After watching Seung Hui Cho, a man with a supposed history of psychiatric problems, kill 32 people at Virginia Tech earlier this year, the governor of Virginia decided to start helping to fix his state’s terrible mental health system. Gov. Tmothy M. Kaine proposed spending $42 million for mental health over the next 2 years, to hire more counselors, more psychiatrists, and also to lower the threshold needed to legally commit someone for mental health treatment.

Kaine’s proposal would change that standard to a “substantial likelihood that in the near future” a mentally ill person will cause “serious physical harm to himself or another person.”

But some mental health advocates were skeptical of the proposed change.

“They’re going down this path without any proof that anyone can concretely predict whether someone will become dangerous or violent,” said Diane Engster, president of the Northern Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association [...]

Which is, of course, completely true. But it won’t stop this train from leaving the station. Because regardless of whether Cho’s past mental issues had anything to do with his decision to murder, people linked the two together immediately following the murder. We now have the indelible image seared into our minds — get people mental health treatment or they may become violent and kill someone. Completely untrue, but truth rarely matters when it comes to looking for a scapegoat.

The article pulled out a figure of Virginia spending $154.8 million for community-based services (we assume in mental health) in 2006. I couldn’t find that figure in Virginia’s budget summary for 2006, so I assume it’s a part of one of the agency’s budgets listed. (To me it looks like Virginia’s overall expenditures per year are around $487 million on mental health services and treatment centers.) So according to the Post’s number, this is a 13.6% funding increase. (According to the overall figures for the mental health services budget, however, it appears to be much smaller — 4%.)

But hey, every dollar counts in mental health, a chronically underfunded stepchild service in state’s funding rolls.

We applaud Virginia’s move in recognizing the importance of the mental health of its citizens and hope other states don’t wait for their own personal tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech to follow suit.

His funding initiative is expected to pass easily.

Read the full article: Kaine Seeks to Bolster Mental Health Funding

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 15 Dec 2007