A mental health reform paradox

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: April 28, 2008

In an era when convenience is everything and pain is passe, tragedy of magnitude is the accelerator for government’s perpetually revving engine of reform. Hence the race started last spring to repair the state’s sputtering mental health system in the aftermath of Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage at Virginia Tech. A fix to be in place by July 1 will arrive nine weeks too late for a Churchville man, whose solitary passing is a faint shadow of the 33 in Blacksburg.
Donald Rice, his wife believes, should be in a hospital now, talking to psychiatrists about the torment that drove him to the mountains, to a gazebo perched on a hill in Bath County, which he lined with sandbags and logs and stocked with an arsenal of weapons as if in anticipation of the apocalypse. That came Wednesday for the Robert E. Lee High School graduate.
He burned to the ground the rustic, two-story farmhouse where he’d once lived with his parents. After firefighters responded, he opened fire on authorities and then retreated to the gazebo. As the sun slipped behind the ridge, darkness settled into Donald Rice’s soul. He ended the anguish with a single shot.
For years, Rice battled bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, an illness which carries those affected by it on a series of exhilarating emotional ebbs and debilitating flows that drain hope from life as though the former were a toxin. The gazebo on the family spread in Millboro had been a sanctuary, but Sherry Rice recognized in recent weeks that it might become a tomb.
She recounted to The News Virginian’s Cleve Wiese pleading on her husband’s behalf with authorities and local Community Service Board officials, all to no avail. Alas, even at quickened pace, the wheels of reform turn slowly, too slowly, it would seem, for Donald Rice.
Under the law that goes into effect in July, mental health officials will be empowered to involuntarily commit patients — that is, hospitalize them against their will — based on determinations that they pose a threat to themselves or others. The current law includes the additional proviso that the threat be deemed “imminent,” a threshold that some experts consider exceedingly high.
Sherry Rice is sure that was true in her husband’s case. She says authorities told her repeatedly that he had done nothing to warrant their intervention. He had taken to the gazebo before, and so even as he established his arsenal there, he was not considered an “imminent” threat. Authorities well acquainted with Rice’s struggles believed this mood would fade as had others.
But the task of defining and then applying terms is the white heat that melts to mush reform’s hammers and chisels. Officials still must determine precisely what it means to be a “threat,” imminent or not. In particular, they must discern when to override an individual’s rights and dignity in the name of safeguarding that person and others. Such acts are not ordinarily taken lightly, nor should they be.
Restraint in this regard can be tantamount to failure when people cross the brink. For all those who fall into that category – more than 14 of every 100,000 Americans commit suicide every year, according to federal statistics – there are thousands of others who venture near the edge but do not slip over it, in some cases by virtue of a quiet valiance amid struggle and a desire to live in freedom beyond hospital walls. The danger is real that in the name of preventing a second tragedy of the superlative nature of the one perpetrated by Cho, some brave souls will be precipitously stripped of their rights.
Involuntary commitment is, assuredly, necessary in some instances, but it is no panacea. Rather, in some cases it can be an injustice.
We cannot from afar ascertain whether blame is warranted with regard to Donald Rice. We grieve with his family and remind ourselves and others of the necessity of vigilance in watching over the troubled among us. Still, his sad end and Tech’s horrors do not alter the fact that tragedy frequently makes for flawed precedent and overreaching reform.