Campus Shootings Highlight Need for Mental Health Improvements

As the nation reels from another mass shooting on a college campus, analysis of the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech University highlights the need for “comprehensive and coordinated mental health services on college campuses, according to a paper in the November/December issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry.

The Virginia Tech shooting can be viewed as a “sentinel event,” highlighting the need to improve college mental health services — including an increased role of psychiatrists in assessing and managing students with severe mental illness, according to a perspectives article by Dr. Marisa A. Giggie of University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa. She writes, “Effective communication and coordination of intervention activities among campus mental health and administrative resources are paramount for preventing future tragedies.”

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