Comments on: Fort Hood, PTSD, And Islam

By: oatcake

oatcake — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:48:57 +0000

correction: all doctors, in any field, are fucking crazy. full disclosure – I'm a psychiatrist who feels hurt by this stereotype, but have met very few "normal" MDs anywhere.

By: Bittersweet

Bittersweet — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:03:15 +0000

Reminds me of a classic from Sept. 2001…

http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:07:33 +0000

I get it Abe. Look dude, you gotta quit being so defensive. You're a good columnist with interesting perspectives and I enjoy 95% of your output tremendously. But, like all people, sometimes you take positions that are a little irksome and I give you my opinion on it. No harm, no foul.

Keep doing what you are — it's good stuff.

By: Bucko

Bucko — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:09:18 +0000

Why can't we just blame men and be done with it? We're only a decade or two from removing the necessity of men from the reproduction equation, I think it's time to start considering whether men have outlived their usefulness.

By: Abe Sauer

Abe Sauer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:59:29 +0000

Cintra, if you want to address the column you can just email me.

By: OldBillyBaroo

OldBillyBaroo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:28:42 +0000

@abe & baboleen:
you know what else is near there? austin. and don't act like either of you dudes haven't given hand jobs to each other at The Backyard while the Indigo Girls played, or eaten tofu cooked in a variety of ways at the Whole Foods World Headquarters, or attended a Kathy Acker reading at BookPeople, or furiously texted your other gay friends after seeing Sandra Bullock and Jeff Tweedy in the same bar on the same night…because if you act like you haven't done any of these things then you're both not only sanctimonious fucks, but you're also liars.

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:49:07 +0000

And Abe, I don't care to be hostile about it. But your statement, perhaps in jest, was a little bit of a stretch.

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:48:04 +0000

My family is from Waco, actually.

You could see the Koresh compound burn my grandfather;s house. So you're half-right.

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:47:19 +0000

No Abe. I don't. Because I have no idea what the truth is. But I read the Times this morning, and watched channels other than Fox, and found that the man's religious faith was barely mentioned.

By: Abe Sauer

Abe Sauer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:34:30 +0000

Nobody here is tiptoeing around anything. They were mocking Pajama Media which, let's face it, is the "News" organization that send Joe the Plumber to Israel as a war correspondent. Nobody is mocking poiting out religion as a driver for this event. They are mocking those who are cumming in the their pants with joy over this being perpetrated by a rag head, the kind who loved to repeat Hussein every time they said "Obama."

And what media are avoiding talking about the Islam issue? I've been watching al the 24/7 news channels and they're all over it. Shit, Shep Smith said that the guys name basically tells you why he did it before anyone had any details at all. NPR even mentions it as a "possible motivation." You have an Everyone's Blind to the Truth Except Me persecution complex.

By: Baboleen

Baboleen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:30:44 +0000

He's from Waco.

By: Abe Sauer

Abe Sauer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:22:24 +0000

It's clearly pointing out the trivia of the area and admits to no meaningful connection. So come off what exactly? What drives your particular need for having dialogue in only the most hostile terms?

By: jackiett

jackiett — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:58:06 +0000

People who make psych diagnoses based on news articles and tv segments are indeed idiots. People who make racist statements are indeed racists.

That understood, let's not deny the reality of secondary trauma and ptsd related violence.

Secondary trauma is a genuine phenomenon that occurs with counselors and psychologists who work with other people who have experienced primary trauma — victims of wife abusers, victims of rapists, and victims of war. This article discusses the phenomenon http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/html/trauma__post-traumatic_stress_.html

Counselors on the GI Rights Hotline — http://girightshotline.org 877-447-4487 assist people in the military to obtain their rights, including the right to obtain discharge and to have accurate information about the consequences of going AWOL and UA. These counselors often experience secondary trauma related to this work. No article on that; but I can speak from direct experience working on the Hotline.

There is also good reason to believe that PTSD may lead to violence, often against a wife or other woman and against oneself in the form of suicide. Here's an older article on this http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.com/2005/09/casualties-of-war-tracking-us-ptsd.html

It is literally criminal that there is inadequate care for people in the military who have ptsd, that people in the military with ptsd may be harassed and otherwise discouraged from obtaining treatment,and that this condition is often misdiagnosed — sometimes intentionally to avoid giving pensions to people with ptsd. The Military Law Task Force has an excellent article on this at http://www.nlgmltf.org/ under "Information for Militlary Servicemembers and Families.

By: Baboleen

Baboleen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:42:41 +0000

@Hired Goons-Are you available for parties and events. I need you to walk beside me and whisper good come-backs.

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:37:25 +0000

That's all I meant. Delusional/desperate people flock to religion; they also flock to drugs. If dude was a meth-head we could all talk about it without our "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" covert feelings of superiority and askance glances towards those who might assert that his drug habit provides a partial explanation for his madness. As it is, even here (and generally I think Awl commentators are remarkably open-minded) people are quick to mock anyone who asserts that religiosity might be a driver.

By: toadvine

toadvine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:34:34 +0000

Or Idaho. Oklahoma City. Manhattan? Cleveland. Milwaukee. Newark and Camden?

In short, come off it.

By: HiredGoons

HiredGoons — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:33:17 +0000

Calvin Klein begs to differ.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:19:27 +0000

Muslims do!

By: SarahHeartburn

SarahHeartburn — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:19:20 +0000

Sadder still when I think that Phyllis Chessler was a respected feminist writer back in the day. Women and Madness was a very important book in its time.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:17:53 +0000

Yes, but mass shooting = muslims! doesn't exactly compute does it? Mass shooting = crazed worker with a grudge usually does.

By: pattycakes

pattycakes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:15:50 +0000

My first thought too! I knew he'd get slammed merely for his name (despite that he totally could have been a christian or an atheist or whatever) but in my experience the psychiatrists go into that field because they are fucking crazy.

By: KenWheaton

KenWheaton — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:51:40 +0000

Well, yeah, and upstate New York, and Colorado and Virginia Tech.

SPEAKING of which, Hasan went to Virginia Tech. Coincidence? Or is VT a breeding ground for EvilDewars?

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

By: Abe Sauer

Abe Sauer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:48:20 +0000

Well. I'm kind of kidding about the association being meaningful. But it is still striking. Killeen and Hood are almost the same place with Waco very nearby. And two of the three events I mention are far beyond the average US shooting spree. Killeenw was the worst in history until V Tech. Like 28 people killed. Waco had, what, 65? Again, probably no meaningful connection but it certainly gives that little triangle of America a bad reputation.

By: HiredGoons

HiredGoons — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:44:22 +0000

Guns don't kill people…

By: Baboleen

Baboleen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:21:57 +0000

Agree. Obsession rarely a good thing, except for maybe immediate gratification.