DARBY, Pa. (AP) — Authorities are attempting to determine why a patient fatally shot a caseworker at a hospital complex in a Philadelphia suburb and whether a psychiatrist who pulled out his own gun and wounded the patient had concerns about him…Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan said, "We do believe that there were some issues between the doctor and the patient, but whether or not he actually feared him is unclear," Whelan said.
Apparently, there were some issues in this case, namely treatment resistance on the part of the patient, and counter-transference on the part of the doctor. Usually such phenomena can be dealt with in a slightly less dramatic fashion, but all our patients are now on notice that their psychiatrist may be packing heat. They might want to be a bit more cautious about not following advice or disagreeing with uncomfortable interpretations offered by their highly-trained health care provider.
To those who are surprised that a mental heath professional would bring a gun to work, I say what better way to both protect yourself from law-abiding citizens asserting their Second Amendment right to shoot whomever they please while demonstrating conclusively who is in charge therapeutically? Some years ago after a series of patients laughingly disregarded my suggestions for improving their lives, I purchased a .357 Magnum which, it turns out, is too large a weapon to be easily concealed and very uncomfortable to sit on. I solved the problem by placing it openly on my desk and found that patients were much less likely to disagree with anything I said. Incidentally, my practice’s bill collection rate went way up and has continued to hover near 98%.
Occasionally, a patient may complain about feeling “intimidated” by the gun and I am forced to tell them stories about saving a life (my own) in several road-rage incidents to which, for some reason, I appear to be prone. Several of my anxious patients report feeling safer knowing that their doctor is in a position to defend himself. If I think a depressed patient may be suicidal, I sometimes place the weapon in a hollowed-out copy of the PDR before bringing them back to the office.
I must confess that during my youth I was of the liberal persuasion and even suggested that handgun owners might be a little short in the masculinity department. Now that I have had more life experience (and have read the Constitution more closely) I have come to realize that the NRA is correct when they assert that, “an armed society is a polite society,” not to mention a safer place to live. I also appreciate now that, as Alphonse Capone so eloquently put it, “You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” So many patients have taken my advice to buy their own guns that we have had to install a metal detector at the front door next to a sign reminding them to “Leave your gun in the car.”
To my fellow therapists, most of whom still take the unnecessary risk of showing up to work unarmed, I say, “Look what just happened with that psychiatrist in Pennsylvania. Don’t bring a pen to a gunfight.”