August 6, 1999

Psychiatrist Reuven Bar-Levav, M.D., of Palmer Woods, Mich., was killed in his office in June by a patient he had seen for only about a dozen sessions. Two months earlier, psychiatrist Wakil Khan, M.D., of Toledo, Ohio, was critically injured when a patient he hardly knew shot him in his downtown office.

After shooting Bar-Levav, the gunman opened fire on a group therapy session, killing one patient and injuring four. The assailant, Joseph Brooks Jr., a 28-year-old man from Plymouth Township, then turned the gun on himself, according to an article in the June 12 Detroit Free Press.

Brooks had been previously diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and treated in a mental hospital, noted the article. However, he refused medication and hospitalization, according to Bar-Levav's daughter, Leora Bar-Levav, M.D., who practiced with her late father.

A week before the shooting, Brooks mailed Bar-Levav a long, incoherent manuscript, according to the article. In it, he complained about his therapy and described a scheme by others in the group to degrade and ostracize him.

Bar-Levav was viewed by many as a brilliant psychotherapist who specialized in group therapy. He wrote two books, Thinking in the Shadow of Feelings: A New Understanding of the Hidden Forces That Shape Individuals and Societies and Every Family Needs a CEO: What Mothers and Fathers Can Do About Our Deteriorating Families and Values.

Bar-Levav is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son.

Wakil Khan, M.D., an adult and geriatric psychiatrist, was critically injured in April, when a 39-year-old patient, William Vanzant, entered his office and shot him six times at point-blank range, according to an article in the April 22 Toledo Blade.

Khan is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Ohio. Vanzant has been charged with felonious assault, noted the newspaper article.

Immediately before the incident, Vanzant told the building receptionist that the treatment Khan had prescribed had adversely affected Vanzant's sexual performance, noted the article. Vanzant was convicted of domestic violence in 1988 and was found incompetent to stand trial on a sexual imposition charge in 1979, according to the article.

Khan's office manager, Lori Sherman, told Psychiatric News that the building needed more security because Khan and other therapists treated severely mentally ill patients who often appeared troubled.