I will go to my therapist’s office this afternoon. I will sit in the waiting room and read an old magazine. Another client will walk from a hallway that leads to my therapist’s office, pass through the waiting room and leave. My therapist will poke her head out, smile and say: “I’ll be with you in a minute.” After a few minutes she will come back and invite me into her office. I will walk in, notice Kleenex in the waste basket and sit on the couch beside the box of Kleenex.
After a few pleasantries I will start unloading the detritus of my soul. She always pays attention and looks interested. I am her last patient on Friday. I cap off her week of listening to the detritus of other peoples’ souls. I ask myself, who in their right freakin’ mind would do this for a living? Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, listening other peoples’ misery.
So I asked her. ”It does get to you,” she said and explained how she takes care of herself. Burnout is a big problem among mental health care providers, she said. Then I remembered Tony Soprano’s therapist who had her own therapist on The Sopranos. It never dawned on me that a therapist might have a therapist.
This morning I got to thinking about this after reading about the gunman and his horrible rampage at Fort Hood yesterday. His name is Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and he is an Army psychiatrist. He also is Muslim. Before he opened fire and killed 12 and wounded 31 people yesterday he had been assigned to counsel soldiers returning from the battlefields with post traumatic stress disorder. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week he listened to the horrors and atrocities of war. The soldiers he counseled were emotionally raw - just off the battlefield.
Then Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan learned that the Army wanted to send him to the very place where those horrors and atrocities occur. There was the “Muslim issue”, too. The doctor is a practicing Muslim and he took a lot of heat for it from his fellow soldiers. So much so that a couple of years ago he retained a lawyer to help him get an early discharge but learned he could not. He thought the U.S. should pull its troops out of Afghanistan and often argued with others who supported the war.
The Army thought it was best to send Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan to the battlefields where our soldiers are trying to kill terrorists who practice that same religion as the doctor. And we all know how devoted the terrorists are to their religion.
I am not condoning what Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan did yesterday. I am not making excuses for him. I don’t know if any of this contributed to what happened yesterday but I can see how it might have. I just want to why. I want to know if it could have been prevented. I want to know if the Army has anyone taking care of the people who take care of soldiers who are devastated by war. Maybe it is time we all looked at our caregivers and asked, what do THEY need? How are THEY holding up? Do THEY need help too?
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From Psych Central's World of Psychology blog:
Best of Our Blogs: November 6, 2009 | World of Psychology (November 6, 2009)
From Psych Central's Christine Stapleton:
uberVU - social comments (November 6, 2009)
You express very well my concerns in the wake of this horrible incident. As a therapist I have to be very aware of whether I am metaphorically putting the oxygen mask on myself first so that I am capable of helping others. Thank you for this.
As a mother of thre teenagers, I have to put on my oxygen mask first. Sometimes I tell my family I am emotionally unavailable while I write, watch TV, have a shower, veg out or sleep and then I will be available.
My thoughts are that the army wanted to punish him for being anti-war.
Hi, Christine -
Thank you for allowing us to stand in the shoes of Dr. Hasan for a few moments . . I can imagine he had a very difficult job.
- Marie (Coming Out of the Trees)
I really wish we could hear more about the victims instead of this pitiful psychiatrist.
I Agree Claire. Just because you have a difficult job doesn’t give you the right to go and kill people. What about their family members?
I disagree with the last two posters. The only thing that could have prevented those victims from becoming victims didn’t have anything to do with them; it had everything to do with that psychiatrist. If anything could have been done it would have been by paying more attention to his needs and warning signs.
Of course, short of a psychotic break, there’s no excuse for what he did. At worst this should have been a case of AWOL or suicide. But the military needs to watch out for their members better.
I agree that the military really does need to take better care of things and watch out for troubled behavior or warning signs. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that innocent people had to die because of this guy and his problems. It’s absolutely unforgivable and I really hope this guy pays for what he does. Shooting people that are risking their lives everyday for their country is just atrocious. Whatever happened to doctors “doing no harm?”
Physicians and therapists are just people too, regular human beings with normal ranges of emotions who are trained to do a tough job. Does not mean they don’t struggle with depression, alcoholism and PTSD, especially as MS. Stapleton says when they are listening to soldiers straight from war describing atrocities and now have to face their own deployment.It does not excuse shooting people, but we are looking for explanations, not excuses, ways to prevent this from ever happening again by understanding the contributing factors. We have programs in place for impaired physicians who need to be in rehab. We have physicians who write eloquently about their recovery from bipolar disorder or depression and continue their career.
PTSD is an illness which can lead to extreme symptoms if not recognized and treated. Physicians cannot be held to a higher standard than the average person when it comes to mental illness. They are vulnerable to PTSD just like everyone else and that requires intervention and support from others. No one would say “he has the right to go kill people”, more that he became a victim long before he victimized others. It’s tragic for everyone involved and the military should have heeded the warning signs a little better imho.
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