by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Nov. 6, 2009
All Rights Reserved.

             Proving that mental health professionals are not immune to stress, 39-year-old Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan went postal, opening fire, killing 13 and injuring 30 at Fort Hood, Texas.  When the smoke cleared, Dr. Hassan committed the worst act of mass murder at a military base in U.S. history, sending shockwaves through the ordinarily sleepy town near Kileen, Texas.  Before reporting for duty at Fort Hood in July, Hasan worked for six years at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Md, completing his residency in psychiatry and fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry.  Despite his accomplishments, Hasan exhibited some “difficulties,” requiring counseling and extra supervision, according to Walter Reed’s training director Dr. Thomas Grieger.  Like so many other incidents of workplace violence, Hasan’s supervisors missed the warning signs.

            Giving clues to a festering problem, Grieger, who is bound by privacy laws, admitted that Hasan showed problems interacting with patients, describing the American-born of “Palestinian” descent as “mostly very quiet.”  “He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said, adding, “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths,” raising the old myth in a post-Sept. 11, where associations to terrorism eclipse what’s well-known about a very specialized type of mass killer sometimes seen in neighborhood post offices.  Grieger’s reference to loyalty oaths display the knee-jerk tendency to ascribe headline-type motives to garden-variety psychotic killers.  Hasan fits the profile of postal-style mass killers, whose mild-mannered personalities erupt into unspeakable violence.  While there’s a context to every murder, intolerable stress often precipitates violence.

            When Virginia Tech senior 22-year-old Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32 students and faculty April 16, 2007 in the worst college mass murder in U.S. history, school officials took heat for not recognizing Cho’s prior stalking incidents and history of mental illness.  Former President George W. Bush signed a tougher gun control law July 5, 2008, permitting the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to include individuals treated for mental illness.  Cho, like Hassan, was also described an introverted misanthrope, with no history of violent behavior.  Those fitting the profile of explosive mass killers lack the social skills and support systems to contain a seething caldron of rage and frustration.  Hasan’s “loyalty oath” had nothing to do with his growing dangerousness that eventually exploded into the latest preventable episode of violence and mass murder.

            Hasan’s deranged internal world outed itself on the Internet with bizarre postings equating suicide bombers with soldiers falling on hand grenades to save innocent lives.  Hasan shared his opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, seeing an attorney to help extricate himself from his expected Mideast deployment and military service.  Federal authorities seized Hasan’s computer at his flat in Kileen, hoping to shed light on his motives.  Hasan’s aunt, Noel Hassan of Church Falls, Va., told the Washington Post her nephew was harassed for being Muslim since Sept. 11 and wanted out the Army.  “Some people can take it, and some cannot,” she said, implying that Hasan cracked under the stress.  While tempting to accept such explanations, acts rage and mass murder involve more than grudges.  They involve a breakdown in rational thinking, where ordinary restraints give way to psychotic impulses.

            Federal authorities won’t find the broken down human being driven psychotic by intolerable stress and a mental breakdown.  Whatever the breaking point, Hasan showed warning signs that should have been heeded by his supervisors.  When federal authorities noticed his peculiar Internet rantings, they should placed him on stress leave and ordered a psychiatric evaluation.  If his own aunt speculated her nephew couldn’t take the stress, surely Hasan’s medical supervisors should have taken notice.  “You wouldn’t think that someone who works in your facility and provided excellent care for his patients, which he did, could do something like this,” said Col. Kimberly Keslin, deputy commander at Fort Hood’s Darnell Army Medical Center, showing the same kind of naivety blinding authorities to the warning signs.  Hasan’s ranting about the Iraq and Afghan wars should have raised red flags.

            Forecasting violent behavior isn’t rocket science.  It takes some common sense and guts in a litigious atmosphere, driven more by political correctness than protecting the public from violent incidents.  Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan at Walter Reed, told FOXNews that Hasan frequently argued about the Iraq and Afghan wars and tried to stop his Mideast deployment and exit the Army.  Add to that federal authorities identifying disturbing Internet comments about suicide bombers and someone should have taken notice.  When law enforcement gets done with Hasan’s computer, they’ll conclude he went postal, like other garden-variety psychotics who crack under intolerable stress.  Psychotic personalities don’t react well to religious fanaticism, where otherwise socially inept individuals allow rage and violent impulses to get the better of them.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.