Warning Shots: Lessons learned
(I think) from school shooters

© David Chartrand
April 28, 2007

[As published by THE WASHINGTON POST, April 20, 2007]

Check out Chartrand's Mental Health Blog

   To assess America’s latest and worst school massacre, let us review what we learned from previous shootings.
That didn’t take long, did it?

   Now let’s consider what we should have learned.

   First off, forget the “big bang” theory. School gunmen (yes, they’re usually males) aren’t born yesterday. What may seem a random act of momentary madness is usually premeditated payback — punishment of those whom the shooter blames for his feelings of rejection and isolation.

   “The most frequent motive was revenge,” concluded the Secret Service in a May 2003 study of 37 school shootings. As part of its “Safe Schools Initiative,” agents reviewed case files and interviewed 10 of the shooters.
School assassins also send clear warnings, the Secret Service found. “Information about these attackers' intent and planning was potentially knowable before the incident,” the Secret Service found.

   None of this suggests that assassins deserve public sympathy, or that all mentally ill persons are violent or dangerous (most are not). Nor do we know — yet — if anyone at Virginia Tech knew about Cho Seung-hui’s festering rage.

   But the Secret Service report, and countless other investigations into the minds of the mentally ill and suicidal, suggest that many such tragedies are preventable. Assuming anyone wants to make the changes necessary to prevent them. A good place to start is the place young people spend most of their time — school.

   For decades, American schools and universities have ignored the recommendations of mental health experts to install mental health screening programs for students. School boards and campus administrators have ignored the advice of school psychologists to develop formal, written protocols and training programs that teach students as well as faculty and counselors how to save the lives of the mentally ill and suicidal.

   Very few have heeded the warnings. The Associated Press reported recently that many American colleges choose to expel suicidal students rather than offer treatment or counseling. Ironically, Virginia recently passed legislation barring this practice on its own state campuses. And a trial is scheduled to begin June 18 in a Kansas court involving a mother’s claim that incompetent and poorly trained school personnel inadvertently caused the suicide deaths of her two teenaged sons in 2003.

   Rather than refute the claims of misconduct by staff, the defense team in the Kansas case argues that public schools have no obligation to protect suicidal students or their families. I am not making this up. I read the entire court proceedings and everything.

   Scott Poland, a Florida school psychologist and one of the nation’s leading authorities on school crises and the prevention of adolescent suicide, estimates that fewer than 20% of American schools have installed the suicide prevention programs and mental health protocols recommended by the National Association of School Psychologists. “Schools have been slow to address it,” Poland said. “Sometimes I think we’ve actually lost ground.”

   Schools and universities have access to 20 years of mental health guidelines on the handling of mentally ill students, and 20 years of data on youth violence, suicides, and attempted suicides. They also have access to lawyers. When agencies adopt safety policies and protocols, they can be held legally responsible for the tragedies they fail to prevent. It takes only teensy smidgeons of fear and speculation for paranoid public officials to place the reputation of institutions above the welfare of the public. I could go on but this it might turn mean.

   Having been warned, many communities and schools have done little to address mental illness and suicide among the young. Kids aren’t stupid. When grownups (teachers, parents, school boards) refuse to talk openly about depression and suicide, children get the message:
No one wants to listen, so I’ll take matters into my own hands.

   It reminds me of those storm sirens we hear on Kansas summer evenings. Is it a tornado “watch” or a “warning”? Maybe it’s an equipment test. Many pay no attention, and many pay the price.

   Some warnings arrive too late, of course, while others are sounded long before tragedy strikes. Midwesterners learn the hard way that trees don’t suddenly collapse during winter storms. Snow and ice accumulate gradually; gradually, the limbs begin to droop. It’s a beautiful sight, at first. Then comes that terrible snapping sound.

   The 2003 Secret Service investigation found that while most shooters had never had a mental health evaluation, most had a history of depression and suicide attempts. More than half had a “documented history of feeling extremely depressed or desperate.”

   What the Secret Service didn’t explain is who knew all this ahead of time. The parents? Teachers? Close friends? If frightened and alienated kids reached for help, did anyone reach back?

   It would be helpful to learn if the Virginia Tech student-gunman had a history of violence or mental illness, and if others knew of his gathering rage. If so, did they tell anyone? We’ll probably never know, unless we want to or something.

   Mental illness doesn’t exist, of course, without a medical diagnosis. And you can’t get a diagnosis if you don’t seek treatment; or if you’re dead. It’s a vicious cycle that gets broken only by those who notice that something is broken and then stop to fix it.

   Now that we mention it, darned if I can remember what was learned about the history and mental health of last year’s shooters (Colorado, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania). Maybe it was in all the local papers and I missed it. Most of us, including the news media, contemplate such events the way we contemplate accident scenes during the morning commute. We shake our heads and frown, taking care not to spill the coffee. A half-mile down the road, all is forgotten. But ain’t it awful.

   What we’d really like to know is how many dead children and grieving families it will take before American communities and their school systems hold serious discussions about mental health screening for children and mandatory suicide prevention programs for students, teachers and counselors. The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in 2003 endorsed such reforms because schools “must be partners in the mental health care of our children.”

   A child with an untreated mental illness becomes a teenager with an untreated mental illness, who then becomes an angry grownup with a shotgun, who then …. As if we needed to be reminded.

   “Knowing is not enough, “ Goethe wrote. “We must do.”

   We must want to do.

   "If kids snap, it lets us off the hook,” Secret Service agent Bryan Vossekuil told the Chicago Sun-Times prior to the release of the 2003 study. “If you view these shooters as on a path toward violence, it puts the burden on adults. Believing that kids snap is comforting."

   It also means little has been learned, which isn’t very comforting.

   Like I said, Midwesterners pay attention. During winter storms, I stand at the kitchen window and watch for sagging limbs. As snow and ice collect on the sapling dogwoods and ornamental pears, I get out there and clear the limbs with a broom.

   I hate losing a tree. And I hate that snapping sound.