Panaceas

I'm a little behind the curve here. Forgive me. I've been buried in books. But I did want to point out something the Washington Post reported earlier this month. It noted that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, had been under a court order since December 2005 for involuntary outpatient mental health treatment. No entity ever followed up. He never got the treatment.

The Post story included this line: "'The system doesn’t work well,'” said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year."

This is something for folks to ponder who have been backing a so-called Kendra's Law in New Mexico for court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment. Passion was aroused for such a law in New Mexico after a man with a mental illness gunned down five people in Albuquerque. Such a law would prevent such killings in the future, supporters argue. Critics warn that the mental health system (and they also might have considered including the court system in this critique) wasn't able to handle demands already facing it, and that the solution was to improve the mental health system, not to hand down court orders.

The events in Virginia certainly give one example of how court-ordered treatment can't prevent tragedies. But a comprehensive mental health system with good coordination with the law enforcement and judicial systems might have. Unfortunately, a law calling for court-ordered treatment is relatively cheap; building a good mental health care system isn't.