Navy Yard Gunman's Supervisors Were Told Of His Mental Health Issues
Serge F. Kovaleski writes in The New York Times:
The mother of Aaron Alexis, the military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last month, told his bosses one month before the shootings that he had a history of paranoid episodes and most likely needed therapy. But Mr. Alexis' managers at the Experts Inc., an information technology firm, decided to keep him on the job and did not require him to seek treatment, an internal company investigation has found.The investigation by Hewlett-Packard, which oversaw the Experts' subcontract at the navy yard and other military bases, concluded that the Experts mishandled Mr. Alexis and knew more about his mental problems than the company has disclosed, a person with knowledge of the inquiry said. As a result, Hewlett-Packard last week canceled its business relationship with the firm, saying it had lost confidence in its work.
"It is HP's understanding that the Experts made their decision to return Mr. Alexis to duty without consulting a medical professional about his behavior, without determining whether he had seen a therapist as his mother suggested he might need to do, and without taking any other action to ensure that any mental health issues had been treated and resolved," the person said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Experts did not dispute most of the findings of the investigation, including that Mr. Alexis' mother had made them aware of his history of paranoia. But in a statement, the Experts said that Hewlett-Packard was "fully aware" of problems Mr. Alexis was having in early August in Rhode Island, "and any claim to the contrary is baseless." Over all, according to the statement, Hewlett-Packard supervisors consistently gave Mr. Alexis satisfactory or better ratings in the weeks before the shootings.
Apparently he has asked for help multiple times before he went off.
Unfortunately the mental health system was gutted in the the sixties. So now there are very few inpatient treatment centers that aren't addiction oriented. LEO can't just do a drop off without a crime and there is a stigma attached to asking for help.
I don't have an answer, but it should be looked at.
Jim P. at October 5, 2013 6:00 AM
Of course they were, and if he had been a white guy, they might have actually done something about it.
When the automatic assumption is to assume racism behind every adverse personnel action, nothing will be done, if a minority is involved.
Isab at October 5, 2013 9:39 AM
Isab, which way do you want to go with that?
Is it that black people can't get help because they are black, or it is that black people can't be mentally ill because they're black?
After all, it's in the news that they can't be racist...
Radwaste at October 5, 2013 10:57 AM
All I am saying is that if you are anything other than a white male in this country, a supervisor even hinting that you were crazy would be more likely to get the supervisor fired, than help provided to the crazy person.
Look at the Fort Hood shooter, who gave at least one jihadist rant, in front of a room full of Army officers, and nothing was done because it would have killed anyone's career who tried.
Isab at October 5, 2013 12:57 PM
Okay, thank you.
Radwaste at October 5, 2013 1:49 PM
"All I am saying is that if you are anything other than a white male in this country, a supervisor even hinting that you were crazy would be more likely to get the supervisor fired, than help provided to the crazy person."
That's a really bizarre thought. Where the hell do you work that you are that frightened of being called a racist/sexist/homophobe, etc?
It's possible that you're spending too much time reading crazy shit on the Internet rather than making fact-based observations about the actual world around you.
Thus ends my rand about Isab's post. Moving on.
Mental illness is a difficult thing for any institution to deal with for whatever reason. I had a pretty harrowing experience with one poor fellow that worked for me. He went completely off the rails in a lot of ways, to the point where I was concerned that we'd all end up on the news at some point. Eight months later or so, while he had lost his clearance and had zombie medication that he was compelled to take, he was somehow still showing up to work.
It's a hard thing to balance individual rights, dignity, and proper treatment of a fellow human being when faced with the tragedy of severe mental illness.
In the case of my stricken friend, I was the guy who was shouting from the rooftops to get this guy fitted into a pair of pajamas somewhere before he hurts someone.
Legally, there wasn't much help and the military mental health professionals were really, really terrible at their jobs. (Yes, this guy was in the military). He was able to turn a switch when we'd send him to the mental health people and he would seem normal to them. At some point, he just lost the ability to turn that switch -- yet the military mental health people simply didn't know how to handle it. They just kept sending him back to work. Yet, we didn't have any real work for him to do since he no longer had a clearance and we were scared shitless of him.
We were faced with having to find busy work and administrative work for him to do that didn't involve a clearance. He couldn't even really do any of that due to the zombie medication. He was just a frightening guy drooling in the corner that we all had one eye on. It was really scary as shit.
The most frightening day was when I saw in his eyes that he was no longer on his medication. He was also back to saying bizarre things. I gently confronted him about it and again sent him to mental health. They did nothing.
Later that day, he wound up buying a very fast car on credit that he could never possibly repay and, within an hour, was driving it at breakneck speeds through about seven Texas counties with about a dozen policemen on his tail. He could've easily killed a lot of people with that little adventure.
That little adventure could have also been a rampage on the military base with a gun. While myself and several others had the rare authority to go through his house and gather up all his guns, we might have missed a few. Also, though he was facing a court martial at the time, there was nothing that would have turned up on a background check to keep him from buying a shed load of guns. He could've used the same credit that he used to buy the car.
I used the term, "rare authority", in the previous paragraph. It is a unique thing that the military has so much authority over an employee's life. We didn't do so well in this case. Our guy could've killed people. This Navy Yard fellow was a contractor. He wasn't subject to the same system.
I don't really know the point I'm trying to make. I suppose my point is that mental illness is really tragic and horrible, nobody really knows how to deal with it, and there is no right answer.
Oh yeah, and that Isab is an idiot :) -- just kidding Isab.
whistleDick at October 5, 2013 10:48 PM
"That's a really bizarre thought. Where the hell do you work that you are that frightened of being called a racist/sexist/homophobe, etc?"
The government.
I had a good friend who retired because he could not get a psychiatrist to back him up in writing that a Marine LTC was so bat shit crazy that he was leading his own personal little psychotic raids against families in Baghdad.
Isab at October 6, 2013 6:30 AM
Where the hell do you work that you are that frightened of being called a racist/sexist/homophobe, etc?
Public university.
I try not to interact too much with people above and beyond what I need to accomplish my job.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 6, 2013 8:01 AM
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