Virginia Tech officials will continue to live with the issues of what they did, what they didn't do and what they should have done after the first two shootings Monday morning. Their experience will influence — indeed, already is influencing — security policies and measures at other colleges and universities across the nation.

It is a rethinking and re-evaluation like that conducted at primary and secondary schools following the April 20, 1999, killings at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo.

But information that has surfaced since Monday's Virginia Tech massacre, particularly a package sent to NBC News by the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, apparently between his first two killings and when he entered a classroom and killed 30 students and instructors before committing suicide, indicates serious failures within the mental health community.

Simply put, mental health officials misdiagnosed the seriousness of his problems and perhaps were not convinced that his were problems that would not work themselves out.

As Monday proved, they were wrong on both counts, and those mental health professionals, like other university officials, will have to live with the decisions they made, the decisions that were not made and the decisions that could have been made.

The major good that will emerge from the tragedy of Virginia Tech is that college mental health experts nationwide will thoroughly re-examine ways — and help to implement new policies — to help students experiencing depression or anxiety disorders, and those contemplating suicide.

Nearly 18 percent of college students nationwide say they suffer from depression; 12 percent report anxiety disorders, according to a study last year by the American College Health Association. About 9 percent revealed they had seriously considered attempting suicide.

College mental health experts are predicting that, as a result of the Virginia Tech tragedy, many more colleges will refer their more severe cases to off-campus psychiatric facilities. Those experts also predict that others will be mandating counseling, rather than recommending it.

Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia, said, "We will be a little better at listening to what teachers have to say. We will probably train resident advisers a little more forcefully about when to make referrals. Hopefully, we will train whole student bodies that if somebody is suffering or having problems, they'll let people know about it who can help."

However, that task won't be easy because of privacy, confidentiality and communication issues and because colleges generally don't have psychiatrists on hand who specialize in predicting criminal or dangerous behavior.

As David Hayes, a clinical psychologist at Louisiana State University, pointed out, "Mental health centers at universities are trained to deal with the normal problems of living — depression, anxiety. I just feel any university counseling center would probably get a referral like this and want to help and do what they could. But they'd be so outmatched."

An Associated Press article reports that Bob Gallagher, author of an annual survey of college counseling centers, has been watching the trends in college mental health for more than 20 years. He has found that not only are more college students being treated for mental health problems, but their problems — including depression, bipolar disorder and learning disabilities — are more severe than in the past.

The 23-page written statement Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC News, along with 28 video clips and 43 photos, provides insight into how deeply disturbed he really was. But even with such evidence in hand prior to Monday, some people still might have clung to doubts that he would be capable of inflicting the kind of death toll for which he ultimately became responsible.

"You're going to see a nationwide re-evaluation of how to respond to incidents like this," said Jeff Newton, police chief at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

On the mental health front, Paul Joffe, a counselor at the University of Illinois, perhaps summed up the current attitude at colleges and universities nationwide when he said, "We are certainly going to have every practice under review."

This will be a busy summer for institutions of higher learning but, unfortunately, courses and other education-related matters will often be taking a back seat to the concerns and lessons stemming from Virginia Tech's tragic experience.