Synaptic Silence

The report released today on the Virginia Tech killings made me reflect back on a piece I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. It was never published, but well worth going back to for reflection now.

I took a break from work this week. I stepped back temporarily, partly due to some medical problems that needed evaluation, but perhaps equally because I was emotionally drained to the point of exhaustion from my work as a civil commitment investigator. My job primarily involves the evaluation of mentally ill persons to determine if they pose a danger to themselves or others. I knew I was in trouble when I felt totally overwhelmed after testifying at a hearing that resulted in an angry young man being involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment.

After much reflection, I realized that I was so emotional out of relief—relief that he got the help he needed, and an equal feeling of relief that the judge had seen through his calm facade and glimpsed the lurking violence I had sensed during my evaluation. When I was testifying on the stand, it suddenly struck me how crucial these decisions are to people like this young man, his parents, and the rest of society in general. And the weight of my own role in the process—making the case to the level necessary for the court to find it necessary to rescind his constitutional right of liberty—suddenly seemed far greater than I had ever experienced it.

Then came the events at Virginia Tech. Watching the frantic efforts to try and make sense of a senseless tragedy and listening to the impotent attempts to place blame somewhere for the slaughter, I could only share in their frustration and cry along with them. Because there really isn’t a simple solution available.

For decades, mental illness was something people hid from others because of the societal stigma associated with it. The terrible legacy of eugenics and other efforts to weed the mentally ill from our midst are dark shadows on our common history. Yet in spite of research to the contrary, the notion that depression, psychosis, mania, and other mental disorders stem from some intrinsic moral weakness or demonic influence is still active in some spheres of social discussion. My admission of my own struggle with major depression and my endorsement of antidepressant medication still evokes obvious discomfort among many who believe mental illness is nothing more than a moral failing.

The system we have to deal with the rare cases of potentially violent mentally ill individuals is not perfect. Still, as terrible as the killings last week were, we should not dismiss the progress we have made. With rare exceptions, the statutes that deal with civil commitment in Oregon and other states serve their purpose and keep us all safe. These laws are the constitutional balance between preventing unwarranted prejudice against people with mental disorders and ensuring their own safety and the safety of society.

The issue in question after the killings at Virginia Tech is where that actual balance lies. There are already calls to move the needle toward the greater good of society. I would only advise that the best guarantee against such tragedies is not the liberalization of a legal process that, in spite of its shortcomings, is consistently effective. Rather, the true solution is to reverse the cutbacks in funding for social services and mental health care that have resulted in so many people with mental disorders slipping into their own terrible wells of hopelessness, paranoia, and anger. Without a well-funded and easily accessible outpatient mental health support system, our safety ends, as it did at Virginia Tech, the moment someone like the shooter walks out of the locked psychiatric ward and back into society.

But above all, we must refrain from retreating into our own wells of ignorance and false superiority that guided our actions toward the mentally ill for so long. Walls built out of fear and misinformation provide no safety at all. They are merely a warped reflective surface in which our own intrinsic prejudices are unnecessarily and falsely reinforced as the truth.