When Poet and Professor Nikki Giovanni decided to stop her students from being paralyzed by the brutal, rambling and violent-laden writings of Cho Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech, she told him that he'd have to change what he wrote. But she should have known this was impossible. For writing comes from within, and whatever hellacious renderings he was spewing on the pages came from a very dark place.
I will not speculate on whether or not Cho was abused, neglected, molested or any of the other things the public is all willing to heap upon his parents without any proof. But I will speculate that he was mentally ill, and that it wasn't just a recent thing. Cho had been troubled for years and was probably having issues even when he was in high school. He got by, well enough to graduate and go to VT. But by all accounts, what people observed was that he was friendless, a loner who gave monosyllabic answers to questions and stalked two women, who lodged complaints. He had enough psychiatric notes to cause alarm and I am baffled as to why he was allowed to continue as a student at Virginia Tech.
Cho existed in an alternate world, one without the boundaries that most of us know and live by. No one had access to the bottomless depths of violence that coursed through his mind. Not his parents, who were observed ferrying him back and forth to school; not Giovanni, or his other teacher, Lucinda Roy, who tried to work with him one-on-one. It seems that people did try to help him, but in the end, he slipped through the cracks. Some people made the mistake that he was 'shy,' and perhaps his parents hoped that his silence signaled a certain compliance, but others had a sixth sense --they knew to stay away from him. Yet, it is this human element that he needed the most, that might have made the difference on April 16, 2007.
We have to get over this stigma of mental illness treatment in this country. Literally, it's dividing families, cutting short potential, and it's killing people. Mental wellness must be seen as a possibility for all.
I'm not an advocate for rolling back the times to where anyone could get committed into a psychiatric hospital, however, we have to re-examine the laws that made it impossible for Lucinda Roy to get the police to haul him into a psychiatric hospital. And we have to consider who is safe to let out, and also ensure that he or she not only has oversight, but that they're getting all the resources --family support, individual, group therapy, and medication consistently.
I cannot imagine the horror of any parent or spouse who lost someone that day. And this includes Cho's parents, who I'm sure are re-examining each and every thing that they did or did not do for their son. Did they know? What had they tried? There's no reason to lambaste them here, they're doing that to themselves right now. But there are many questions to be answered.
Death was not anyone's dream when they sent their child or spouse to college, and this has to include his parents. Having a loved one afflicted with mental illness is not easy. One feels like dumping and leaving them, and also never letting them out of your sight, fearful for what the future might hold. Every parent of a mentally ill child saw their worst nightmare come true on that tragic Monday.
About NAMI
NAMI is a volunteer led organization that advocates and educates patients and families about the challenges. They have FREE ten-week courses for family caretakers on not only coping, but also the legal aspects of caring for someone who is mentally ill. I urge you to bookmark this page and send it to someone who might be in need.
Update: I am disgusted by NBC's decision to release the materials sent by Cho shortly after he started his massacre. The victims should have the last word, we should remember their dreams and hopes.
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8 comments:
It is too bad that Giovanni is trying to use this situation as a platform to promote her own political agenda. It is supposed to be about the victims, not Giovanni’s political ideology.
I don't know about that. All I want to do is erase the stigma from mental illness so that people can work toward mental wellness.
And we must do so without party politics, but for the good of humanity.
Touché, Kanani. As a parent of a son with mental illness, I can tell you that every organisation out there wants to sweep these situations under the rug - and oftentimes I feel it's a result of their hands being tied. There isn't enough funding, not enough patient beds, and we're still in the dark because we don't have people willing to spend the money it will take to address these situations before they occur.
Well, let's put it this way.
We have the money to fight a war on terrorism without no end.
But we don't have the money to make mental health treatment available to everyone who needs it for free.r
It is hard to understand why we can waste millions of dollars and young lives on an unpopular war, but not fund better health care for all who need it -- as the mentally ill certainly do. But maybe it is not so hard to understand after all: the mentally ill do not make up a rich and powerful lobby; they can't approach congressmen in Washington D.C. and push their own agendas, unlike the people who stand to profit from juicy construction contracts in Iraq.
My heart goes out to all of those families who lost a family member or child at VT; I can hardly imagine their anguish and the long, painful road to recovery they face. But if I had to get a phone call telling me my child had been killed -- or that my child had just killed 32 people -- I suppose I'd rather get the latter.
Here in Britain we have the same problem re: mental health. Although health care is free, if it can't be sorted with a pill or an operation then know one wants to know.
Lambasting Cho's parents is how society is, yet again, passing the buck. It's like someone has to be to blame and it ain't us. As parents we can only do the best we can with what we've got. I can't imagine what his parents are going through right now. They must wish he'd killed them too.
"They must wish he'd killed them too."
Oh, eryl... I'm sure you're right. And in a way, he did. The burden falls on his sister, a Princeton grad, to carry on for all of them and I'm sure it's not going to be easy.
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