The Mind of a Murderer: A glimpse into the darkest corners of the human psyche, from a leading forensic psychiatrist
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The Mind of a Murderer: A glimpse into the darkest corners of the human psyche, from a leading forensic psychiatrist
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Having said that, this reticence, along with the particulars of the crime Seb had committed, left the assessors reluctant to rule out psychiatric issues completely. Despite the evidence, there has been a reluctance to accept that mothers are capable of this twisted combination of deception and harm. That's one group of murders that I don't deal with because, in a sense, that's more of a social problem.
Hers was an open window into her highly disturbed personality: an example of a woman turning her aggression on her own body and reproductive system, namely her child – the process that has been described by Welldon. While we set about confirming these were fake ‘pseudoseizures’, Tamara started to develop multiple large, infected, pus-filled boils on her legs and her left arm. However, the scholars note that they do not have enough evidence to draw a causal relationship between reduced gray matter and homicide. So the way the way the law works in the UK is you get a partial defence to murder, so you don't completely lose responsibility, you get diminished responsibility. And I think in her case, it reached the state where I kind of formed the view that it was almost as if the child didn't exist.Harold’s case might seem exceptional now but, in reality, it could be just the tip of the criminal psychology iceberg. And the neurosurgeons took him to theatre, they got it out, obviously they had to be careful in case it caused haemorrhage.
Fortunately, it was only a few steps from the nurses’ office to Seb’s cell, but they were not expecting the strength with which Seb fought against their attempts to release his arm from their colleague’s neck. It would be of little assistance to the family courts in deciding about the safe care of a child if I were to just present symptom names and the associated diagnostic label. Again, it bears repeating that such killings are extremely rare, on two counts: postpartum psychosis is itself rare, occurring in 1 to 2 in 1,000 births; and for the result to be the death of a child is rarer still. And obviously, I got their permission to say as much as I have said in the book, that this was a psychosis, this was a postpartum psychosis where she essentially lost touch with reality, although, like the case of Stella North that we talked about, it wasn't totally straightforward, but she ended up initially in prison custody at a women's prison, Holloway, where I later ended up working.
This work represents more than 10 years of data collection across eight prisons in two states,” Kiehl said. A young woman, Tamara Atkinson, had been admitted to the medical ward, suffering with poorly controlled epilepsy. So there's nothing…I think this chapter in my book, some readers have said they had to read it with their eyes closed because these are not easy, not easy cases to digest.
And I think my decision to take up the post at Holloway may have been influenced by this family story, a sort of curiosity. Once discovered, these patients would be summarily admonished and banished from the hospital, without so much as an opinion from the ‘trick-cyclist’ (semi- affectionate, yet denigratory term for my future profession, used by the physicians and surgeons). And she told the police the baby had gone missing and there was, as you can imagine, a huge police operation. A dodgy brain is not enough by itself to turn psychopaths into killers, however: you need a dodgy mum in the mix. It transpired that Tamara had been contaminating needles with her own faeces and sticking them into her skin to produce the boils.As a young doctor, the first murder case Dr Taylor worked on was an infanticide; that's the killing of a child under the age one. If she did go ahead with her plans for another baby, a child protection team would be keeping a watchful eye on her with a pre-birth case conference. Mayday Hospital, I encountered some unusual psychiatric cases which have stuck in my mind to this day. She told me to put away my notes and instead describe Stella’s story to the seminar, as well as what it was like to be in a room with her. The taking of another person’s life was often the outcome of a strong emotion linked to a particular event and a close relationship, such as cases of unrequited love or cheating on one’s mate.
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