You knew it had to happen sooner or later. Preventing another Virginia Tech massacre would come down to money — mo’ money. Joe Samaha, whose daughter Reema was killed by Seung Hui Cho, pleaded with the House Welfare and Institutions Committee to pass legislation that will “fund mental-health care, with the coordination of education, policies and administration of the laws.”
Committee Chairman Philip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News, agreed, according to the Washington Post’s reporting of the hearing. “We can make all the policy changes we want, but if we don’t allocate adequate resources to address the policy changes, then we’ve actually done nothing.”
While agreeing that funding should be a priority in the 2008 legislative session, Del. Brian J. Moran, D-Alexandria, contended that it is important how the money is spent. Said Moran: “We need to make sure that training is a component so there’s no misunderstanding about what mental-health professionals are supposed to do.”
Moran has the right instincts: We can’t just throw money at the problem. We need to target dollars spent to ensure that mental health systems are operating properly. Training may be a component of what’s needed. But there’s an important piece of the story that the press, and presumably the lawmakers too, have overlooked.
Here’s how the WaPo summarized the institutional breakdown:
Cho encountered the state’s mental-health system when he was referred to the New River Valley Community Services Board in 2005, 16 months before the shootings. Virginia Tech police said that he had harassed two female students and that he was suicidal. The board, the government mental-health agency that serves Blacksburg, found that Cho was “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization,” according to court papers.
The next day, a special justice assigned to Cho decided that he was “an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness” and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment. But three law enforcement sources familiar with Cho’s medical records have said that Cho never received treatment. There was no follow-up from the community services board or the courts.
Why was there no follow up? Mental health administrators blame insufficient funding to fully participate in judicial mental health hearings and follow up on court-ordered treatment. Is that the end of the story? Read today’s column in Bacon’s Rebellion, “Isolated Case or System Failure?”, by Sam Mela, a former member of the Central Virginia Community Services Board. He argues that the lack of follow-up represented a breakdown in quality assurance.
Writes Mela: “A key tenet of QA is to elevate the priority of critical issues until they are resolved. Who was the person in charge of Quality Assurance at the New River Valley Community Services Board?”
Other questions he asks: “Is every community services board in the state of Virginia so under-funded that it is out of compliance with Virginia mental health law? Or are only some boards out of compliance? Or, is the problem limited to the New River Valley Community Services Board?”
Darn good questions. Let’s get answers before we start spreading around the greenbacks.
