Shooting Suspect Was Seeing Psychiatrist at U. of Colorado-Denver

James E. Holmes, the former University of Colorado at Denver graduate student suspected in last week’s movie-theater shootings, was being treated by a psychiatrist at the university, according to documents filed on Friday by his lawyers.

The psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, is director of student mental-health services at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, in Aurora, Colo., the city where the rampage occurred. She was the intended recipient of a package, found on Monday by investigators in a university mailroom, in which Mr. Holmes is said to have discussed plans for the shootings. Mr. Holmes’s lawyers argued in a filing on Friday that the package is a privileged communication between a psychiatrist and a patient, the Associated Press reports.

Mr. Holmes was in the process of withdrawing from the university, where “we are all still shell-shocked,” one professor told The Chronicle.

Update (7/28/2012, 4:40 p.m.): Dr. Fenton was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners in 2005, before she worked at the university, for prescribing medications for herself, her husband, and an employee, according to 7News, a television station in Denver. The report, which cited state records as the source of the information, said the drugs included anti-anxiety and anti-insomnia medications. It is not known if she prescribed any drugs for Mr. Holmes.