Fort Hood shooting suspect conscious, talking, hospital says
November 9, 2009 10:29 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Nidal Malik Hasan awake, says spokesman at hospital where's he's being treated
Soldier wounded in Fort Hood attack: It's difficult to believe this could happen
Obama: Massacre and response showed worst and best of human nature
Thirteen dead, 42 wounded, according to Fort Hood's public information office
(CNN) -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in last week's mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army Post, is conscious and talking, according to a spokesman for the Army hospital where he is being treated.
Authorities have not identified a motive in Thursday's attack that left 13 dead and 42 others wounded.
Hasan, a 39-year-old licensed Army psychiatrist who worked at a hospital on the post, has been identified as the suspected shooter. He was shot several times after the attack. On Sunday, he was listed in critical but stable condition and in intensive care at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Hasan's ventilator was removed over the weekend, and he began talking afterward, hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said. He is speaking with hospital staff, but Mitchell was unable to say whether Hasan has been speaking with Army investigators.
go here for more
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/09/fort.hood.shootings/index.html
Monday, November 9, 2009
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan wanted to be lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood
"Deeply troubled" and "almost incoherent" but Hasan was to be deployed anyway?
The FBI was watching him according to reports. But Hasan was to be deployed anyway?
He was able to get his hands on the guns he used to cause 13 deaths and over 40 wounded. Yet again, this same man was to be deployed with the troops and the military had no problem with this? Hasan's record is coming out because of all he did but what about the ones we don't know about?
Keep in mind this was a doctor and trained to take care of the mental health of our troops. He was trained by the military. What was he telling the troops he was supposed to be taking care of? Was he in anyway treating any of the soldiers who ended up taking their own lives or attempting to do it? Above all, keep in mind the same person described above was still allowed to be treating our troops as a psychologist. How was this allowed to happen? Was wasn't he removed from having anything to do with the mental healthcare of our soldiers? Is anyone checking on the state of the mental health of the providers they have treating the troops? Is anyone checking to see if they are trained experts on PTSD to be able to treat this wound of war? How seriously is the military taking this when this was all allowed to happen? What policies do they plan on changing? Do they plan on changing any at all?
There are so many questions when it comes to what happened last week at Fort Hood, but while the carnage is fresh, all that came before needed to be taken seriously and maybe, just maybe, it could have been prevented.
The FBI was watching him according to reports. But Hasan was to be deployed anyway?
He was able to get his hands on the guns he used to cause 13 deaths and over 40 wounded. Yet again, this same man was to be deployed with the troops and the military had no problem with this? Hasan's record is coming out because of all he did but what about the ones we don't know about?
Cleric said he sensed Hasan was troubled
By Angela K. Brown - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 8, 2009 8:52:21 EST
FORT HOOD, Texas — An Army psychiatrist who authorities say went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood was so conflicted over what to tell fellow soldiers about fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that a local Islamic leader was deeply troubled by it, the leader said Saturday.
Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said he was disturbed by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s persistent questioning and recommended the mosque reject Hasan’s request to become a lay Muslim leader at the sprawling Army post.
Danquah said Hasan never expressed anger toward the Army or indicated any plans for violence, but during the second of two conversations they had over the summer, Hasan seemed almost incoherent, he said.
click link for more
Keep in mind this was a doctor and trained to take care of the mental health of our troops. He was trained by the military. What was he telling the troops he was supposed to be taking care of? Was he in anyway treating any of the soldiers who ended up taking their own lives or attempting to do it? Above all, keep in mind the same person described above was still allowed to be treating our troops as a psychologist. How was this allowed to happen? Was wasn't he removed from having anything to do with the mental healthcare of our soldiers? Is anyone checking on the state of the mental health of the providers they have treating the troops? Is anyone checking to see if they are trained experts on PTSD to be able to treat this wound of war? How seriously is the military taking this when this was all allowed to happen? What policies do they plan on changing? Do they plan on changing any at all?
There are so many questions when it comes to what happened last week at Fort Hood, but while the carnage is fresh, all that came before needed to be taken seriously and maybe, just maybe, it could have been prevented.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
More Fort Hood stories come out
No evidence wounded hit by friendly fire at Fort Hood
November 8, 2009 2:01 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Official: Evidence so far indicates alleged shooter acted alone
NEW: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan off ventilator, spokesman says
Chief of surgery: Some patients will be "physically impaired" for life
President Obama says he met with FBI director and will monitor investigation
A CNN Special Investigation drills down on the causes and the impact of the Fort Hood shootings, at 11 p.m. ET Saturday on CNN TV.
Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) -- There is no evidence of "friendly fire" during this week's deadly shooting at Fort Hood, an Army spokesman said Saturday.
Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman Chris Grey said authorities did not believe that any of those killed or wounded were shot by anyone other than the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
Furthermore, Grey reiterated that all evidence indicates that the suspect "acted alone." Grey said there was "no evidence to contradict that finding." He added that the investigation is continuing.
Thursday's mass shooting left 12 soldiers and one civilian dead and 42 people wounded, according to the post's public information office. It was unclear how many of those injured suffered bullet wounds.
read more here
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/07/fort.hood.shootings/index.html
November 6, 2009
CNN's Campbell Brown talks to the medic who treated the Fort Hood hero cop and the suspected shooter.
Suspect off ventilator, breathing on own
FORT HOOD, Texas — An Army spokesman says the man authorities say went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood has been taken off a ventilator
For troubled service members, military therapists are at their sides
The problem is not just there are not enough to take care of the need, nor is it that they are burning out. The biggest problem is that too many of "healers" are clueless when it comes to PTSD. Sounds harsh? Yes, but it is heartbreakingly true.
Ever since the campaign in Afghanistan, there was a great need to play catchup to the veterans we already had needing help. How did they expect to be prepared for any of the troops they knew would need help? Didn't anyone think of stocking the military and the VA with qualified PTSD experts? What did they think would happen when more troops were sent into Iraq on top of the veterans already waiting for care? Remember this was at the same time we were finally getting thru to Vietnam veterans about taking care of their own combat related wound of PTSD.
The people advising the military about mental health were telling them that either they had a tsunami coming or the soldiers claiming PTSD were looking for a lifetime free ride. Commanders were still dealing with their own dismissal of the realities of combat trauma, just as some were using personality disorders as a quick campaign against the soldiers to get them off the books instead of providing them with a lifetime of care for their wounds. Remember, there were over 22,000 dishonorably or "less than honorably" discharged, leaving them absolutely nothing available to them. Service organizations would not help them. They were not able to get any care at all from the government and as for jobs, even if they could work, employers would toss out their applications without consideration. Given the fact the unemployment pool was growing, there was no need at all to even think of what could have been behind the "less than honorable" discharge.
When the kicking out began it also sent a message to the brains of the commanders that PTSD was not really a wound and they were just not tough enough.
As the years went on, it changed to the troops just needed "train their brains" to become "resilient" so they pushed Battlemind telling them that they could just get tough and suck it up, and oh, by the way, PTSD is real but if you get it, it's your fault. Check out the Battlemind program and the way it began. Whatever message they were supposed to get after the first couple of minutes was lost.
The biggest problem is that while most working with the troops may be really bright when it comes to mental health, they are clueless about PTSD, the one thing going on in the minds of the troops they should have been experts on.
The psychologist and psychiatrists along with chaplains, trained by the military, later entering into the VA, never got the real scoop on PTSD but they were expected to treat it. This was happening at the same time colleges were turning out mental health providers with a full range of knowledge regarding PTSD to treat it. One more reason why depending on where a veteran lives, their care can be anywhere from wonderful to abysmal. We tend to assume that if someone has a degree and is on the job, they are experts on what they treat but this was not the case.
It was training them the usual way other psychology students were trained, looking for the usual mental health illnesses instead of Post Traumatic Stress. This was made crystal clear when the misdiagnoses began and the troops were being discharged under every illness other than PTSD. One thing you have to understand about PTSD is if they are looking for any other illness, they will find it even though they may be looking at PTSD. PTSD comes only after trauma but can look like a lot of other illnesses including heart problems and gastrointestinal. Instead of noticing what was happening around the country with training to address people after crisis and traumatic events, the military was performing with their head in the sand. This is not a baseless claim. I've talked to too many veterans over the years telling me they were treated by idiots when it came to what was going on inside of them. They were given bags filled with prescription medications and very little therapy or information on what PTSD was.
What was the military thinking when they trained these mental health experts when they were not addressing the number one cause of mental health crisis with troops deployed into two military campaigns? Some VA doctors were fully trained and knew what they were talking about. The veterans were treated with medications and talk therapy. The problem here is that they were not told what they really needed to hear so they understood exactly where PTSD came from and why it "picked" on them instead of buddies they served with. They also had no clue they were supposed to address all aspects of their being with spiritual healing as well as physical healing on top of mental healing.
This is the most mind boggling aspect of all. When you think about what programs followed from yoga to martial arts, from art and writing for therapy, all the way up to civilian spiritual programs being studied over the years, you'd think the military was paying attention to at least some of this, but they were not. They also never addressed the need for the families to be educated on what PTSD was so they could help with the healing instead of making things worse.
When the military became overwhelmed by suicides going up every year, again, they took no clue from the civilian world. While they were well aware crisis teams responded to the people in New York after 9-11, they would not let that reaction to trauma penetrate into addressing crisis in the units deployed into combat.
Chaplains were not trained to address it. Mental health professionals were not trained properly. All this lead to what we've been seeing and unfortunately, they are nowhere close to being prepared for what is to come. The numbers keep going up for the troops and our veterans committing suicide along with attempted suicides. The numbers keep going up when it comes to families falling apart while commanders look for excuses instead of the basis for the problems the families face. Drug and alcohol abuse is seen as a discipline issue instead of self-medicating. Dangerous driving is the cause for reprimand instead of a clue these are the men and women willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their countrymen and would not so easily change into people with no regard for the lives of others. The same applies with domestic violence when the soldier responds to someone with sudden violence when they had absolutely no history of it in the past.
What happened at Fort Hood needs to be looked at but not the way they are looking at it. The tragedy of the safe zone being invaded by one of their own will end up complicating the traumas of war so severely that no amount of pills will ease it. If they are responding with what they've already been doing addressing PTSD, then we can expect far more tragedies to come.
Right after Fort Hood was traumatized, an ex-employee in Orlando went to kill people he used to work with. He killed one and wounded several others. What came after was that a church was opened up to the survivors and their families and crisis teams were sent in to address this horrific event. These are highly trained people on trauma. They did not send in any people they could get just to have someone there. They knew untrained people would add to the crisis. Who knows who will be sent to help the survivors of the Fort Hood massacre or if anyone will be sent to help the families scattered around the country to cope with their own trauma. Given what we've already seen, it's easy to guess they haven't even thought about this at all.
As for this evil committed by a "healer" we also need to be asking what he was telling the soldiers going to him for help after the traumas they had seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he fill their heads with facts or did he tell them things that would make their PTSD worse? Was he part of an even bigger problem in the military behind what we've seen?
Ever since the campaign in Afghanistan, there was a great need to play catchup to the veterans we already had needing help. How did they expect to be prepared for any of the troops they knew would need help? Didn't anyone think of stocking the military and the VA with qualified PTSD experts? What did they think would happen when more troops were sent into Iraq on top of the veterans already waiting for care? Remember this was at the same time we were finally getting thru to Vietnam veterans about taking care of their own combat related wound of PTSD.
The people advising the military about mental health were telling them that either they had a tsunami coming or the soldiers claiming PTSD were looking for a lifetime free ride. Commanders were still dealing with their own dismissal of the realities of combat trauma, just as some were using personality disorders as a quick campaign against the soldiers to get them off the books instead of providing them with a lifetime of care for their wounds. Remember, there were over 22,000 dishonorably or "less than honorably" discharged, leaving them absolutely nothing available to them. Service organizations would not help them. They were not able to get any care at all from the government and as for jobs, even if they could work, employers would toss out their applications without consideration. Given the fact the unemployment pool was growing, there was no need at all to even think of what could have been behind the "less than honorable" discharge.
When the kicking out began it also sent a message to the brains of the commanders that PTSD was not really a wound and they were just not tough enough.
As the years went on, it changed to the troops just needed "train their brains" to become "resilient" so they pushed Battlemind telling them that they could just get tough and suck it up, and oh, by the way, PTSD is real but if you get it, it's your fault. Check out the Battlemind program and the way it began. Whatever message they were supposed to get after the first couple of minutes was lost.
The biggest problem is that while most working with the troops may be really bright when it comes to mental health, they are clueless about PTSD, the one thing going on in the minds of the troops they should have been experts on.
The psychologist and psychiatrists along with chaplains, trained by the military, later entering into the VA, never got the real scoop on PTSD but they were expected to treat it. This was happening at the same time colleges were turning out mental health providers with a full range of knowledge regarding PTSD to treat it. One more reason why depending on where a veteran lives, their care can be anywhere from wonderful to abysmal. We tend to assume that if someone has a degree and is on the job, they are experts on what they treat but this was not the case.
It was training them the usual way other psychology students were trained, looking for the usual mental health illnesses instead of Post Traumatic Stress. This was made crystal clear when the misdiagnoses began and the troops were being discharged under every illness other than PTSD. One thing you have to understand about PTSD is if they are looking for any other illness, they will find it even though they may be looking at PTSD. PTSD comes only after trauma but can look like a lot of other illnesses including heart problems and gastrointestinal. Instead of noticing what was happening around the country with training to address people after crisis and traumatic events, the military was performing with their head in the sand. This is not a baseless claim. I've talked to too many veterans over the years telling me they were treated by idiots when it came to what was going on inside of them. They were given bags filled with prescription medications and very little therapy or information on what PTSD was.
What was the military thinking when they trained these mental health experts when they were not addressing the number one cause of mental health crisis with troops deployed into two military campaigns? Some VA doctors were fully trained and knew what they were talking about. The veterans were treated with medications and talk therapy. The problem here is that they were not told what they really needed to hear so they understood exactly where PTSD came from and why it "picked" on them instead of buddies they served with. They also had no clue they were supposed to address all aspects of their being with spiritual healing as well as physical healing on top of mental healing.
This is the most mind boggling aspect of all. When you think about what programs followed from yoga to martial arts, from art and writing for therapy, all the way up to civilian spiritual programs being studied over the years, you'd think the military was paying attention to at least some of this, but they were not. They also never addressed the need for the families to be educated on what PTSD was so they could help with the healing instead of making things worse.
When the military became overwhelmed by suicides going up every year, again, they took no clue from the civilian world. While they were well aware crisis teams responded to the people in New York after 9-11, they would not let that reaction to trauma penetrate into addressing crisis in the units deployed into combat.
Chaplains were not trained to address it. Mental health professionals were not trained properly. All this lead to what we've been seeing and unfortunately, they are nowhere close to being prepared for what is to come. The numbers keep going up for the troops and our veterans committing suicide along with attempted suicides. The numbers keep going up when it comes to families falling apart while commanders look for excuses instead of the basis for the problems the families face. Drug and alcohol abuse is seen as a discipline issue instead of self-medicating. Dangerous driving is the cause for reprimand instead of a clue these are the men and women willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their countrymen and would not so easily change into people with no regard for the lives of others. The same applies with domestic violence when the soldier responds to someone with sudden violence when they had absolutely no history of it in the past.
What happened at Fort Hood needs to be looked at but not the way they are looking at it. The tragedy of the safe zone being invaded by one of their own will end up complicating the traumas of war so severely that no amount of pills will ease it. If they are responding with what they've already been doing addressing PTSD, then we can expect far more tragedies to come.
Shortage of military therapists creates strain
By KIMBERLY HEFLING (AP)
WASHINGTON — Amputations. Combat stress. Divorce. Suicide. For troubled service members, military therapists are at their sides.
But with the U.S. fighting two wars, an acute shortage of trained personnel has left these therapists emotional drained and overworked, with limited time to prepare for their own war deployments.
An Army psychiatrist is suspected in the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and the rampage is raising questions about whether there's enough help for the helpers, even though it's unclear whether that stress or fear of his pending service in Afghanistan might be to blame.
An uncle of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said Saturday that Hasan was deeply affected by his work treating soldiers returning from war zones. "I think I saw him with tears in his eyes when he was talking about some of patients, when they came overseas from the battlefield," Rafik Hamad told The Associated Press from his home near the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a psychologist in the Navy Reserves, said the toll is sometimes described as "compassion fatigue" or "vicarious trauma."
read more here
Shortage of military therapists creates strain
Right after Fort Hood was traumatized, an ex-employee in Orlando went to kill people he used to work with. He killed one and wounded several others. What came after was that a church was opened up to the survivors and their families and crisis teams were sent in to address this horrific event. These are highly trained people on trauma. They did not send in any people they could get just to have someone there. They knew untrained people would add to the crisis. Who knows who will be sent to help the survivors of the Fort Hood massacre or if anyone will be sent to help the families scattered around the country to cope with their own trauma. Given what we've already seen, it's easy to guess they haven't even thought about this at all.
As for this evil committed by a "healer" we also need to be asking what he was telling the soldiers going to him for help after the traumas they had seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he fill their heads with facts or did he tell them things that would make their PTSD worse? Was he part of an even bigger problem in the military behind what we've seen?
Saturday, November 7, 2009
PTSD should be a badge of honor
With PTSD in the news after what happened at Fort Hood, when a doctor that was supposed to help PTSD soldiers, ended up going on a killing mission, we forget a lot of history. As bad as it is for the newer veterans, think of what it's been like for the Vietnam veterans as they suffered all these years, watching their families fall apart, doing the best they can to "get over it" and attempt to hide it without anyone they knew understanding it. Heck, some of them didn't understand it themselves. Some still don't understand.
PTSD should be a badge of honor
By Guest Columnist
November 07, 2009, 7:33AM
By JACK ESTESThe doctors fixed his body but there was trouble in Bobby's mind.
What happens to our soldiers when they return from war? Where do they go? What do they do? For many the war isn't over, it's only just begun.
Forty years ago I carried Bobby out of a rice paddy. He was shot four times and covered with blood when I laid him down in the safety of a tree line. He had a shoulder wound, a sucking chest wound and his forearm was shattered. I tied my sock around his arm to hold the bone in place.
Then I pulled Bobby to his feet and we staggered to the medivac truck. As he left I feared I'd never see him again. They took him to a firebase, put him in a bunker and worked feverishly to save his life. When the doctor probed inside the hole in his chest, to spread his ribs, the pain was so great Bobby sat up and punched him. They shot him up with more morphine, inserted a tube in his lung and soon he's on a gurney, in a plane full of wounded, on his way to Guam.
In Guam they re-broke his arm and spent hours suturing him up. Days later he's on another plane headed to Camp Pendleton in Southern California. Back in Vietnam I already missed him. I trusted him. We used to run patrols during the day, set up ambushes at night and lived through nightmare firefights, often tending to our dying brothers. Like all combat Marines, we became adrenaline junkies, hooked on hunting other men.
Months later, Bobby is awarded the nation's second-highest medal, the Navy Cross, and meritoriously promoted to sergeant. Then he began his long rehabilitation at the Naval Hospital and soon married his high school sweetheart. The Marines tried to give him a medical discharge but he wanted to go back to Vietnam, to finish his duty. He worked out every day. He aced the physical fitness test and appealed to the commandant and was allowed to stay in the Corps.
read more here
PTSD should be a badge of honor
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