The MSU professor who screamed at students in the Engineering Building and stripped, walking up and down the ground floor hallway, has struggled with apparent depression for more than a decade, a source told The State News on Tuesday.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous, has been friends with mathematics professor John McCarthy and his family for decades. There had been warning signs of McCarthy’s unravelling mental state for at least 10 years, but before Monday, McCarthy had not been explosive to the best of the source’s knowledge.
The source said he came forward to encourage people to see the incident with compassion.
“For it to come to this outburst is awful,” the source said. “I just hope now he’ll find real helpful treatment.”
But McCarthy wasn’t always depressed, the source said.
Prior to the early 2000s, McCarthy was jovial with a “wonderful sense of humor,” the source said.
Although there might have been stressful events in McCarthy’s life, the source could not pinpoint one specific event that caused the professor’s apparent depression to surface.
“The John I got to know (prior to his depression), and the John I’ve known over the past 10 years are two different people,” the source said. “He carried a heavy burden.”
The source said McCarthy’s wife often said her husband would come home from teaching each day and lie on the couch, staring at the wall for hours instead of spending time talking with her and their four sons.
“The one thing with John is teaching in classes at MSU has been his anchor in his life — it’s been the one thing he can do (regardless of his emotional state),” the source said.
In an email, university spokesman Kent Cassella said McCarthy’s classes have been reassigned, and the university’s primary concern is the professor’s well-being.
Mathematics department head and professor Yang Wang could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The university has programs for faculty and staff, as well as insurance plans, that cover mental health treatment, university physician Dr. Beth Alexander said.
Each year around April, the university sends information about insurance plans to all staff, outlining two different insurance plans. One plan covers all mental health expenses while the other supports some services, and the rest are paid with a co-pay by the insurance holder, Alexander said.
There also is the Employee Assistance Program, a mental wellness program to provide support within the university, which can provide short-term mental health assistance or referrals for long-term assistance, she said.
She added no type of psychiatric screening is required for professors within the university.
“That would probably be a violation of one’s civil rights,” Alexander said. “If you really want to try to catch anybody with a mental health problem, you’d have to screen them quite frequently.”
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