"I'm worried my child might hurt someone"

The news of the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman and 18 others, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, who died, and the arrest of an apparently mentally disturbed unemployed 22-year-old for the acts, horrified all who heard it. Media reports that a few months earlier his college had suspended the man and notified him and his parents that he would not be allowed to return without a letter from a mental health professional saying that he did not pose a threat to himself or others, suggests a question for lawyers: How should you advise clients who tell you they're worried about their child, or someone they know, and fear that a similar trage­dy might ensue? Helen Gunnarsson asks the U of C's Mark Heyrman in the March Illinois Bar Journal.