Record Keeping ImportanceElizabeth Manzanares

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Florida International University

Record keeping is an activity that should be conducted by all professions. Concerning psychologists, they should maintain the appropriate records with their extent and nature is dependent on the context, purpose, and setting of the offered psychological services. They are useful documentation that indicates the treatment plans, the services offered and the progress of the clients. Also, they allow the professionals to monitor the work of the clients to help in the planning of appropriate services and protect the psychologist and client in the event of legal proceedings. The discussion below will focus on the Virginia Tech massacre with a reference to the missing records.

Seung Hui Cho had been in Korea but they had moved to the United States in 1992, he was a 23-year-old senior and majoring in English at Virginia Tech. On April 16, 2007, he began at 7.15 by shooting a male resident assistant and a female freshman before leaving the dormitory, when the police arrived on the scene with no identification of the shooter identity they pursued the boyfriend of the female victim with the assumption that the female victim had been shot while in a domestic violence quarrel. At 9.40 am Cho went classroom to classroom after locking and chaining some main doors with a 22-caliber handgun, a 9-millimeter handgun and hundreds of ammunition rounds shooting people. While the rampage only took 10 minutes it left 32 people, 5 faculty members, and 27 students dead with others more than a dozen wounded, Cho also died after inflicting a wound himself with a gun. Two days later after the incident, the NBC News received materials from Cho that had a timestamp indicating he had mailed them between the two shooting, among them were some of his photos holding the gum and a video of his rants on the wealthy people among other topics. Later, some students Cho as a loner and it was found that he had mental health problems (“Virginia Tech shooting leaves 32 dead”, 2011).

According to Friedman, 2009, on August 19, 2009, mental health records of Seung Hui Cho were made public, they offered a glimpse of the evaluations Cho underwent before the shooting. The records had one in-person visit and two telephone conversations between Cho and the mental health profession at the Cook Counseling Center in the 2005 winter. From the records, it was found that Cho had visited the center after being released on December 14, 2005, from a psych ward at Carilion St. Albans hospital and he had been admitted after his roommate claimed that Cho had threatened to commit suicide. Unfortunately, he denied having suicidal thoughts and was given emergency numbers that he was to use in the event such thoughts were known to him. The phone conversation indicated that Cho had reported that his anxiety and depression and depression had resumed and he was experiencing problems concentrating but he had no willingness to visit the center at the time.

After the records were released they only brought more anxiety, pain, and grief for the survivors and victims of the shooting and also the professionals who had interacted with him at the center. However, these records were also released so that the people affected could be aware of Cho mental health issues before the incidence, as a result of this incidence the governor of Virginia then Timothy Kaine signed an executive order that stipulated that everyone who had been mandated by the court to receive mental health treatment to be added on a state database of those people prohibited from buying guns. A year later legislation was introduced that required some amendments on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that stipulated how much mental health records of a student can be made known to a university (Friedman, 2009).

Unfortunately, the missing records were recovered from the home of the director of the counseling center Dr. Robert Miller who claimed he had done so mistakenly when he left the center in February 2006. As a result of this Miller was dismissed by the university.

From the discussion above, it has become evident why appropriate records should be maintained. The massacre could have been prevented if the professionals had access to Cho’s past struggles and he would have been monitored if not readmitted to the psych ward to ensure he was receiving enough support and treatment. This records if they had been provided after the shooting they would have offered those who had been affected by the massacre closure by releasing the struggles of the offender. Lastly, the police would have been able to identify the offender which might have prevented the second shooting that took place in the classrooms.

References

Friedman, E. (2009). Va. Tech Shooter Seung-Hui Cho’s Mental Health Records Released. ABC News. Retrieved 2 April 2020, from https://abcnews.go.com/us/seung-hui-chos-mental-health-records-released/story?id=8278195.

Virginia Tech shooting leaves 32 dead. HISTORY. (2011). Retrieved 2 April 2020, from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massacre-at-virginia-tech-leaves-32-dead.