this guy had been to therapy (maybe not engaged in it fruitfully, but made it to at least a session), and may have been on psychotropic meds.  The description of his behavior / demeanor sure sounds like he was deeply unhappy, resentful, angry, and disconnected.  I would be curious to hear from his teachers all through school how many of them sent him to the counselor's office, told the parents or the student he could use some help, etc.?  I have a feeling the ball was not dropped on this particular case, but rather that the student was treatment-resistant.

I wonder if, when his whole class was afraid to attend any more sessions of class while he was there, the school would have been justified in laying out an ultimatum -- "Get help or go" -- as they no doubt would have if he had had a highly contagious illness, or any condition that represented a threat to himself or others.

I had a classmate in grad school who got kicked out of the program and kept showing up for classes.  He made me extremely nervous, and I always made sure I had an exit strategy whenever he showed up.  I would not have been surprised in the least to see him show up with a weapon sometime, and I always behaved as if he was armed and dangerous.  I think the department worked behind the scenes to get him gone, and eventually he stopped showing up.

That was a really creepy experience, BTW.  One of my classmates committed suicide, and my adviser was the victim of a really brutal murder.  No wonder I was on edge!  I think we started with about 25 in our cohort and ended up with about 18.

I think that Cho was mentally ill and in ways I know I can't comprehend. I also think that Bill O Reilly seems evil to me, as does Fred Phelps, Hitler and a guy I saw hitting his kid the other day.
I think, if there is such a thing as evil, it comes in all sorts of ways. From turning blind eyes to homelessness, to waging war.
Or maybe its not a force, but a choice we all have to face.
But I think Cho was probably paranoid schizophrenic with borderline/sociapathic tendancies.

Some people are evil and mentally ill and go on shooting rampages. Some go on to have syndicated talk shows.

Young people in their 20's in demanding programs are going to present erratic behavior. He sounded bad, especially in retrospect, but I'm sure any university Dean etc could come up with dozens if not hundreds of cases of troubled youths who presented in similar ways and peacefully grew up and went on their way, perhaps with some therapy and perhaps not. I was just a student and I know a couple of people who ended up (very properly) on 72 hour holds. They ended up with normal lives (no murders so far).

We humans love hindsight, and blame, and shaking our heads and saying "would shoulda coulda" but IMHO we miss how many others are out there with similar 'signs'  who never do anything terrible.

I'm not a fan of the word evil, not only because it's moralistic and religious, but I don't see how using the label evil helps society or individuals solve problems.

If someone is "evil", ie something wrong with their soul (and what's that anyway, since soul is tough to agree upon also), what do we do about that? Except vilify that person I guess. Or worse. Historically, we kill people who get labeled evil - and they were probably powerless and marginalized to begin with. In the case of "leaders" such as Hitler who are responsible for mass murder, their whole technique is to dehumanize in these vague ways to rile people up.

So even though our secular clinical terms don't really do this behavior justice, I'll take clinical terms, or even "sociopath", because at least we can start to figure out how to prevent that or treat that.

RachelD

Listening to the different fragments of what is known about Cho, I saw him as being profoundly disconnected from others. I imagined him moving through the world unable to form human connections and just sad and frustrated and ultimately driven insane and rageful at his own inability to connect.

The one teacher who took an interest in him (after he wrote a disturbing piece) and offered to tutor him and meet with him privately said that he would keep his sunglasses on the entire time they would meet and tears would be streaming down his face. That sounds to me like a person absolutely desperate for human kindness, for someone to take an interest in him, to care about his pain.

We are such a social species. It must have felt like a special kind of prison to be that alone and invisible.

It will be interesting to see what comes out about the meds he was on. There was an aspect to the Columbine killers' story that had to do with anti-psychotic meds, too. There is a dangerous possible side effect with certain medications that can make a person violent toward others or self.

but people aren't "good" or "either"...we're a mixture of both.  I also believe we are very lucky that we don't know the thoughts of others...we would most likely be profoundly shocked.  We all have a few dark places in our souls.  Evidently, people like Cho lack something that inhabits them from controlling those thoughts that come from those places.  

Are such people "evil"?  No, I think they're mentally deranged.  This is not an excuse...all of us have been in situations in which we could have made very bad decisions yet chose not to, for whatever reason.  I'm also not uncomfortable with the idea of locking criminals up, even though I believe a good part of them are mentally ill...frankly, a person who has a difficult time making the right choices is a scary person to have on the street...scarier than a person who is just calculating and coldly makes such choices.

The shooter was terminally ill -- suicidally, homicidally depressed.  It is a great tragedy that the aberrant behavior resulting from his illness led to so many other deaths and injury in addition to his own.  Reports indicate that the illness had been apparent to others for some time, and must have been growing progressively worse.  It must be terrifying when your brain is not working correctly, and is causing horrible, painful feelings like paranoia, fear, helplessness, resentment, depression, desperation, delusion, loneliness, rage...  It must be very strange to feel all this darkness while walking through a college campus where the sun is shining and young people are smiling and happy and seem relatively carefree.  It would be like a hallucination, where you are seeing something that no one else is seeing, but in this case he was feeling something that no one else was  feeling.  Any one of us could become ill and be "not ourselves".  In an altered state, we could strike out at anyone, even at the people we most love, just as this boy did.  

This was a awful, horrible tragedy.

If there is anything to learn here, it is that mental health care is an issue of public health.  When individuals needing mental health care are not found and treated, then the consequences can be severe, and extend beyond that individual to society at large.  Also, the distinction between mental health care and medical care is entirely artificial, and should be eliminated.  Mental illness is not some excuse for paying someone to sit around and gossip with you about your problems.  It is a symptom which can be traced back to a physical problem within the body, such as a chemical imbalance in the brain, a brain tumor, a hormonal imbalance, a tumor causing excess hormonal secretions, physical symptoms of stress resulting from your bodies reaction to the pressures in your life, etc.

It is a huge problem in our society that many of us see someone near to us who is mentally ill, but, because they are an adult and their civil rights protect them from our interference, unless they break the law there is little we can do to help them, and their illness often prevents them from getting help for themselves.  Drug, alcohol addiction, schizophrenia, manic depression and suicidal depression are some areas where this tragedy plays out over and over again.  Usually, the ill person only hurts themselves or a few others, but occasionally, like this, the tragedy is acted out on a much larger scale.  

A person who behaves erratically when they are ill is not evil, just very, very ill.
 

 

A word that is sticking with me from some of the posts above. Cho became so depressed that others were no longer "human" to him. That seems like a key factor.

And conversely, to say someone is simply "evil" allows us to dehumanize them. Makes it easier to condemn them for their actions.

Mental health care in this country has certainly progressed beyond the sad state it once was, but we still have a few more steps to go. There are so many who still look upon any instance of mental health care, basic therapy or anti-depressants and the like, as a negative. It still could impact your job security, your boss knowing you are in any kind of therapy. Hopefully, slowly, as the "Prozac Nation" grows up into "power," this will become a notion of the past.

Part of me actually feels badly for Cho, that his life was this bleak.

Poet Nikki Giovanni teaches at VT, and coincidentally lectured here at Bradley U (where I work) last night. Here's the local article(I was unable to attend). Interesting insights.

Another theme in some of the media reports I've seen and read are attacks on his parents.  I understand the tendency, I've also wondered whether his parents (presumably the closest people to him) noticed this problem before it was too late.  Reportedly some media outlets have published personal information about who his parents are and where they live.  I obviously know nothing about his parents or his upbringing but let me just remind us that the parents of Cho lost a son on Monday in more ways than we can ever imagine.  They carry this burden more than any of us ever will.  

I don't know about this, but one thought I had was that at some point only 23 years ago, Cho's mom was looking at her little baby & loving him & thinking about what kind of life he would lead.  I can't imagine her pain.  It does also strike some fear: what if, despite everything we do, DS just turns out bad?  I'm sure it's unlikely, but the moms of those kind of kids probably never thought it would turn out this way for them either.

I also think it's sort of silly to keep hearing "someone should have tried harder to reach out to him."  I know that's a bit of a reactive response, but how hard do you try to be friends with a person who literally would not answer you if you talked to him?  I think everyone realizes that you can't make someone get help if they don't want it.  But who has time, energy, and inclination to keep trying to reach out & befriend someone who shows absolutely no interest in being befriended?  I'm sure many people did try.  The sad reality is, it just didn't help.

also gratitude.  Sadness for such a horrible tragedy and all the levels of pain that will ripple out because of it.  But gratitude to read the comments here that bring humanity, kindness, compassion, worry, concern, desire to find out how we could do things differently, etc.  It really helps me to re-balance my feelings of utter despair over such a nightmare --- for all that were killed, and yes, also for Cho's family and for Cho himself.  What a complete devastation and yet, hope.