The REAL Lesson From Columbine

I heard a story on the radio that made me sad and angry at the same time.  It was an interview with a man, named Sam Granillo, who was a junior at Colombine High School on April 20, 1999.  He was in the cafeteria when Harris and Klebold started their rampage and he hid, along with many other students, in an inner office of the kitchen.  He lost a close friend that day and he was offered free counseling, which he tried.  As adolescents are wont to do, he felt that it wasn't working for him; but he remembers being told that, for the rest of his life, free counseling would be available to him.  This was in recognition of the fact that there are sometimes emotional scars that don't show up immediately after a traumatic event.

Unfortunately, Sam discovered that the services were not available to him when he wanted to return to counseling several years after the event.  He was struggling with some symptoms that are fairly typical of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In his interactions with other survivors of Colombine, he found that counseling stopped being free for them about 2 years after April 20, 1999.  He also found that many of them had been told the counseling would be available for the rest of their lives.  

Thankfully, Sam works as a freelance camera assistant and production assistant, and he decided to put those skills to use in order to bring attention to the mental health needs of survivors of trauma.  Sam has been making a documentary about survivors of mass shootings, such as Colombine and Virginia Tech.  He calls it Columbine: Wounded Minds and he hopes it will lead to a foundation for free services for people who have been through major traumatic events, such as mass shootings or war.  It breaks my heart that he and the other survivors haven't had free counseling services available to them.  I don't understand why we don't take better care of each other.  I really don't.