Navy Yard shooting: the cost of a lack of psychiatric follow-up

[the_archfiend]

This isn't the time to blame anyone for letting Aaron Alexis go this far without someone, somewhere pulling his security clearance first: there's plenty of time for that sort of investigation later. Instead, consider the following:

Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis left a note saying he was driven to kill by months of bombardment with extremely low-frequency radio waves, the FBI said Wednesday in a disclosure that explains the phrase he etched on his shotgun: "My ELF Weapon!"

Alexis did not target particular individuals during the Sept. 16 attack in which he killed 12 people, and there is no indication the shooting stemmed from any workplace dispute, said Valerie Parlave, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office. Instead, authorities said, his behavior in the weeks before the shooting and evidence recovered from his hotel room, backpack and other belongings reveal a man increasingly in the throes of paranoia and delusions.

"Ultra-low frequency attack is what I've been subject to for the last 3 months, and to be perfectly honest that is what has driven me to this," read an electronic document agents recovered after the shooting.

The attack came one month after Alexis had complained to police in Rhode Island that people were talking to him through the walls and ceilings of his hotel room and sending microwave vibrations into his body to deprive him of sleep.

On his shotgun, he had scrawled "My ELF Weapon!" — an apparent reference to extremely low-frequency waves — along with "End to the Torment!" ''Not what yall say" and "Better off this way," the FBI said.

It would take a trained psychiatrist to make the final clinical determination of whether or not his written rants constitute outward signs of paranoid schizophrenia or not, but my own guess as a layman is a resounding "yes".

The question is not so much what he was suffering from, though, but why no one seemingly caught on to his behavior before this happened. And considered the prevalence of mental illness among veterans (After googling the words "mental illness"; the first suggested linking phrase in the search came up as "...among veterans" somehow, which is an ominous fact in itself), this is a problem that needs a solution - if there even is one to be found.