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Hey, we're on the same side! I would love it if there were a way to identify and remove the truly dangerous to a nice, safe mental health facility where they can get treatment and not pose a danger to society! In my earlier posts on this thread, I was saying this very thing.

I agree the school should have been able to expel this person. Once he started to display destructive behaviour (setting the fire in the dorm room, stalking, etc.), there should have been a mechanism to do so. IMHO, the fire should have done it. Perhaps they were not able to prove he had set it intentionally? I don't know.

There was a thread posted last night about how the Virginia legislature passed a bill recently that a mentally ill student cannot be expelled from a university after a lawsuit was filed by a student who was expelled because he exhibited suicidal behaviour. I looked for that thread just now, but could not find it right away. I'll try again This must be why they could not expel Cho?

I do not think colleges should expel every kid who has depression: they'd have to expel thousands upon thousands of them if they did. Some of the greatest scientists, inventors, artists, composers, writers, philosophers, etc., in history suffered from depression.

And I would not like to see every kid who was a bit weird expelled, either. Cho's behaviour was clearly beyond weird, and much more than depression was going on with him. I agree that the school should have expelled him, should have been able to expel him, given the constellation of troubling behaviours: flat affect, stalking, disruptive behaviour in class (taking pictures of others in class), setting the fire, etc. He probably would have done the same thing anyway, whether at the school or at a shopping mall or theatre or somewhere he could kill a lot of people.

The magistrate who deemed him "dangerous" recommended OUTPATIENT treatment for him. Some "dangerous" right? Apparently, he was not in contact with the mental health professionals long enough for them to get a handle on the true nature of his illness and he was misdiagnosed as depressed.

As Valpal1 said earlier on this thread, schizophrenia can seem like depression at first, before the therapist is able to recognize the dysfunctional thought patterns of the schizophrenic. Maybe the answer is that if a person is deemed "dangerous" then the law should mandate some specific time spent in a mental health facility which would give the mental health professionals a chance to diagnose and treat properly? I don't know.

A forensic psychiatrist concludes that Cho was schizophrenic: What then leads you to believe Cho had schizophrenia? How he related to his roommate was just too bizarre to be depression. The bizarre content of his plays — mashing a half-eaten "banana bar" in someone's mouth, the hypersexual, nihilistic (death obsessed) obsessions in the absence of depressive guilt or tearfulness are another clue. The progressive decline of a period of years. Those with schizophrenia, especially in their earliest years, are not readily recognizable as such — their condition is evolving. But here was someone who, as early as 2005, was carrying himself so strangely that he was a spectacle. The depressed withdraw and disappear. Those who are so peculiar in their manner so as to be inappropriate (taking cell phone pictures of his teacher, speaking inaudibly, pulling a cap low over his eyes) exhibit signs and symptoms more indicative of schizophrenia. He was communicating in a rambling manner reflective of what we appreciate as autistic thinking — characteristic of schizophrenia. In a similar vein, Mr. Cho's stilted communication in his homicide note (deceitful charlatans — not the language of a 23-year-old college kid) is also the manner of a schizophrenic's communications, as is his pronounced delay in responding to questions.

This is not surprising. A lot of schizophrenics start to show symptoms in late teens or early 20s.

Link: http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2007_04_15_archive.html#507098213652900487

My best idea at the moment? Once a student has been declared "dangerous" in a court of law (or even identified as dangerous by faculty, as Cho was), the university should be allowed by the state legislature to have a rule that the student in question must attend regular appointments with the proper mental health professionals and also follow-up appointments with school counselors or else face expulsion? This seems reasonable.

That way, the kids who are merely depressed or have some anxiety problems could get the help and meds they need to finish college and live productive lives. And the ones, like Cho, who are severely mentally ill and not getting the help they need could be identified and removed.