Obama Pledges to 'Fully Understand' Camp Liberty Shooting
WASHINGTON, May 11, 2009 – President Barack Obama said his administration “will press to ensure that we fully understand” what led to the shooting of five U.S. servicemembers, allegedly by a U.S. soldier, on a U.S. military base in Iraq today.
“I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear the news from Camp Victory this morning, and my heart goes out to the families and friends of all the servicemembers involved in this horrible tragedy,” Obama said in a statement.
As details about the shooting continue to emerge, the U.S. military is holding in custody an American soldier suspected of involvement in the shooting deaths that occurred around 2 p.m. local time at the base in the Iraqi capital.
“I will press to ensure that we fully understand what led to this tragedy, and that we are doing everything we can to ensure that our men and women in uniform are protected as they serve our country so capably and courageously in harm’s way,” Obama said, adding that he met with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to get a briefing on the matter this afternoon.
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I am a behavioral scientist and the military is not to blame for this. There is only one entity to hold responsible and that is NIMH. The way mental health professionals treat patients’ trickles down from the National Institute of Mental Health. In a recent conversation with an NIMH official in regard to depression as the primary symptom for suicide he stated "It is not what we would call a strong risk factor." If depression is “Not a strong risk factor” for suicide will somebody please tell what is? This individual by the way is solely responsible for determining who will receive a scientific review in regard to effectively addressing the record setting suicides in the Army.
The fundamental issue is NIMH is not asking the questions that will lead to a fix for this problem. If we can agree that someone who is contemplating killing themselves or someone else is emotionally out of control the first question is “What brings about an emotional state?” Let me make addressing this question perfectly clear. What brings an emotional state about from the inside out not from the outside in?
NIMH and every mental health professional needs to stop miring themselves down in ancient Freudian theoretical external observation and get to the core of the problem which is how each human being processes information from the beginning at the very core of the subconscious.
I do not often rant but this is a systemic problem that absolutely must and can be fixed if we start holding our mental health officials accountable and start demanding answers to questions that simply are not being posed in order to fix the problem. It is time that the science we require from every other health entity start being applied to mental health.