Is it possible that the Gunman in the Colorado Massacre was not properly treated for a serious mental illness?
In a news story out of Fox News Company the medical record of this doctor could be suspect in some serious ways.
WAS Psychiatrist Lynne Fenton treating Colorado movie massacre suspect James Holmes.
Did she make a mistake? Should she have hospitalized him? The answer now is obviously yes and yes and yes.But was this a preventable situation, I think the answer has to be yes, though it is so easy to say it from this viewpoint you have to think that if this patient had been treated by a more professional and perhaps even “Board Certified” doctor the end result may have been very different, of course this does not excuse any human being from the personal responsibility of exercising good judgement and seeking help before something like this becomes a problem.
Over all the answers may never be known one thing for sure as long as we have marginal doctors that should not be practicing medicine for critical patients, we will face the possibility of having these problems over and over again.
The thing to do now is to find out how to identify these high risk patients and take the appropriate action to prevent these horrible outcomes.
Reading about the potential for the treating physician may have dropped the ball is convenient but is it accurate we really do not know the full extent of this situation it might be that she did try to help him but he did not come to his appointments on a regular basis, of course its so easy to sit back on the couch and judge the results still it makes you wonder if the man had sought more qualified and professional help would we even be reading this story today?
We really do need to begin to better asses the risk involved in human behavior, considering this took place over a period of several months, there were likely many signs that something was wrong, from the purchase of ammunition to guns, to all kinds of different things in-between, you would think that someone along the line would have taken the steps of reporting this to the police so it could be investigated.
If it turned out to be nothing you did what you could do, but in this case it turned out to be a serious problem that no one took action on, from the shooting club, to gun dealers, to doctors, no one did the right thing, how could that happen?
Once we learn how to identify how to stop these situations from occurring and how to manage our actions better we might find that saving lives becomes a lot easier.
Until that time we may find that the answers are still waiting to be found, however it appears that at least several opportunities were lost to prevent this crime and that is something that will haunt the dreams of those involved for many years to come.