City Council: Increased Demand for Mental Health Services Following Bombings

The Cambridge City Council voted on Monday night to bolster the city’s mental health services in the wake of last week’s Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent manhunt. Councillors said that the need for mental health services in the city is great as many Cantabrigians struggle to process the tragedies of last week, as well as the fact that Cambridge residents were behind the atrocities.

“Knowing that it was a member of our community—for many people, it’s very confusing and painful to try and understand this,” said Councillor Marjorie C. Decker.

The City Council voted unanimously to ask that City Manager Robert W. Healy contact the Department of Human Services, the Cambridge Health Alliance, the Community Development Department, and any other appropriate city departments to ensure that the city is providing additional mental health resources in the wake of last week’s events.

Monday also marked the first day that Cambridge students returned to school since the bombings. According to Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis, representatives from the various Cambridge public health agencies visited the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, which bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev attended, to inform students and faculty about the mental health services available to them.

“It was very impressive to see how the [school’s] personnel responded to the kids—the professionalism, the thoughtfulness, the caring,” said Davis. “They spent the weekend preparing to make sure that today would be a good day.”

Like officials throughout greater Boston, the members of Cambridge’s City Council expressed both pride and sorrow. They praised the work of Cambridge’s public safety officials and medical personnel as “first-class,” but also expressed sorrow for those killed and injured in last week’s bombings and for the friends and family of the slain MIT officer, Sean A. Collier.

Healy, who testified before the Council on Cambridge’s response to the bombings, described last week as the most trying week of his career.

“You get a call that you always fear, that a policeman has been shot,” he said. “And then a call that a police officer has been pronounced [dead].”

The Council agreed on the need for roundtable discussions, in which various segments of the community—representing different ethnic groups, socioeconomic levels, and zip codes—would come together to discuss last week’s tragedy and ways that Cambridge can move forward as a community.

“Cambridge, as we go forward, is going to be more of a community,” said Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72.

—Staff writer Sonali Y. Salgado can be reached at ssalgado@college.harvard.edu. You can follow her on Twitter @SonaliSalgado16.