Cho never got mental treatment ordered by court

9 May, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, the young man who shot 32 people at Virginia Tech University, failed to get the much-needed mental health treatment ordered by a judge who declared him “an imminent threat to himself and others.”

Seung-Hui Cho was found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalisation” in December 2005, according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment.

Despite the judge’s order, neither the court nor the officials of community mental health ensured that the order was carried out and so Cho did not receive the treatment he badly needed.

Special judge Justice Paul Barnett, who ordered the treatment, said judicial ethics prevented him from talking about Cho’s case.

“The system doesn’t work well,” according to Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the Virginia state’s mental health system and will report to the state’s General Assembly in 2008.

Federal, state and local officials told the Associated Press that they had no idea whether Cho received the treatment because they were not privy to that information. Virginia Tech officials did not comment on queries from the Associated Press.

It also appears that the panel appointed to look into the massacre, appointed in the first week of May 2007, has yet to meet and has not received any information.

When Cho e-mailed a roommate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg on December 13, 2005, saying that he might as well commit suicide, the police were summoned and they took Cho to the area’s mental health agency, the New River Valley Community Services Board.

Cho was subsequently detained temporarily at Carilion St Albans Behavioral Health Clinic in Christiansburg, a few miles from the campus, until a special justice could review his case in a commitment hearing.

The following day, the judge found that Cho was an imminent danger to himself and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment.

Lawyers say the most likely outcome would have been a referral for treatment at Virginia Tech’s Cook Counselling Centre.

However, the court has no authority to check that orders have been carried out and the college is prevented from discussing Cho’s case because of privacy laws.

There have been many reports from other students and from the college that Cho’s behaviour had been a worry for some time. Cho’s family, it seems, had tried for some time to give him treatment but without success.

Experts on mental health say that the case helps highlight the problem of dealing with the mentally ill in the community and ensuring that they receive the treatment they need without transgressing their individual rights.