Updated: How to have safer schools

Note: I have updated this previous post to reflect

today's tragic events on the Virginia Tech campus.

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We are all - yet again - heartsick and bewildered. We collectively grieve this senseless and cruel lose of life at Virignia Tech, and seek somehow to find meaning and consolation in its aftermath. Inevitably, we wonder what this means about the safety of our children in our schools - now college campuses must sadly be included in the conversation - and what we should now do to make our schools safe from such acts. In response to similar past horrors, the pundits have suggested:

• More metal detectors.
• More security guards in the school.
• Faster police responses.
• More security cameras.
• Better surveillance and monitoring of visitors.
• Teaching kids how to behave when under siege and confronted by someone with a gun.
• Teaching less hatred of women in our society (of all the explanations of this kind of tragedy, I thought this the most boneheaded: that some homicidal manaics are reflecting misogynist America's hatred of women, and not what it clearly invariably is: the deranged act of a mentally ill, pathetic nut job from Hell).

All of these have a certain logic and appeal, I suppose. Events like this make us desperate for solutions. But, as I'm sure you can see, all are flawed (not to mention costly), e.g., most of these measures (like metal detectors and cameras and quicker police response). For example, most won't stop maniacs intent on mayhem; they'll just have less time and more inconvenience to commit their heinous acts.

The question is: How much do you want to invest in these measures? And how much fear of the school environment do you want to instill in your kids?

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Are schools safe?
Horrific events like this aside (and now the name "Viginia Tech" is affixed to this infamous and dispiriting list), the inside of a school remains statistically the safest place outside of home for your child to be. Less than 1% of all child fatalities, for example, occur en route to school, in school, or at a school event. The drive home or just hanging out on the street with friends are a lot more dangerous.

The headlines and 24/7 media coverage to come will serve to convince us that schools are far more dangerous than they really are. That's why very rare but dramatic events often lead to ill-conceived policies and misspent resources. True, even less than 1% is too much, but how much should we spend on measures like these which are of dubious efficacy, especially when dangers to children's well-being are much greater in other (but less publicized) areas?

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Dr. P's opinion:
It's easy enough to be critical of others' imperfect suggestions on how to try to manage a really difficult dilemma, so I feel the need to step up to the plate. What is my proposal on how to make safer schools? It's this:

The common denominator of all these events is the perpetrators' mental illness.

The shortage of child mental health services and treatment and research in this country represents, in my opinion, a critical public health danger. Additionally, parents (and pediatricians) are often unaware of or insensitive to young children's mental health challenges, tend to downplay their existence and their significance, and feel a social stigma in seeking a mental health professional.

And the complicated logistics of being working parents often subvert the best intentions. Even if willing, it can be hard to schlep a child to a mental health provider during or after school, once or twice a week, for many years - which is what most significantly disturbed kids need.

So, I'd invest in putting mental health providers in our schools. That way, troubled children who desperately need mental health evaluations and treatment can easily access them in the very setting in which they already spend a good chunk of their day.

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Now, I'm not so naiive as to suggest that early interventions by child mental health professionals are always successful in nipping in the bud incipient mental health problems. But I know sometimes they can. Is it possible that appropriate early diagnosis and counseling and appropriate medications might - just might - have changed the horrible life trajectories of some of these crazy headline-makers (and many more less dramatic folks) into less pathological, more socially-productive outcomes?

Let's put the necessary resources into the goal of placing a school psychologist / social worker / psychiatrist in every elementary and high school. Sure, it would be costly and, sure, it's not the solution. There is no the solution. But don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. I think my proposal could provide a much-needed boost in tackling the mental health issues that plague so many children and lead to so much human suffering.

Message Board Discussion: Safety Shattered: Shootings at VA Tech
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