All the Lonely People

My first reaction to the tragedy at Virginia Tech was of course great sadness and sympathy for the victims and their families. My second reaction was similar to that of Jeff’s at Have Coffee Will Write, the realization, not intellectually, but emotionally, that in other places in the world this happens every day. Then as I learned more about the young man who killed so many and ended his own life, I just kept hearing the Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby”.

“All the lonely people,

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people,

Where do they all belong?”

Cho Seung-Hui, was a lonely person. As a teacher, I have often had concerns about lonely students. I haven’t been worried that they would hurt others, but I know that they are in psychological pain, and I know that pain can bring them to the point of suicide. There are always those students who don’t fit in with the popular high school cliques. Sometimes they are teased or bullied, but often they are just ignored or students make a condescending effort to be inclusive though it is apparent to the loner that s/he is not a part of the group on an equal basis. Usually, the ones who don’t fit into the major cliques find some friends and form a group of what I like to term individualists. Since I was a member of one of these “misfit” groups in high school, I find myself drawn to the individualists. I know what it is like to not fit into the clique but have a small group of friends who accept you just the way you are warts and all. Adolescence is a time where a person needs a group, any group. From the information I’ve seen in the media, Senug was never able to find a place in adolescent society where he belonged, not even a group of individualists.

Erik Erikson describes adolescence as the stage of Identity vs. Role Confusion. It is interesting that Seung gave himself the name, Question Mark, a poignant expression of his inability to navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence. The roommates interviewed on television describe living with him for a whole year and never having a conversation with him. I can only imagine the pain he felt never being able to make a connection with anyone on campus. It would be like being in solitary confinement for years but able to watch others as they supported, and nurtured each other. Seung was in severe psychological pain. If we saw someone in comparable physical pain, we would rush him to the hospital. We would demand appropriate treatment, and we would do what we could to ease the pain. But this society does not recognize the need to treat psychological pain with the same urgency as physical pain. Even when parents or a close relative recognize the individual’s desperate need for help, treatment is difficult to get. For a good discussion of the difficulty of getting help for a family member listen to this discussion from NPR.

The news coverage of this story has filled me with sadness and anger. I am filled with sadness for the victims and their families, for Seung’s family and for Seung. I am angry because our society will fix the blame for this tragedy on Seung and do nothing to fix the problems in our mental health and legal systems. I am angry at the media for showing the images that Seung sent to NBC and for dwelling on every detail of the tragedy instead of spending their time talking about how the system failed and what we can do to fix it. I don’t buy the excuse that they are showing the images because they want to understand the motivation of the killer.

We already know many of the changes we can make to prevent similar tragedies. Here are some of them.

1) Provide funding and support for mental health treatment. Give treatment for mental disorders parity with treatment for physical ailments.

2) Provide more mental health support for children and families through guidance counselors and psychologists in our schools.

3) Provide outpatient support for the mentally ill. This would include group homes, therapy, medication, employment counseling.

4) Change the law to make it easier for family members to involuntarily commit a psychotic individual into a treatment facility. Only those who have tried to get help for a mentally ill family member can understand the anguish of watching a loved one in tremendous psychological pain but being unable to help because the law demands that the individual be an imminent danger to self or others or consent to treatment.

5) We need to change the culture that glorifies violence in the media. While most of us are not influenced to commit violent crimes by violent video games, movies, TV shows and the almost morbid obsession the news media has with violent events, there are those among us for whom these things are poison to the mind. We can pretend that there is no link between the increase in graphic violence in media and violent acts in our society, but I can remember when there was no need for schools to have a lock down plan. In fact, when I was in high school, I was on the rifle team and the members took their 22’s to school so that we could take them to target practice after school at the local armory. No one was worried that we were going to commit mass murder with them. It would have never crossed our mind.

6) As individuals and as a society, we need to reach out to all the lonely people and help them find a place to belong. We are becoming more and more isolated from each other. This is a society that emphasizes competition over cooperation. From an early age children are placed in competition with each other even in after school activities. The increasing need for both parents in a family to work and the need for people to move away from extended family to find or maintain employment has reduced the social support for children. While we are worried about leaving no child behind academically and place great pressure on young people to achieve and compete, we are failing to help them find the belonging and identity they seek during adolescence.