Virginia-Tech Massacre Calls for Full Fact-Gathereing Investigation Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:01:52 -0500 (CDT) ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com The Virginia-Tech student who murdered 32 students and teachers at Virginia-Tech before killing himself, set an infamous record. It is the worst school shooting massacre in U.S. history. This killing spree underscores the urgency for conducting a full fact-gathering investigation of multiple factors that may have contributed to the tragic massacre. If there are some common factors to previous school shootings, these must be fully examined. We must learn whether and how these tragedies might have been prevented. First: Ready availability of human assault weapons such as the rapid-firing glock used by Cho Seung-Hui needs to be examined. This weapon is designed for one purpose--to kill human beings. Do we really want to put the lives of millions of children at risk rather than restrict assault weapons? Arianna Huffington writes: "The fact that a clearly disturbed individual like Cho, a young man who had been found to be "mentally ill" and potentially dangerous by a Virginia court , could so easily -- and legally -- purchase the semiautomatic weapons he used on his rampage should make even the most ardent fan of the Second Amendment take pause (and the rest of us pull our hair out). " Second: School policies that fail to address problem students whose aberrant behavior intimidates other students and faculty--even when police are involved--as was the case with Cho. Universities are not prisons. Students should not have to live with roommates who intimidate them. Teachers should not be driven to think of resigning because the administration fails to take responsible action which may require removing students who intimidate others from campus. The New York Times reports: "For all the interventions by the police and faculty members, Mr. Cho was allowed to remain on campus and live with other students. There is no evidence that the police monitored him and no indication that the authorities or fellow students were aware of any incident that pushed him to his rampage." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19gunman.html The Washington Post reports that university spokespersons said that Virginia-Tech was not responsible for ensuring that Cho received outpatient psychiatric care ordered for him after he was involuntarily hospitalized and reportedly suicidal in late 2005. "The court ordered mandatory counseling," said Christopher Flynn, head of the campus counseling service, speaking at a televised briefing. "Who got notified under that court order, and who it was directed to -- to my knowledge, it was not directed to the university. We are not part of the mental health system of the state. You would have to check with the court system to see who the mandated provider was." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041900 830_pf.html Third: What, if any medical and/or psychological follow-up was there after Cho was discharged from a psychiatric facility? Was he one of the many people put on antidepressants without a thorough and ongoing monitoring of the results and side effects? Few in the press covering this latest school massacre, have asked direct questions about the drugs prescribed for Cho Seung-Hui. Although it would be ludicrous to suggest that antidepressants caused Cho to plan and murder 32 people, the fact that it is reported that he was taking antidepressants, drugs that have been linked to most school shooters requires investigation. http://www.thejabberwock.org/blog/gonz1.pdf The issue was avoided following previous school shootings-it can no longer be ignored. Clearly, the nature and quality of mental health services being provided to students on or off campus should be evaluated in light of emerging evidence showing that widely prescribed mental health interventions are not backed by scientific evidence and may be more harmful than helpful. In particular, the widespread prescribing psychotropic drugs requires full examination. Arianna Huffington writes: "Reports that Cho had been taking antidepressants once again turn the spotlight on the uneasy question of what role these powerful medications might have played in yet another campus massacre. It's the same bloody-morning-after question I've been asking since 1998, when we learned 15-year old Oregon school shooter Kip Kinkel, who opened fire in his school cafeteria, had been on Prozac. Nearly ten years -- and numerous school-shooters-on-prescription-meds -- later, we're still waiting for answers." Indeed, the revised FDA approved label (October 2004) includes Black Box warnings informing physicians that antidepressants may INCREASE the risk of suicidal behavior: "Antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in short-term studies in children and adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of [Insert established name] or any other antidepressant in a child or adolescent must balance this risk with the clinical need." In December, 2006, the FDA acknowledged that the increased suicidal risk for those taking an antidepressant has been documented beyond adolescence--young adults as well are at increased risk. The FDA-approved label lists additional serious adverse drug effects: "The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although a causal link between the emergence of such symptoms and either the worsening of depression and/or the emergence of suicidal impulses has not been established, there is concern that such symptoms may represent precursors to emerging suicidality." See: SSRI STORIES website and its 1500 documented SSRI drug-related cases of violence: http://www.ssristories.com/index.php Among these, are 24 school shootings / incidents, 44 cases of road rage tragedies, over 370 murders, over 100 murder-suicides and other acts of violence. See: Letter from Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (October 2006) to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt forwarding information documenting that antidepressant drugs were a factor in numerous school shootings provided to the AG by Mrs. Lisa Van Syckel. http://www.thejabberwock.org/blog/gonz2.pdf See: A follow-up letter to the AG, by attorney Derek Braslow who lists 13 separate school shooting incidents. He points out that since 1998, at least 10 school shootings were committed by children under the influence of antidepressants. http://www.thejabberwock.org/blog/gonz1.pdf Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav 212-595-8974 veracare@ahrp.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/virginia-tech-aftermath-_b_ 46280.html Virginia Tech Aftermath: Did Legal Drugs Play a Role in the Massacre? Arianna Huffington "This didn't have to happen." So said Cho Seung-Hui in his final message, which he mailed to NBC. In the aftermath of any tragedy, personal or collective, the human mind retraces steps and looks at what might have kept the tragedy from happening. In the case of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech, the first look has been at our insane gun laws -- and rightly so. The fact that a clearly disturbed individual like Cho, a young man who had been found to be "mentally ill" and potentially dangerous by a Virginia court , could so easily -- and legally -- purchase the semiautomatic weapons he used on his rampage should make even the most ardent fan of the Second Amendment take pause (and the rest of us pull our hair out). We urgently need a national debate about guns. But we also urgently need a national debate about the epidemic of mood-altering drugs being prescribed to young Americans. I'll take my teachable moments wherever I can find them. And Virginia Tech has the potential to be one of them. Reports that Cho had been taking antidepressants once again turn the spotlight on the uneasy question of what role these powerful medications might have played in yet another campus massacre. It's the same bloody-morning-after question I've been asking since 1998, when we learned 15-year old Oregon school shooter Kip Kinkel, who opened fire in his school cafeteria, had been on Prozac. Nearly ten years -- and numerous school-shooters-on-prescription-meds -- later, we're still waiting for answers. Now let me make it perfectly clear that I am NOT saying that antidepressants are what caused Cho to go off the deep end and kill 32 people and then himself (indeed, school and law enforcement officials haven't yet disclosed what specific meds were found among his effects ). And I'm NOT saying that there aren't thousands of people who benefit from such medication. What I AM saying is that it is absurd -- and incredibly irresponsible -- for our leaders, and our culture, not to be fully investigating the correlation between antidepressants and manic/suicidal behavior. Despite disturbing evidence of drug-induced reactions, the number of children being given mood-altering drugs continues to soar. America now has over 8 million kids on such drugs. Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, has vehemently denied numerous claims that the drug causes violent or suicidal reactions. But the company's own documents admit that "nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts, self mutilation, manic behavior" are among the "usual adverse effects" of the medication. And a clinical trial found that Prozac caused mania in 6 percent of the children studied. Can there be any doubt that Cho was exhibiting many of these adverse effects during his reign of terror in Blacksburg? His rambling, multi-media diatribe seems like a textbook example of manic behavior. The question is, was his manic behavior purely the result of a sick mind or was drug-induced psychosis part of the toxic psychological mix? We don't know. But we do know that one school shooter after another was on prescription drugs. Kip Kinkel was taking Prozac . Columbine killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox. Red Lake Indian Reservation shooter Jeff Weise was taking Prozac . James Wilson, who shot 2 elementary school kids in Greenwood, South Carolina, was taking anti-depressants. Conyers, Georgia school shooter T.J. Solomon was on ritalin. Is this just a coincidence? Again, we don't know. But here are some of the questions we need answers to: 1. It's been reported by the New York Times that Cho was on prescription medications. Which ones? Who prescribed them? How long had he been taking them? 2. If the drugs were prescribed when he was admitted to the New River Community Services center near Virginia Tech in December 2005, which doctor kept refilling his prescriptions? And what was the diagnosis? 3. What kind of medical and/or psychological follow-up was there? Or was Cho one of the many people put on antidepressants without a thorough and ongoing monitoring of the results and side effects? America's blogs and op-ed pages are teeming with discussions about the impact Monday's carnage will have on America's relationship with guns. It's well-past time to also embark on a national discussion about the potentially deadly side effects of our pill-for-every-ill culture. And for the discussion to really begin, we need answers to all these questions. The lives of our children could be riding on the answers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19gunman.html THE NEW YORK TIMES April 19, 2007 Officials Knew Troubled State of Killer in '05 By SHAILA DEWAN and MARC SANTORA BLACKSBURG, Va., April 18 - Campus authorities were aware 17 months ago of the troubled mental state of the student who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, an imbalance graphically on display in vengeful videos and a manifesto he mailed to NBC News in the time between the two sets of shootings."You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui , said in one video mailed shortly before the shooting at a classroom and his suicide. "Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people." NBC, which received the package on Wednesday and quickly turned it over to the authorities, broadcast video excerpts on "The NBC Nightly News." The hostility in the videos was foreshadowed in 2005, when Mr. Cho's sullen and aggressive behavior culminated in an unsuccessful effort by the campus police to have him involuntarily committed to a mental institution in December. For all the interventions by the police and faculty members, Mr. Cho was allowed to remain on campus and live with other students. There is no evidence that the police monitored him and no indication that the authorities or fellow students were aware of any incident that pushed him to his rampage. Despite Mr. Cho's time in the mental health system, when an English professor was disturbed by his writings last fall and contacted the associate dean of students, the dean told the professor that there was no record of any problems and that nothing could be done, said the instructor, Lisa Norris. The quest to have him committed, documented in court papers, was made after a female student complained of unwelcome telephone calls and in-person communication from Mr. Cho on Nov. 27, 2005. The woman declined to press charges, and the campus police referred the case to the disciplinary system of the university, Chief Wendell Flinchum said. Mr. Cho's disciplinary record was not released because of privacy laws. The associate vice president for student affairs, Edward F. D. Spencer, said it would not be unusual if no disciplinary action had been taken in such a case. On Dec. 12, a second woman asked the police to put a stop to Mr. Cho's instant messages to her. She, too, declined to press charges. The police said Mr. Cho did not threaten the women, who described the efforts at contact as "annoying." But later on the day of the second complaint, an unidentified acquaintance of Mr. Cho notified the police that he might be suicidal. Mr. Cho went voluntarily to the Police Department, which referred him to a mental health agency off campus, Chief Flinchum said. A counselor recommended involuntary commitment, and a judge signed an order saying that he "presents an imminent danger to self or others" and sent him to Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital in Radford for an evaluation. "Affect is flat and mood is depressed," a doctor there wrote. "He denies suicidal ideations. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are sound." The doctor determined that Mr. Cho was mentally ill, but not an imminent danger, and the judge declined to commit him, instead ordering outpatient treatment. Officials said they did not know whether Mr. Cho had received subsequent counseling. In Virginia, the examining doctor or psychologist has to convince a local magistrate that the person "as a result of mental illness is in imminent danger of harming himself or others, or is substantially unable to care for himself," said Richard J. Bonnie, director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia . Mr. Bonnie said that it was not a simple matter to force people into treatment against their will and that lawyers, patients' advocates and psychiatrists had debated the question for decades. The hospitalization occurred after a trouble-filled semester for Mr. Cho. In October 2005, a professor of creative writing, the poet Nikki Giovanni, refused to let him stay in her class because his writing was "intimidating" and he frightened other students. Classmates reported that Mr. Cho was taking photographs of women under the desks. Lucinda H. Roy, chairwoman of the English department at the time, tried to intervene, but she, too, was disturbed by his response. Professor Roy said the reaction was "very arrogant" with an "underlying tone of anger." Much about what Mr. Cho did after leaving the hospital remains uncertain. Professor Roy said that she had no contact with him after that date and that she believed he had graduated. Last August, Mr. Cho's parents helped move him to a dormitory room he shared with Joe Aust, 19, for his senior year. His writings grew increasingly unhinged. He submitted two plays to Prof. Edward C. Falco's class that had so much profanity and violent imagery that the other students refused to read and analyze his work. Professor Falco said he was so concerned that he spoke with several faculty members who had taught Mr. Cho. Ms. Norris, who taught Mr. Cho in a 10-student creative writing workshop last fall, was disturbed enough by his writings that she contacted the associate dean of students, Mary Ann Lewis. Ms. Norris said the faculty was instructed to report problem students to Ms. Lewis. "You go to her to find out if there are any other complaints about a student," Ms. Norris said, adding that Ms. Lewis had said she had no record of any problem with Mr. Cho despite his long and troubled history at the university. "I do not know why she would not have that information," she said. "I just know that she did not have it." Ms. Lewis, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, said Wednesday night that she would not comment on Ms. Norris's statement. Mr. Cho was allowed to remain in the seminar but was placed off to the side, where, Ms. Norris said, he did not speak. She did not share his writings with the class. As the weeks passed, she added, she noticed a slight change in his writing. Instead of focusing on children, as he had in the past, his last story was about adults. And then he stopped going to class. "If I had known anything else I could have done, by god, I would have done it," Ms. Norris said. Carolyn D. Rude, chairwoman of the English department, said faculty members were pro-active, even attending seminars on helping students in distress, a skill particularly applicable in an English department, where creative writing teachers had intimate glimpses into their students' troubles and temperaments. But, Professor Rude said, there was only so much that faculty members, administrators and even the campus police could do if no crime had been committed. "There were reports, and urgent ones, more than once," she said. "All we can do is notice and report. We don't have the powers of the counselors or the justice system. But we do have the responsibility to let students do their coursework." Investigators have not determined Mr. Cho's motive or whether he had a connection to any victims, said Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the state police. The package mailed to NBC, a composite portrait of Mr. Cho as a pistol-wielding moralist who decried his audience's hedonistic taste for vodka and cognac, did not immediately seem to offer concrete clues. It brimmed with recriminations and a sense of persecution, and referred to the killers at Columbine High School in Colorado as martyrs. You had a hundred billion chances and ways to avoid today, but you decided to spill my blood," Mr. Cho said in a video. "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option." The package included 29 photographs, 27 short videos and an 1,800-word diatribe in which Mr. Cho expresses a desire to get even, though it does not say with whom, according to the NBC News program. In two photos, he looks like a typical smiling college student. In 11, he aims one or two handguns at the camera, posing as if in an action movie. Several postings on Internet film sites noticed a similarity between the poses and scenes from "Oldboy," a violent 2004 South Korean film. As he prepared for the shooting, Mr. Cho filled out paperwork to buy handguns, rented a van and bought the cargo pants and vest that he wore. He appeared to have made the photos and videos by himself, a law enforcement official said. "This kid, over a period of two and half to three weeks, there was a process where he was working himself up to this and he stayed for one night at a hotel in the general area, and that's where he took the pictures of the gun," said the official, who insisted on anonymity. "And we're assuming he made the video there." Mr. Cho mailed the package using Express Mail at 9:01 a.m., two hours after the first shootings, from the post office at 118 North Main Street, about a mile from his dorm room on campus, a spokesman for the Postal Service said. Mr. Cho apparently returned to his room after the first shootings to assemble the package, which seemed to have been put together over six days, NBC News reported. The return address was "A. Ishmael," similar to the cryptic phrase "Ismael Ax" that was found written on his arm. The New York Times Company ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mental19apr19,0,5646841 ,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines THE LOS ANGELES TIMES MASSACRE AT VIRGINIA TECH: THE NATION'S CAMPUSES Policies vary on troubled students Universities such as USC actively monitor problem behavior and consider intervention. By Richard C. Paddock and Mitchell Landsberg April 19, 2007 For university administrators, it is an alarmingly familiar story: A student's roommates find him to be sullen and uncommunicative. He writes violent stories in his English class that alarm his instructor. He is accused of harassing a female student. Do campus officials see the pattern of behavior? And if they identify a student who poses a threat to others, what can they do? In short, the answer depends on the campus. As universities across the nation deal with a surge in mental health problems among students, some campuses have taken an aggressive approach in how they monitor problem behavior and intervene in the lives of those who might pose a danger to themselves or others. With counseling centers at many universities understaffed and swamped by requests for help, some schools urge students and faculty to be more active in reporting people who show signs of depression or aberrant behavior. "What we've tried to establish is an early-warning system where we gather information about students who are in difficulty," said Michael Young, UC Santa Barbara vice chancellor for student affairs and co-chairman of a UC committee that examined mental health issues systemwide. "It's proven from our point of view, the earlier you can identity a problem and respond appropriately, the better off the campus is," Young said. At Virginia Tech, where student Seung-hui Cho killed 32 people and himself, officials saw warning signs as early as 2005. That year, after Cho was accused of stalking two young women, he briefly was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation. His roommates found him to be withdrawn. Later, the violent plays he wrote for his creative writing class disturbed his fellow students and professor. But for universities, putting such pieces together and knowing when a student is nearing a crisis can be a daunting task. "You won't stop every suicide, you won't stop every homicide, but you can have a significant effect," Young said. "It's better to over-respond and overreact than to under-respond and under-react." Young said UCSB, which has an enrollment of 20,000, collects information on troubled students from all over campus, creating a clearinghouse that allows officials to spot links between unusual activities or behaviors. The campus expels several students a year who are deemed to pose a danger and tries to get them counseling, he said. UCSB suffered its own tragedy in 2001 when student David Attias drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in the student community of Isla Vista, killing four people. After the crash he raged that he was the "angel of death." A judge found him guilty of second-degree murder, ruled him insane and committed him indefinitely to a mental hospital. At smaller universities, where students often have smaller classes, more contact with faculty and a more intimate setting, there is less chance of problems going unnoticed, officials say. At Pepperdine University, which has about 4,000 students at its Malibu campus, administrators say there is a culture of students supporting one another. "When someone faces difficulties or extraordinary challenges, it is likely more than one person will ask if they are OK," said Pepperdine spokesman Jerry Derloshon. "In the aftermath of the tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech, it has become obvious that it is important that we all try to help each other out." At USC, which has about 27,000 students, administrators try to track students who have problems. Representatives of the counseling staff, campus police, residence halls and other branches meet each week to discuss student behavior and whether intervention might be needed in individual cases. "We encourage students and faculty to bring forth things," said Bradford King, director of USC's student counseling service. "It's like Neighborhood Watch. What you hope is you have a community spirit where people are looking out for each other." But how to balance the freewheeling ethos of college with the need for vigilance? Consider the dilemma posed by creative writing assignments. Cho's plays prompted Virginia Tech to pull him from an English class and give him private instruction. Joseph Duemer, who teaches creative writing at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., expressed concern that universities might overreact to the Virginia Tech tragedy and inhibit creative freedom. "One of the things you do when you teach the arts is encourage students to take aesthetic (& thus emotional) risks - to extend themselves," he wrote in an online discussion on the Inside Higher Education website. "Sometimes this involves the sort of self-revelation that makes an instructor - to say nothing of fellow students - uncomfortable. But that freedom to explore is a fundamental part of the project; without it, we might as well not teach the arts." The issue of whether artistic depictions of violence cross the line from healthy self-expression to pathological obsession also arises in high schools. Arlette Crosland, who teaches English and journalism at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, said that although her students frequently depict violence, she has had only one student whose writing so disturbed her that she notified administrators. "They love horror," she said. "They have their death metal drawings, and, yeah, they have their goth crosses and everything, but this is their subculture." Students can see gruesome movies, such as "Saw II," but "still smile and still have friends," Crosland said. She would worry more, she said, if the students' violent imagery were combined with the sort of antisocial behavior seen in Cho. The Los Angeles Unified School District has a detailed set of "threat assessment" protocols that determine how school officials should handle concerns, and the criteria make it clear that descriptions of violence alone cannot predict violence. In a landmark study of school shootings, the U.S. Secret Service concluded in 2002 that "there is no accurate or useful 'profile' of students who engaged in targeted school violence." However, the study did find that more than one-third of school shooters "exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries." And it said that in 93% of the cases it studied, the attackers had "engaged in some behavior prior to the attack" that concerned students, teachers, parents or police. Alan Sitomer, an English teacher at Lynwood High School who is California's entrant in this year's national Teacher of the Year competition, said he had referred students to counseling after seeing suicidal tendencies in their writing, but found himself wondering this week whether he would recognize the warning signs of a mass killer like Cho. "I guess the question is: When is the writing on the wall? And I don't know," he said. "I think we're all going to become more hypersensitive to that. However, are we about to trample the rights of free speech and discourage our students from being fully expressive, creative writers?" Maurice O'Sullivan, former president of the College English Assn., an international organization of college English professors, also worried about the future. "Will colleges have to return to the days of in loco parentis, where colleges take on the role of parents on campus?" asked O'Sullivan, who teaches at Rollins College in Florida. "And will we have to change confidentiality laws," O'Sullivan added, "which would tell everyone about a problem right away but could also scar someone for life? And is this one case sufficiently provocative to make major changes in what we do about such students at our nation's colleges?" "It may be premature to see this as a larger issue than one troubled young man," he said. * richard.paddock@latimes.com mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com Times staff writer Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report. FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. 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