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SAFETY TIPS
By lindamuralidharan on 2010-03-03 23:16:31
My thoughts return again and again to the college and medical school records of Army Major Nidal Hasan. There are so
many similarities to the brief history of Seung-Hui Cho who killed many people at Virginia Tech in 2007. People observed
signs that indicate possible mental illness and either did nothing or tried to intervene in a preventive system that has many
flaws. There had been hints for a while that Hasan had shown evidence he was not a good doctor and not a good officer..in
terms of performance. Recently a more complete report has come out, and it seems to verify previous anecdotal reports.
Please read a fairly detailed news item about the contents of this report.
tracked as a poor student and one who showed little interest in learning. It is said he became more religiously
obsessive after the deaths of his parents. He apparently did not adjust well to this common life event. Over the course of
his years of medical training, he was counseled or reprimanded for not being available for duty, for overall poor
performance, and for questionable ability to adequately relate to and treat the psychiatric patients who were the focus of his
career. The above article goes on to say that even after written records of these failings were placed in his file, Hasan
received glowing performance reports, and there is actually a pattern of passing on poor performing students in the military
medical training process. Hasan may be the only one who shot many people, but he was not the only one turning in bad
performances and yet continually promoted. In Hasan's case, it seems there was even more glaring negligence than shown in
the usual pattern. His poor performance persisted over a very long period of time, and he showed increasing indications
that his obsession, as much as his actual views, with not wanting to fight against other Muslims presented a security risk for
a person serving in the US military. A number of suggestions have been made as to why this happened. Some have said that
there was such a shortage of doctors during the course of our two wars that officers did not want to lose even one if they
could help it. I would also add suggestions from my own work experience and learning about failures in a variety of other
institutions, public and private. For one, there is an enabling streak in modern Americans that fears to hurt people's
feelings. This misplaced notion is based on the idea that one is responsible for somebody else's feelings. Too many
people miss the point that if you need to give a consequence to someone who has violated the rules and you do it in a fair
and humane way, the other person is entirely responsible for the position she or he has put herself in and also needs to learn
to handle his or her own feelings. A lot of bosses fail to reprimand someone in a timely fashion or let an employee slide
even while others are demoralized by the presence of the slacker for whatever reason. Second, I have known too many
bosses who couldn't be bothered with the paperwork involved in firing someone and didn't like to have to recruit and
interview replacement candidates if they did have a vacancy to fill. And I have seen many bosses who were easily fooled by
less than competent staff because the staff were good at pleasing the bosses or flattering them or hiding their failures behind
socially acceptable smoke screens. I am attempting to address two big issues here. One is the issue of how people are kept
in positions of responsibility in ways that can lead to a lot of bad outcomes down the road. Second is how people even in
the field of mental health miss the red flags that suggest a person has a serious problem. For one thing, before latter stages
of mental illness occur, there are often subtle signs that something is amiss. These may include such traits as lack of ability
to concentrate on school work, low motivation, relative isolation (limited interpersonal communication skills and few or no
close friends), and growing obsessions with a theory or philosophy or a religion that is presented in a rigid way and not
responsive to suggestions that the person broaden his horizons a bit or keep some of the ideas to himself and not try to
impose them on others. Hasan exhibited these characteristics in one way or another, and it is said in the report that some of
his supervisory associates wondered if he were veering toward the psychotic. Now, there are people who have experienced
psychotic symptoms but who hold jobs and do no serious harm to anyone. Usually this level of functioning means the
person is engaged in active mental health treatment and using some built in safeguards to prevent relapse. Those might
include fellow staff who understand the situation and will let the person know if symptoms increase that might interfere with
work. And the person is usually practicing a self-monitoring program so that if he or she regresses, preventive measures can
be taken. I am not trying to stigmatize individuals who suffer from such an illness. I am here addressing people who show
signs of disturbance and neither ask for help nor are redirected by their supervisors into less sensitive areas of work nor are
relieved of their duties altogether if that is called for. Going back to Virginia Tech, we learned there were often no
interventions in Cho's life or those that were tried were not followed up in any consistent way. Now we have another horror
story as a college professor, Amy Bishop, with a history of red flags has shot to death some co-workers. After killing her
brother when she was a teenager, there appears to have been a cover-up rather than a thorough investigation of what really
happened. Some years later she was concerned that a Harvard professor (he was involved in evaluating her doctoral
candidacy) had a negative view of her work. He received a bomb in the mail. He was not hurt and she was investigated.
No charges were filed, and her husband has many reasons why she was just "innocently" caught up in the investigation. As a
parent, she was with her family in a restaurant when she became verbally and physically aggressive with another customer
over the use of a child booster seat. Her husband says this incident was blown out of proportion. Students at her campus
reported that she did things as a teacher that hindered their learning and made them feel uncomfortable. Some made official
complaints well before the shooting. In the weeks prior to the shooting, the accused professor talked totally off topic and
inappropriately at faculty meetings about her belief she was unfairly denied tenure. This "symptom" of some kind of mental
disturbance reminds me of Hasan's insisting on doing class assignments about Muslims when that had nothing to do with the
curriculum. At one point, faculty members told the administration that she may have infected the biology department with
herpes as a way to disable the faculty...herpes can lead to disabling brain inflammation and she had done past research into
the study of the herpes virus. The administration did nothing regarding these suspicions until after the shooting. When
asked, the professor's husband has offered all kinds of "innocent" explanations for her behavior. Officials at the university
took no action on student and faculty complaints. The officials may not have had reason to know about the incidents that
occurred off campus or in previous years, but there were red flags even on the Alabama campus. And the the husband
indeed, appears to be in serious denial since he is at least the one constant who has been exposed to the entire pattern. I have
no easy answers. However, if we want to keep people safe, we need to do less shouting about "those" people, "those"
terrorists and ask people in positions of responsibility to be more accountable for the information they do have and the
actions they need to take accordingly when any lives might be in danger. The same kinds of lessons came from the incident
of the so-called "Christmas Day Bomber" since authorities were issued red flags about his likely intentions and did not do
the required follow ups. And I believe that all of us, and family members especially, need to become better informed about
what behaviors indicate a person is suffering in a way that may lead to a lot of bad results. People need to be aware and to
intervene...hopefully with the intent to help the person him or herself...people need to direct the person to get help and, if
necessary, take precautions to minimize the person being able to wreak havoc on the lives of others. Do we fail so often
because we don't get enough information about safety and mental health? Is it because we pay more attention to appearance
and status than to what might be really going on? Do we operate out of prejudice about what types of people are "good" and
which are "bad"? How often are we just too lazy to act or speak up or rock the boat? In any case, I believe we are all
responsible for being alert to people we encounter who may need to be avoided or if possible treated with caring concern
and possibly directed to get some kind of help. We are responsible for speaking out for more accountability among people
in positions of power, whether in government or private institutions. We are responsible for encouraging the prioritizing of
more and more effective mental health treatment and preventive services. Let's at least avoid scapegoating and learn to be
part of the solution.
