NASW Official Weighs in on Fort Hood Tragedy
Vicki Hansen, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers in Texas, comment about the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings. Click here to read the full story.
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It feels like the violence of the conflicts our country is engaged in overseas, are increasingly bleeding over onto our shores. This is tragically happening in the form of spouse abuse, suicide, murder, rape and sexual assault, to name just a few. It feels like this is happening because the human limits of tolerance to emotional trauma are continuously being stretched and our courageous Service Members are coming home not only in body bags, not only physically disabled or severely injured; they are also coming home “psychologically broken”.
The above scenario is not what happend at Fort Hood. Major Hasan had never deployed. Reports suggest that it may have been his fear of deployment that was contributory to his violent actions. Whatever the reasons this happened, it is a tragedy of monumental proportion for all those that he killed and injured, all those who loved those that were lost, and for our country as a whole.
The fact that this perpetrator of mass violence was not only a Service Member, not only an Officer, not only a doctor, but also a psychiatrist, makes this event all the more tragic. It was a part of this man’s job to use his skills as a healer to prevent the very type of atrocity that he himself committed. The tragedy at Fort Hood has highlighted the over burdened and over stressed military mental health care system. It is our country’s mandate to identify problems and implement changes across all branches of the military to avert any possible recurrence of mass violence. Let us never have to utter the words, “it’s another Fort Hood-like tragedy, the way we seem to have come to say, “it’s another Columbine-like tragedy”.
INFINITE thanks to Kernan Manion, M.D. and Amy Heinz, MSW, LCSW for averting a possible Columbine-like tragedy at MCB-Camp Lejeune!
EA Wahrburg, LCSW
Maj Hasan and DR. KERNAN MANION CONTRAST:
“Dr” Hasan allegedly spewed red flags to many who encountered him, and the system apparently cast a blind eye and deaf ear to it all! Maj Hasan, it is alledged, went on to later perpetrate the most heinous violent outbreak on the grounds of a United States Military Installation in this country’s history.
DR. Kernan Manion, it has been reported, feverishly, passionately and repeatedly warned of the potential for violent outbreak at Camp Lejeune and of his perceptions of needed changes to military mental health care, to avert potential tragedy.
He was reportedly terminated and allegedly escorted out.
When Dr. Kernan Manion swore to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, he meant it with every fiber of his being.
Ernest Wahrburg