Published: Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 12:01 a.m.
Shooting suspect
School too quick to dismiss role
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In response to the Friday news article headlined, "Mass shooting suspect was seeing psychiatrist": University Chancellor Don Elliman said this week that to his knowledge, "We did everything we should have done in this case."
How sad; and what a stinging indictment of the mental health community. What about following the law and deeming the suspect "a threat to himself and others"? Should the university psychiatrist have acted on the graphic prediction of James Holmes' murder spree?
Perhaps the school "doctor" was busy dreaming of treating guilt-ridden husbands and frustrated housewives when she neglected to open the desperate cry for help from Holmes which sat on her desk unopened.
Mental illness is an insidious disease; contagious in that it afflicts and kills the ill and the innocent. Would we allow a person with advanced tuberculosis or smallpox to wander around in the population -- not try to isolate the person until treated and cured?
"We did everything we should have done in this case" are words which will haunt the University of Colorado over the next few weeks -- and for many years.
Donna Hill
Everett
How sad; and what a stinging indictment of the mental health community. What about following the law and deeming the suspect "a threat to himself and others"? Should the university psychiatrist have acted on the graphic prediction of James Holmes' murder spree?
Perhaps the school "doctor" was busy dreaming of treating guilt-ridden husbands and frustrated housewives when she neglected to open the desperate cry for help from Holmes which sat on her desk unopened.
Mental illness is an insidious disease; contagious in that it afflicts and kills the ill and the innocent. Would we allow a person with advanced tuberculosis or smallpox to wander around in the population -- not try to isolate the person until treated and cured?
"We did everything we should have done in this case" are words which will haunt the University of Colorado over the next few weeks -- and for many years.
Donna Hill
Everett
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