminishing probability of discharge to a long-term psychiatric care facility.” The parallels to Cho’s life are eerie.

In the 1960’s, our country began dismantling the state mental hospital system, along with the infrastructure that allowed for the assessment and care of the severely mentally ill. Most noticeable among this group are young men, similar in age to Cho, who are experiencing their first severe psychotic disturbance.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act. It promised new outpatient mental health centers meant to replace state hospitals. State hospitals subsequently discharged their patients, but few of the new centers actually materialized. Even if the 2000 centers recommended by the National Institute for Mental Health had been built, decades of harsh experience have shown us that they are not equipped to handle severe mental illness. One of the biggest problems is that these patients simply don’t show up for treatment.

One of the reasons the state hospital system was dismantled was the promise of new medical knowledge. Another causal factor came from civil rights activists who regarded institutionalization as cruel and inhumane. Some activists seemed to regard mental illness as a right that should not be tampered with. “We” were willing to trade the safety of patients and the public for a utopian vision of boundless civil liberty. Now, the most severely mentally ill – those who were meant to benefit from deinstitutionalization – frequently end up homeless or in prison. They are too often the victims or the perpetrators of crime.

Clearly, “we” are confused about violence and civil rights. We force the responsibility of self-care on those who cannot manage it, while denying ourselves personal liberty and the means of self defense. But while collective confusion helped set the tone for the events at Virginia Tech, the wisdom of the individual nearly triumphed.

It was individuals – not an illusory collective – who acted heroically around Cho, even if they were unable to stop him. And it is individuals who will have the power and the responsibility to recognize and respond to the next troubled soul. Isolation, powerlessness, hostility, and pain: these are the context in which fantasies of violence can sometimes become reality. They are also the indication that it is time to follow the example of those who did what they could to prevent the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

References Almog, M. (2004). Managing United States mental healthcare policy: Changing patterns and trends in New York city acute psychiatry use, 1983-2000. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 64(7-A), 2640.

DeAngelis, T. (2007). America: a toxic lifestyle? Monitor on Psychology, 38(4), 50-52.

Moynihan, D. P. (July 12, 1999). Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. 106th Congress. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article22.htm.

Torrey, E.F. & Zdandowicz, J.D. (1999). Deinstitutionalization hasn’t worked. The Washington Post, July 9, 1999. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article17.htm

By Shawn Smith

(c) 2007
The Independence Institute
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