Over the coming days, there is sure to be a media avalanche of opinions and suggestions about “what to do” with people who have (or appear to have) a mental illness. We Americans are driven to do two things in the wake of a senseless tragedy like the Virginia Tech killings. We search for ways to assign blame and we search for ways to assure ourselves that something like this can’t happen again. And I’m afraid that, at least for the next few weeks, people with mental illness are going to be a convenient punching bag for both the professional and amateur ranks of our national punditocracy. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be surprised if our thoughtless overreactions have a chilling effect on college kids who may want to seek out counseling or psychiatric services, but don’t want to be branded by their peers as the next campus psycho.
