Why Sunday?

UPDATE: Soon after I posted, the Washington Post updated its online account of the murder to include assertions that the alleged murderer confessed to the crime, that he beat Fenton to death with his fists, that he was either bipolar or schizophrenic, and that he and Fenton were allegedly arguing about whether the young man would continue taking meds. These were not included in the original article. My original post follows.

Wayne Fenton, a psychiatrist who devoted his life to working with the most profoundly-ill schizophrenics, was killed on Sunday, allegedly at the hands of a schizophrenic. Police in Montgomery County, MD charged 19-year-old Vitali A. Davydov, reportedly seen after the crime with blood on his hands, with murder. Ordinarily, this would be a tragedy and a very odd sui generis case (I have looked and cannot find a reference to a similar case), but this one is more so.

Fenton was an associate director at the National Institute of Mental Health and NIMH has issued a statement. His list of published articles is long—he collaborated with some of the top names in the psych world. One, or example, was Jeffrey Lieberman, who is principle author of the CATIE papers on the lack of effectiveness of antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia. I have little doubt that the psych world will be shaken to its core by this tragedy—not only because of Fenton's prominence in the field, not only because of his obvious devotion to the mentally ill (he was working in his private practice on a Sunday), but because these are touchy times in the mental health world, which is riven by ideological fissures. You know what those are—and you know who is behind them.

Already, the fine folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center have posted to their blog, rightly calling the event a tragedy and profound loss to the mental health world. They are correct. Mind Freedom's David Oaks sent out a press statement on Monday, calling on advocates of toughened outpatient commitment laws—forced medication, as Oaks terms it—to not turn Fenton's murder into a political cause celebre. In effect, Oaks was taking a preemptive strike at both TAC and NAMI, both of which regularly use every act of violence perpetrated by the mentally ill to call for forced medication of the mentally ill.

I'm with Oaks on this one. Fenton was too important to this field—and well-understood the dicey relationship between meds and human autonomy—to turn him into a cheap metaphor. I hope all involved respond with great delicacy until all the facts are in. I hope that I can include the opinion writers and the reporters at the Washington Post in this, since last time out—following the murder of two cops by a psychotic young man in Fairfax, VA—the paper completely screwed things up. (See this and this, for example.)

Besides, it's not clear to me whose agenda would be served by this case, not at this point. The alleged murderer was seeing a doctor (Fenton was filling in for the patient's regular doc), but it is not clear at this time whether the young man was on meds. I'll do my best to keep an open mind as the facts roll in and the commentariat fires up.

Until then, I recommend contemplation and, failing that, prayer. This is a profound loss. Let's hope it doesn't turn into an even more profound mess. I'd prefer to keep my can of whoop-ass holstered for the time being.