The Army has told some of the psychiatrists who supervised Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan that it’s investigating them — and they could face punishments from letters of reprimand to court martial. The Army said it’s going to decide if the doctors at Walter Reed “failed to take appropriate action” against Hasan and were “derelict” in their duties.
The huge missing “elephant in the room” is the high likelihood that Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan was medicated with potent brain-altering psychiatric drugs. These would be drugs that Dr. Hasan had easy access to and which he was probably prescribing widely to his psychologically traumatized soldier-patients, unaware of the serious dangers to them or to himself. These popular, aggressively marketed, highly profitable drugs are known to cause a number of serious adverse effects including hostility, suicidality, sleep alteration, depression, mania and psychotic episodes.
Some in the media have expressed surprise that a man whose profession is about caring would turn to violence. According to one theory, poor Dr. Hasan was driven to the breaking point by the stress of counseling returning soldiers and having to listen to their horrific stories. Totally false. Psychiatrists are no longer trained to listen to or to counsel their patients. Nor do they care to.
A questionnaire asking whether the psychiatrist would or did self-treat for depression was mailed to 830 members of the Michigan Psychiatric Society. In the past, 15.7% responders treated themselves for depression.
Major Malik Nadal Hasan, who was armed with two handguns, was thought to be in his late 30s and was an army psychiatrist. He was due to be sent to Iraq soon but had aired grievances about the planned deployment, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson told CNN.