Falling through the Cracks (New Eng Jour Med)

[pinto]

Falling through the Cracks — Virginia Tech and the Restructuring of College Mental Health Services

Miriam Shuchman, M.D.

Since April 16, when Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 27 fellow students and 5 faculty members and injured 24 other people before taking his own life, some disturbing facts about his mental health history have emerged. At various points during Cho's college career, Virginia Tech police officers, professors, and students recognized that he was mentally troubled, but although state psychiatric evaluators once briefly committed him to a psychiatric hospital, it is unclear whether anyone from the school monitored him after his release. These discoveries have left investigators wondering whether the killings could have been prevented — and college mental health specialists debating the best way to keep other disturbed students from falling through the cracks.

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Source Information

Dr. Shuchman is a national correspondent for the Journal.

An interview with Mark Reed, director of the Counseling and Health Resources Departments at Dartmouth College, can be heard at http://www.nejm.org.


http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/2/105?query=TOC