A lone gunman killed 20 children and 6 adults including himself at a Connecticut) School He used guns registered to his mother. The emergence of ASD and PTSD Acute Stress Disorder and/ Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) were identified as happening after a major incident such as this one. The symptoms that can be present in this situation were reviewed as well as some possible long term effects. The grieving process was also discussed. In the aftermath of such situations, attention is often focused on people with mental illness who might have the potential do do violence and/or commit a copycat crime even though in retrospect this is very small proportion of the population.The gun control issue and related psychological factors were also discussed.
The following is the second case originally presented in this blog several weeks ago for comments. Included are two invited comments and any further comments from the readers are welcome Case #2 A senior psychoanalyst is supervising a junior colleague who is treating the following case. The patient is a single 36 year old dental […]
IIn 1922 Alfred Hoche a German psychiatrist co-authored a document demanding the extermination of persons he believed were a burden to society. In 1933 Adolph Hitler followed up on this by introducing obligatory sterilization of people with diseases he believed to be inheritable including mental retardation, schizophrenia, affective psychosis, and alcoholism. In July 1939 a plan was developed with the assistance of leading psychiatrists for the extermination of this group of people. Torrey and Yolken in their analysis of the literature believe that the entire population of people with schizophrenia (between 220,000 and 295,000 people) living in Germany at the time were either sterilized or killed. After the invasion of Poland the systematic murders of patients in various psychiatric hospitals were carried out. There are reports of only two psychiatrists who chose to stay with their patients and both perished. This plan to eliminate schizophrenia did not succeed probably because it is not entirely a genetic disease. We should never forget those whose lives were taken during this time and how and why they they were killed.
