The macabre and gruesome murder of thirty two students has shocked the world. It has sent shivers down the spines of the students in the universities all over the world and naturally so. If this can happen in Virginia Tech today, it can happen in other campuses tomorrow. Universities should be barricaded is a shout from one quarter. Introduce gun control is the shout from the other. Cho has been described a ruthless killer, a mad man but hold your breath until you have read this perspective.
My view is that here was a young man crying for help. Here was a young man who must have sent many signals of distress. Here was a young man who needed understanding from his friends, classmates and his teacher but did not receive it not because people around him were heartless but because the world is so preoccupied with physical aspects of health as if the globe revolves around our navels. Cho, perhaps, came to a conclusion that no one cared and therefore why should care.
There is so much written on the ratios of bust line to the hip line to the waist line that we forget that we need to be aware of some of the mental health issues. Let us ask ourselves when is the last time that we read a book or attended a workshop on mental health. And this, despite the fact, that mental ill health is a big issue staring at our faces.
If there were better awareness than has been exhibited, then the unnatural lonely behaviour of Cho would have triggered some concerns about the state of his mental health. Now his deadly essays are causing a debate but at the right time we would have known that perhaps we were dealing with a delusioned personality, a schizophrenic person,  psychopath  or person who just hated life in general and his existence in particular, having been sodomised by his step father, as it now comes out. He saw himself not as a human being but a discarded object of humanity. 
With a little more awareness and sensitivity, we would have sought him out and reached out to him. With a little more compassion, may be he would have cried out on someone's shoulder.  And if the conclusion was that he was beyond human help, may be he needed to be put in the safety of a mental institution. 
There are many Chos around us who have gone though childhood traumas of neglect, abused both sexual and physical, criticism and comparison who grow up as ill adjusted people, unhappy with themselves and those around them. It is not building barricades around our campuses or introducing gun controls that are going to solve mental health issues. It is preventive route of awareness that will help.
The author is a counsellor with Sneha Counselling Centre and can be reached at 9342133520