“In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, do you think the UNC campus is safe?”
This Monday the Chapel Hill Herald “Community Speakout” asked as well that of five
students. They all said “yes.” They must also think the Blacksburg campus was safe
the day before the killings happened there. Virginia Tech had a person on their campus
who was clearly and obviously mentally ill, and chronically angry, isolated and
dangerous as well: Cho Seung-Hui. For the record, Virginia Tech was not safe.
Apparently these UNC students didn’t notice alumnus Mohammad Taheri-Azar driving
an SUV through the heart of UNC’s campus last March. Taheri-Azar was charged with
nine counts of attempted first-degree murder. Only his incompetence as a mass
murderer kept him from rivaling the total in Blacksburg.
Taheri-Azar said he did this to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world. He
likely had a brain disorder also. His sister says he has tried to kill himself at least twice
since his arrest. At last report he was at Dorothea Dix Hospital undergoing a psychiatric
evaluation. His lawyer says his client “has a severe mental illness.” He was very angry,
isolated and dangerous as well.
We should also remember Wendell Williamson. On January 26, 1995, Williamson, then
a third-year law student at UNC, killed two people during a shooting spree on Chapel
Hill’s Henderson Street. Williamson also shot and wounded two others. A jury found
Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity. Clearly Williamson received inadequate
treatment for his mental illness, having won a $500,000 medical malpractice suit
against his psychiatrist.
Williamson had 600 rounds of ammunition in his knapsack when he was arrested. He
later said that he originally planned on going up on the hill above the Smith Center at
game time for his killing spree — but he didn’t. If he had, dozens, if not hundreds, could
have died.
No one can make any place else really safe from individuals who are willing to die in
order to kill. There are not enough gun control laws, armed guards or metal detectors in
the world to make it truly physically safe.
I can promise you that the task force established in Virginia to evaluate their tragedy
will recommend improvements in the campus and the state mental health systems.
They should.
Recently, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) graded the state mental health
systems. North Carolina got a D+. Virginia got a D. Our mental health treatment
systems do not have minor flaws or gaps; they have gaping crevasses that make the
Grand Canyon look like a hairline crack.
We can make things substantially safer, starting by providing significantly better and
more assertive treatment for people who have serious mental illnesses, especially
those who are a potential danger to themselves or others. We know how to do this.
This does not mean locking up every person who mutters to himself or looks strange.
Most people with mental illness are not dangerous to anyone — not if their illness is
properly treated and they are incorporated into a close and caring community.
Kicking those with mental illnesses out of school, or the workplace, will only move the
problem. A valid and up-to-date student ID is not what allowed Cho and Williamson to
kill, nor what kept Taheri-Azar from trying.
Shunning, isolating and marginalizing those with mental illness will not make anyone in
this world any safer. Doing these things will make it more dangerous. Appropriat
e treatment and communities that care about those with mental illness will make things
better and safer. Such treatment does exist — but there is far too little of it and there
are too many barriers to receiving it for those in need. And such communities do exist
— but they are too few and too far between.
Sometimes treatment may involve involuntary commitment in locked ward in a mental
hospital. (And this should not be only after tragic acts of violence against themselves or
others.) But when it does, it should also include appropriate placement in supportive
transitional housing after hospitalization, and appropriate community support after that.
(Some of which is just what North Carolina is cutting right now, believe it or not.)
Laws to allow for involuntary out-patient treatment would also keep us all safer.
Someone hospitalized as dangerous then made safe by medical treatment should not
leave the hospital without support and monitoring to assure that they stay on that
treatment lest they return to their previous condition unobserved.
We can do this. We must demand this. If we don’t, when the next horror happens, we
won’t have to look for someone else to blame, we can just look for a mirror.
Gary D. Gaddy serves on the board of NAMI Orange County.
A version of this column was first published in the Chapel Hill Herald, April 26, 2007.
Copyright 2007 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 