If the shooter at Virginia Tech was a student that needed a refill of his antipsychotic medication, he would not have been able to get it at the student health center because it is closed on weekends. One of our astute readers points out that five of the six most recent massacres have taken place on Mondays.
In this case, the shooter may not have been a student, and thus my point might not hold much water. However, incidents like this underscore the need for policies to prevent school and workplace shootings. What sort of programs did the university have to protect the mental health of their students and staff to prevent tragedies like this?
Shootings sometimes happen when the gunman was not able to get access to proper medication. Such was the case in the recent shooting at a postal sorting center in Goleta, California.
The inadequacy of student pharmacies is a national problem, not one that is limited to Virginia Tech. Bureaucratic problems at the UCLA Ashe center, which is also closed on weekends, have caused a close friend of mine to spend several weekends in agony while going through withdrawal from her antidepressants.
Many universities support a suicide prevention hotline. Should there be an emergency hotline for students to get refills of their crucial medications after hours?
