Fort Hood's Killer Shrink: Was He One of the Army Docs Pressured to Misdiagnose PTSD in Soldiers?
The Fort Hood killer psychiatrist's case of pre-traumatic stress disorder couldn't be more clear.
Especially if it's true that Major Nidal Malik Hasan defended suicide bombing in an Internet post as a heroic, even life-saving, measure.
Perhaps we'll learn as details unfold that Hasan — himself a suicide killer — was one of the Army's psychiatrists and psychologists who were pressured during the first five years of the Iraq War to not diagnose screwed-up soldiers as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Instead, the Army's doctors were diagnosing soldiers as supposedly having "personality disorder," a pre-existing condition for which they wouldn't qualify for treatment. The military had a financial motive — keep healthcare costs down — in addition to the motive of covering up the huge PTSD problems of returning soldiers.
Who knows Hasan's motives at this point? (The WashPost has some good tidbits on his being a shrink assigned to study soldiers' trauma.) But perhaps his horribly twisted thinking was exacerbated by his legitimate frustration that Army docs like him were pressured for years to screw the screwed-up soldiers sent to them for diagnoses and treatment.
It's for sure that Hasan, like every other mental-health practitioner in the military, knew about that scandalous situation. Since 2007 or so, it has been laid out well in many mainstream outlets.
From Salon's "The Army's fatal neglect" this past April:
After denying through the first five years of the Iraq War that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicides were a growing problem among U.S. troops, the U.S. Army has owned up to it, to an extent.
In the past couple of years, the Army has released several videos aimed at suicide prevention. Above is one of them.





6 comment(s)
I was REALLY WONDERING, how long it was going to take for some STUPID LIBERAL LEFT WING
Posted On: Friday, Nov. 6 2009 @ 11:31AMDOUCHEBAG to make excuses for this RADICAL
ANTIAMERICAN ISLAMIST,WHO HAD NO BUSINESS BEING IN THE US MILITARY, in the first place.. That's it,of course, it was because he was forced to misdiagnose Iraqi war veterans, that why he massacred all those young men.
Harkavy, you bring LEFT WING STUPIDITY, to a whole new level.
I didn't say that was WHY he did it. I said the guy's thinking was twisted, and the misdiagnosis think could very well have made him even more fucked-up.
Posted On: Friday, Nov. 6 2009 @ 11:36AMBut thanks for writing.
You're Welcome.
Posted On: Friday, Nov. 6 2009 @ 11:44AMNot sure about "no business being in the military in the first place," but certainly, given all the not-so-subtle cues Hasan had given off, it seems obvious he should have been handled as a security risk and removed. This is certainly a case of the Army failure to address an obvious problem with one of its troops.
Posted On: Sunday, Nov. 8 2009 @ 11:01PMWHAT THIS ASS HOLE NEEDS IS STRESSED ON THE END OF A ROPE
Posted On: Thursday, Nov. 12 2009 @ 9:26PMOur once great nation is in the crapper and the stupid PC A__HOLE LEFT WING MAGGOTS have their hand on the flusher. We need to take our country back to the Constitution and the Bible, and a great first step would be to forget all the media crap about WHY this hemorhoid Hasan murdered our people. Hang him NOW and bury him in a PIGSKIN body bag. Political correctness has damn near destroyed us and we need to get TOUGH....NOW. If we'd used pigskin to bury the remains of the very first suicide bombers, and continued from there, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. We haven't heard a single word of regret or remorse from any of our 'peace loving' Muslem Americans have we? That's because they're quietly setting up Jihad within our very borders. The Koran tells them to "Kill all the Jews and the Christians, then kill all the other 'infidels', then kill the other muslems who don't agree with them.(Loosely paraphrased but accurate) I'm finally in favor of rounding them all up and sending them back to the desert. (Preferably in leaky boats.)Or would we rather have urban warfare with them on our own sidewalks? It IS coming dear friends!!
Posted On: Saturday, Nov. 14 2009 @ 10:01AM