Billions in Funding at Risk If Audrey Hale’s Mental Health Records Are Released to Public

September 3, 2024

The Tennessee Star released today a 2023 journal written by Covenant School shooter, Audrey Hale. The release of the journal provides very little new information about the shooter’s motives but raises interesting questions about the public’s right to review all the investigative material, including, and especially, mental health records.

Unfortunately, the 2023 journal entries are a rambling diatribe by Hale lamenting having been born a female and whining about how misunderstood she is by her parents and particularly her father. She alleges that she is a victim of having been born the wrong sex and having a broken brain, most of the pages in the journal are about Hale’s desire to die and only then will Hale be happy. Clearly there are many mental health issues involved with Hale leading up to the shooting. The question, though, is what caused Hale’s decent into suicidal and homicidal ideation?

Remember that it was reported by The Tennessee Star that Hale had been a psychiatric patient at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) for two decades.  Hale had been diagnosed with at least five mental illnesses and had received cocktails of psychiatric drugs as “treatment” and some of the adverse events associated with just the known drugs (Lorazepam, Buspirone, Lexapro, Hydroxyzine and Prozac) Hale had been prescribed could be responsible for the shooter’s deadly thoughts.

So why are Hale’s mental health records being withheld (Evidence Item #46 “Psych File”) for public review? It’s no secret that Vanderbilt “treated” Hale most of her life. The “treatment” provided to Hale included talk therapy and mind-altering psychotropic drugs…cocktails of them. Who wants to bet that not one of the psychiatrists, therapists or MDs at Vanderbilt ever advised Hale’s parents or Hale that none of the psychiatric drugs being prescribed actually treated any known abnormality in the brain? In other words, not one of Hale’s treating physicians ever said “hey, we don’t know what is causing your behavior, but these drugs will make you feel different. They aren’t treating any abnormality in your brain because there are no known abnormalities in your brain for any of our psychiatric diagnoses.” This is called informed consent. Telling patients, the truth about a diagnosis and treatment. But, of course, no one can say whether this information was provided to Hale because Hale’s mental health records haven’t been made public. But the “right” people have seen the mental health records.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Behavioral Threat Assessment Center (BTAC) has a lot of information about Hale. The BTAC knows so much about Hale that it sent a “memo” to the Chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Dept. (MNPD) recommending that “legacy tokens” (documents that may claim credit for attacks/motives) should not be disseminated to the public. One of the reasons provided for not disseminating the shooter’s documents was because the information within a shooter’s documents could contribute to future attacks. Perhaps.

It’s interesting, though, that the FBI’s BTAC did not list cocktails of mind-altering drugs as a possible reason for mass shootings. This, of course, is of interest because prescribed psychiatric drugs often are part of the shooter’s history. The BTAC has seen Hale’s journals and, undoubtedly, has also seen Hale’s mental health records which describe the blow-by-blow psychiatric drug “treatments’ prescribed to Hale over a twenty-year period.  Why wouldn’t the FBI’s BTAC want the public to have that “legacy token” information?

Is the FBI covering for the pharmaceutical or Behavioral Health Industries? Afterall every time there is a mass shooting, legislatures go into crisis management mode and legislate billions of dollars for increased mental health services to “fix” a shooter problem. Never fails. A mass shooting happens and suddenly the reason for the violence becomes not enough mental health. This is bizarre.

Over the last thirty years hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into increased mental health services on a state and federal level and, ironically, no one is getting better. The data bears this out. More people are suffering from mental illness than ever before. And, worse, more people are taking prescribed mind-altering drugs to make it through the day. How is this possible? Despite boatloads of money being thrown at mental health services, why isn’t the number of mentally ill going down… why aren’t the mentally ill getting better? More importantly, why haven’t legislators asked this question?

And, as part of that line of questioning, lawmakers need to have all the information available to them about the shooters to make effective policy decisions. That mental health laws are being passed and billions of dollars are being appropriated without all the information is a scandal.

It’s time for lawmakers to pass legislation that forces the mental health information of mass shooters be made public. Until lawmakers are armed with all the information about these events, no laws will appropriately address what may be the cause of these senseless attacks.  And continuing to throw money at what clearly isn’t working is the definition of insanity.

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