Agree with Sammie. This is an awful situation but it does say the guy who killed him had a history of mental health problems.
I think all too often there is a one size fits all approach to mental health. Some people are dangerous and should not be in the community, some are fine and just need medication and others are only a threat to themselves. Correct assessment needs to be carried out and appropriate action taken.
The world of mental health treatment is so fraught with potential failings though and it is never very easy to make the correct assessment. I am reading a book at the moment that talks about mental health hospitals admitting people for small problems and never letting them out when in fact there was not much wrong with them. A journalist went undercover and admitted himself. The doctors all treated him for what they thought his problems were, he didnt tell anyone that he was sound of mind. Eventually he signed himself out and wrote an article on the situation.
The mental health medical community had always assumed that if someone was in their hospital that they had a problem, they never stopped to think that maybe there were people there without problems until this journalist signed himself in and then wrote the article about how they were treating him for lots of different disorders that he didnt have - they were trying to diagnose the specific mental problem without actually checking if there was a problem, if you were in the hospital there had to be a problem right?
Soon after the article was published the incidence of people being diagnosed with no mental problems in mental hospitals shot through the roof because doctors had switched from assuming people had problems to now assuming they did not unless they had very obvious symptoms. This was not really a solution either since there was mis-diagnosis occurring here too.
The above is just one example of how difficult these situations can be. Do you keep everyone locked up in mental facilities because they say there is something wrong with themselves or do you try to make them prove there is something wrong and if they cannot you put them back on the street.... its quite a situation to ponder.
