Chattanooga-Shooting
Police officers enter the Armed Forces Career Center through a bullet-riddled door after Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire last week in Chattanooga, Tenn. The family of Abdulazeez said he suffered from depression.
(AP/John Bazemore)
AMHERST - The family of the Kuwait-born man who shot and killed five service members in Tennessee last week has said that their son suffered from depression.
He also fought drug and alcohol abuse.
But mental health experts said people who are depressed don't commit violence and they are concerned linking the two might prevent people from seeking the help they need.
University of Massachusetts psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne said people who are depressed don't "commit acts of violence."
The family of 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez believes those personal struggles are at the heart of last week's killings.
Springfield native Gunnery Sgt. Timothy was among the five killed at two military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Whitbourne said what 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez did "is tragic," but saying that he suffered from depressions "sends the wrong kind of impression that these disorders" lead to violence.
The idea that "depression or mental illness leads to violent acts is generally not true."
She said saying that their son suffered from these things might "comfort the parents to think that," but she said, something else led him to act.
Stuart Anfang, chief of adult psychiatry at Baystate Medical, said "in reality people with depression or psychiatric (problems) are no more violent than the general population."
Rather he said they " tend to be victims of violence rather than perpetrators." And he said people with depression are more likely to "do violence to themselves than violence to others."
But he said adding drugs or alcohol changes things as it takes away inhibitions and impacts judgment. And he said people might harm others "in the context of harming themselves.
"Active substance abuse is a big risk factor," he said.
Whitbourne said that associating this violence with depression might cause those suffering from the illness to be fearful of seeking help.
Anfang said too that a greater tragedy "would be for this to be misperceived and (cause) people to hide their illness and not to seek treatment."
He said there is still a stigma attached to the illness and both said there is all kind of help and treatment available to those who suffer from it.
According to the Associated Press, FBI spokesman Jason Pack declined comment on whether investigators were pursuing mental health records for Abdulazeez.
But FBI Special Agent Ed Reinhold told reporters that agents were looking into all aspects of his life and had not yet turned up any connections to Islamic terrorist groups.
And while whether this is terrorism hasn't been determined, Anfang said people can't understand it. They "want to blame it on psychiatric illness. The vast amount of terrorism has nothing do with terrorism."