Major Fishback, who had retired from the Army, died last week, in circumstances still unclear, alone and broke in a group home, convinced he was being persecuted by the very forces he had once embraced. He was 42.
The short life and needless death of Major Fishback underscore the costs of two decades of war far beyond the battlefields and the overall strain on the nation’s mental health system. He is one of many high-profile veterans of the global war on terrorism whose lives have ended in tragedy.
“There are many potential root causes here,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, referring to Major Fishback’s decline. Mr. Malinowski was director of Human Rights Watch when he first met Major Fishback in 2005 and connected him with Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who also wanted to expose wrongdoing in Iraq.
“There is a veteran mental health crisis in this country, and there is a shortage of facilities and of helpers,” he continued. “We panic when we are running out of I.C.U. beds in America, but we accept that we don’t have enough mental health beds.”
A shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurse practitioners across the United States has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, mental health experts say, and lawmakers have struggled to find a solution. Staffing shortages at the Department of Veterans Affairs may have hampered access to care, possibly including for Major Fishback.
In 2005, as an Army captain, he revealed that fellow members of the 82nd Airborne Division had systematically abused detainees in Iraq. His allegations led to the passage of far-reaching anti-torture legislation championed by Mr. McCain.
Major Fishback, who served four combat tours in Iraq, later earned a doctorate, taught at West Point, and became a sought-after speaker on the subject of moral injury and military service.
In recent years, he also had paranoid delusions and deep depression, and was prone to outbursts that caused him to lose jobs and relationships. He oscillated between defiance about his fragile mental state and desperation as he searched for help, a dozen family members, former professional associates and friends said in interviews.
Since September, alarmed at his physical and mental deterioration, his friends and his sister had scrambled to move him from hospitals and low-income adult group homes where, they said, he was heavily medicated with antipsychotic drugs, to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Battle Creek, Mich. Appeals on his behalf to the department went unanswered last week, they said. Major Fishback was found dead in his room at the group home after breakfast on Friday.
“He was always driven by a deeply humanistic sense that people deserve respect, in this case detainees,” said Nancy Sherman, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, who was deeply involved in trying to help Major Fishback over the last decade, including in the last week of his life.
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