So I’m currently at the bistro at the mental hospital I’ve been attached to. Did I say mental? I meant mental health :p
It’s been a week of placements in forensic psychiatry. Forensic psych is definitely one of the more interesting branches of psychiatry. In my last week, one of my visits involved having to go to prison to evaluate prisoners to see if they were actually mentally ill or simply malingering. 80% of the time you have patients with borderline personality disorder malingering on psychotic symptoms just so they can get a free holiday getaway to a medium secure hospital. The rooms in both hospitals and prison cells are actually quite nice and not at all dingy or prison-like. A homeless person with not much to lose on human attachments or relationships would absolutely love it there. Free food, roof over your head, Sky TV in the cells (with ESPN), en suite…
It’s interesting to see how much England adheres to the Human Rights act, a lot more than other countries do anyway. You wonder how much evolved the civilization has become in the sense of morality and ethics. In Malaysia, prisons certainly look and smell like prison. It literally redefines the term shithole. It certainly gave me some perspective. Walking in, I had no expectations whatsoever. After getting IDed, frisked, checked for carrying possible security threats on you, the impression of being somewhere dangerous began to sink in. After all, I was in a place that had 100s of dangerous murderers, rapists, paedophiles and drug dealers. I was in close proximity with them, they were being assessed in the office, they weren’t behind bars, there were panic buttons in every rooms entered, I was constantly accompanied by a tutor, nurse or guard…who wouldn’t be a little timid??
Me: so have any of your patients made a move to hit you or get violent?
Shrink: oh yeah all the time.
Me: how on earth do you deal with it?
Shrink: half the time when I speak to them, they’re malingering arseholes. They’re not mentally ill, sometimes I actually wish they were so it’d make my job worth doing in these instances. But no, I’m dealing with arseholes day in and day out. Makes you a bit cynical really.
Me: I bet it does, it’s a certain type of patient that you see as well. Have you ever gotten wacked before?
Shrink: not really no. It’s quite safe actually.
Me: surely not, if they make you carry alarm bells
Shrink: oh yeah no, I’ve been lucky that staff has been around to hold them back. Gotten kicked before. Punched. Just one of those things really.
I bet it most certainly is, just one of those things in forensic psych!
It definitely is one of the more exciting branches of psychiatry. I’ve spoke to a man who stabbed his father 9 times, someone else who murdered another man in a drug bust, a paedophile and a serial rapist. Creepy looking/behaving people even before knowing their convictions. One of them kept leering at us, almost snarling even as he spoke, as if he was looking for a reason to snap.
Being in prison that day made me question evil. We all have an element of evil and cruelty in us, with a tinge of sadism. But what prompts us to commit these dastardly deeds? What keeps us going during the actual act and what makes us not feel remorse? My tutor asked me to define what a psychopath was. I said that it was someone who committed cruel acts in a saddistic and manipulative way with an element of pseudo-psychosis. He said the defining factor with a psychopath and an ordinary criminal was that a psychopath feels no remorse whatsoever. And you could certainly see that in some of the prisoners.
The man who murdered someone in a drug bust was in shock when brought in. He was awaiting a sentence and had pleaded guilty. It was strange but he appeared to be in a quiet shock, as if the actual weight of reality, of being in prison was actually hitting him. He seemed soulless, in despair and there was immense remorse. Guess the feeling of a 15 year sentence was about to hit. 15 years of your life just taken away from you. What would you do with yourself if that was made to happen to you? And all due to your own doing.
Another thing that struck me was now there is no such thing as a life sentence here. There always is the possibility of parole. No execution and people here find execution horribly cruel and not the way to about punishing murder or crimes involving drugs. Seems fair though, you took away a life, pay back with yours?
Or turn into a more productive functioning member of society and live with your sin for the rest of your life?
