[The National Instant Criminal Check System] has about 1.3 million mental-health records in total, but 23 states and the District have each submitted fewer than 100, the report found.

Federal law prohibits people who are seriously mentally ill or drug abusers from owning firearms. Without the state records in the NICS database, it's impossible for gun dealers to know whether a buyer has is barred from owning a weapon because of mental illness or substance abuse.

The gaps in the background check system have come under fire in the wake of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech and the January shooting in Arizona that left six dead and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Virginia Tech gunman Seung Hui Cho was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment in 2005, but his mental health records were never submitted to NICS. Jared Loughner, the alleged Tucson shooter, had a history of drug use but passed a background check.

The District cites privacy laws as the reason it doesn't submit more mental health records. Neither Maryland nor D.C. submit substance abuse records. Meanwhile, Virginia has submitted 161,344 records to the database, coming in third in the country.

Photo by Flickr user Kevitivity under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

The new records contradict Virginia Tech's old narrative of events. The records appear to suggest that Cho received far more counseling at the university than had been previously reported. How the records disappeared is now being investigated as a criminal matter.

The Post writes:

"According to a memo written by a university lawyer and obtained by The Washington Post, the former director, Robert Miller, had moved the records into his home more than a year before the April 16, 2007, massacre, during which Cho also took his own life.

Word the records had been found first came from Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine during a Wednesday morning news conference. Kaine said only that missing mental health records were located at the home of a former employee of the college's counseling center.

Kaine said a criminal investigation is underway to determine how the employee was able to take the records and why the documents were not uncovered during state investigations following the shooting."

The records only came to light because of scrutiny from two remaining civil lawsuits filed by victims' families. The other families that had settled their cases had been informed that the records were simply missing. Not so.

This is an instance where the persistence of the two families really has paid off. No amount of state money will bring back their loved ones. But at least they can be comforted by the fact that now Tech has to explain the missing records and what those records say about the school's mental health care.

City Desk reached DMH this afternoon for comment.

“We’re doing it," says Director Stephen T. Baron. "But we’re not doing it until ’09." This should not shock anyone who either a) works at DMH or b) follows DMH closely. The department had been pushed to assess its mental health centers for a while. This past summer, it hired KPMG to study whether the centers should go private. The departmental back story is referenced in a report released earlier this month.

The conclusion of the study, Baron says is simple: If DMH privatizes its centers, it will save a lot of money and have a chance to increase the number of residents it helps. The department would save between $11 and $14 million.

The savings would come from an obvious source. "I think frankly it comes down to labor costs and the benefits," says Phyllis Jones, DMH's spokesperson. "The private providers tend to have cheaper labor costs.”

The private providers already cover 60 percent of the city's outpatient care. Think Green Door. Think Community Connections. Baron says his department may begin transitioning residents from its centers to the private facilities in the coming months. A transition plan must be completed by the end of the year with full implementation to be completed by next fall.

What that will mean for the 260 city workers is up in the air. “I would think there’s tremendous anxiety about losing their jobs," Baron says. "We are not doing anything immediately.” He hopes to retain as many employees as he can. But adds maybe some can move to the troubled CFSA.

Still, Baron thinks the privatization will mean more services for residents. “That’s our goal," Baron says, "to have as many different access points...and without losing focus on serious mental illness."

I know you are now suddenly worried about at-risk children. And now must come up with a plan. [We will have more on this plan in a later post].

My most pressing worry concerns an adult, a woman who logs some serious time at the corner of 16th and Irving Streets NW. I've seen her around for the past five, six years. She is troubled. She may have schizophrenia. She gets her food out of trash cans.

Last night, I saw her around 8 p.m. and again at somewhere close to 3 a.m. Same spot. Same sense of ceaseless desperation. She walks with brace-like things so she must have some access to healthcare, has presented herself to a nurse, a tech, a weary emergency room desk clerk. But she clearly needs something more.

She is not what District residents might refer to as a "local character." She needs help. At my 8 p.m. sighting, she bounded across 16th Street without any hint that she understood this to be a busy intersection. People avoided her. Tried not to make eye contact. Cars kinda paused.

She had the same ceaseless energy at 3 a.m. The same yelling and bellowing and heavy breathing and bounding across the now not-busy street.

But I worried. Do something.

Yours,

J.C.