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Update on Fort Hood-- When Psychiatrists go insane
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The doctor is in...custody...
Update on Fort Hood. Alleged shooter, Nidal Hassan was taken alive. More details as they become available.
The big irony of course is that Hassan was a therapist who treated people with post traumatic stress disorder. His lawyers only defense is probably insanity, presumably from the post truamatic stress disorder of treating militarypatients back from combat zones.
He will have to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist to determine insanity or competency.
Military psychiatrists are rarely portrayed in the media. The most prominent would be Dr. SIdney Freedman in the TV show MASH. Freedman psychoanalyzed Hawkeye in the series finale which was the most watched TV show of all time.
The fictional Dr. Freedman never lost his cool. We could never imagine Dr. Freedman shooting the doctors of 4077. The real Dr.Freedmans had a very stressful job and I could not find any articles in the media of a military psychiatrist going over the edge.
Remember Hasan is a medical doctor who got no further into combat than Walter Reed hospital.
Alan Alda's Hawkeye was in Korea, and he certainly exhibited symptoms of mental illness from the stress of treating combat people. The finale actually dealt with his illness. Hawkeye would respond to stress with pranks and witty dialogue.
Still, the real doctors in Mash units were actually in a combat zone, subject to enemy bombing. They saw the wounds while they were still bleeding, they saw men die on the operating tables. The real Dr. Freedmans would see patients minutes away from the battlefield, and make determinations on the spot on whether someone was mentally fit for combat duty.
Military doctors and military psychiatrists in war zones are heroes.
I am not a psychiatrist, but clearly something more is going on with Hasan, other than post-traumatic stress disorder.
The only good thing to come from this is that we will be able to study what made this man go over the edge, and hopefully use that knowledge to help other mental health professionals dealing with disasters.
Not to trivialize what just occurred, but the psychiatrists will probably have to go seek out psychiatrists of their own to deal with their own post stress disorder. These therapists in turn will have to seek out therapists of their own.
The military does not just need to evaluate the latest tank system, they also need to look at their own.
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