|
Dr. Susan Lipkins, a nationally renowned psychologist, campus violence expert and author of Preventing Hazing, says the Virginia Tech shootings could have been prevented. "I believe that we have to use this to realize that our mental health system is broken and that we need to fix it now," she says.
Dr. Lipkins says the system failed to help the shooter at various opportunities when he was a child, in high school and in college. "There were many, many signs. He could have really benefited from medicine, and I believe that by high school and college they should have known this," she says.
While she says a lack of counseling resources contributes to the problem, Dr. Lipkins believes people who recognize that something might be wrong with someone should listen to their gut. "I feel like everybody should have joined together as a group of bystanders and gone to the administration and said, 'We have to do something. We have to help this young boy, and we have to protect ourselves,'" she says. "And as active bystanders, we have to get up and we have to question authority. Sometimes they're not right."
Keep Reading
