By Lisa Suhay
Saturday, June 16, 2007

Seeing the families of the Virginia Tech victims sheared from the state's investigation process makes me grieve on many levels.

Four years ago I helped put a family member with bipolar disorder in prison. He will probably hate me for the rest of his days, but at least he and those around him still have days to count. For years he was a ghost in our mental health and legal systems, similar in some ways to how Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, managed to evade even court-ordered treatment.

While dispassionate reasoning and laws concerning gun control are pieces of this puzzle, families are the framework. Nobody has the passion and dedication that family members carry for loved ones. As we watch relatives of the Virginia Tech victims try to contribute to the gathering of facts, states and the nation should recognize how central families are to preventing tragedies, as well as to healing and salvation. We need a national network linking families with law enforcement, schools and mental health centers, and better information sharing among them all.

My brother's mental health problems developed in his late teens and became acute at the end of his first year away at college. That's not uncommon: a quiet, worried person in an emotional pressure cooker begins changing. We don't know if he sought help in those early days at school or had difficulties that others noticed. Because he was over 18, state and federal privacy laws dictated that our family was not informed of his issues.

He left school after a year as his depression and anxiety festered into anger and paranoia -- and spates of delusion and rage. He disappeared onto the streets and was held in mental health facilities and jail, but even though we lived under the same roof, we were not contacted.

Because our family had no legal right to his medical information, we were not there for him. My brother didn't know that and thought he'd been abandoned.

By law, after a person is 18, hospitals, police and treatment programs can tell families nothing. (As news reports and the Virginia Tech findings given to President Bush this week note, treatment facilities and law enforcement don't always communicate well among themselves.) We have no right to know where patients are staying or how they are. Effectively, this means we have no right to help. Family members are being denied tools to support those who are or might be mentally unbalanced, and we are prevented, really, from protecting ourselves or our community.

Consider: Without a network coordinating law enforcement, schools and mental health centers, charges of assault or property damage, teachers' concerns, threats reported to the police, and even court appearances can take place without officials getting the complete picture. Violations committed in different states could incorrectly be treated as first offenses. Even within the same state, as with Cho's case, concerns raised at schools might not be made known to law enforcement officials.

When psychiatric patients are released from jail or hospitals, family members are not routinely informed. If they are picked up by police, information is not shared.

Nobody notified us that my brother was coming apart. There are warning systems for hurricanes and terrorists, but not for developing tragedies like this.

This cycle of non-information usually went on until he hurt someone and got arrested. After his arrest, he would be medicated, and by the time he saw a judge he was calm and remorseful.

Jail is not the answer for mental illness; you can't rehabilitate a disease. But it is too often the only place where people are stabilized, because they go in, are monitored and can't check themselves out. I know that this is what saved my relative, and I believe others were spared as well. Today he has matured and is a stable member of society with medication, help and a plan for the future.

But we need a national network for psychiatric patients who are violent or self-destructive, one that coordinates agencies and families to ensure patients' continued treatment and everyone's safety. Families are currently the only reliable source of ongoing patient history that is comprehensive enough to prevent further tragedy. They should not be the first ones out of the loop.

I am not advocating a system that publicly identifies or stigmatizes those who are mentally ill but one that connects all those who have pertinent information.

Four years ago I made this plea on National Public Radio, and it fell on deaf ears. Mine was one voice, a single case. Now the world sees that one is all it takes to cause destruction and grief for many. As the president noted this week, "Information sharing among the health-care, law enforcement, and education communities must improve." Families are part of the framework. We should create a network to prevent future tragedy.

Lisa Suhayis the author of eight children's books.