There seems to be some confusion among the wider world about what having mental health issues really means. Are there, as we professionals would imagine, nuanced definitions and understandings that can help with treatment. Is it a one-size-fits-all categorisation or, perhaps the worst possible scenario, is it a condition that means whatever is done can be excused?
That is too simplistic of course but it’s one with which some of my social worker colleagues working in this field are grappling.
A colleague tells me that his conversations with clients usually begin with them saying: “I’ve got mental health.” He explains to me that he has to accept what they say literally instead of saying what he wants to say, which is: “We all have. The question is: ‘Are you managing it or is it getting on top of you?’”
Managing it is what most of us do, most of the time. Sometimes some of us do it all of the time. Sometimes, we find it too hard or we become stuck and that is the time when we might seek out a professional. A GP may look into whether or not there’s a physical cause to our problems or they might decide we need some of form of short-term medical intervention or maybe refer us to a psychotherapist or counsellor for talking therapy. The idea is that if we seek help from a suitable professional someone, somewhere will come to our aid.
Usually, with luck, that will happen. But the terrible murders of the three little girls at Southport last year by a 17-year-old youth shows it is not always so and what then? The boy – a few days off being officially a “man” – who committed the atrocities was known to many parts of the state mental health services in his area. Yet he still managed to carry out that terrible deed.
I have done some quite in-depth reading about what happened. I’m not brave enough to go into the details of what actually took place but I’ve read up about the history of the boy, the family and wondered what could have caused a person to commit this terrible deed and if it could possibly have been prevented.
From an outside point of view it seems all too obvious that it could have been. The boy was known to be troubled. He appeared to be friendless – steering away from friendships from a young age or being unable to make or sustain them can be a hint of potential problems to come. There are videos and pictures that I’ve seen online. In the 2018 one where he’s coming out of the Dr Who tardis for a promotional video for the BBC’s Children in Need, he looks like an ordinary young boy. He’s 11 years old then and his alert eyes behind the glasses face the camera as he shows a hint of a smile. He looks to me like he’s fully present and enjoying the moment. He looks like a boy of whom his parents can be proud.
And yet, not even seven years on, we see the police headshot of the teenage killer, head lowered with a shock of unkempt hair and defiant eyes. He’s unrecognisable from the boy he once was.
So what happened? And how come no-one saw it coming or, if they did, did anything about it? One commentator, well known for his strong anti-marijuana views suggested that might have played a part in the youth’s transformation. I’m not sure we know for sure what his habits were so it’s hard to rule it in, or rule it out.
According to people who knew him, he seemed to change around the age of 13, possibly around the time of puberty. He started displaying “anger issues” and took a knife into school. He complained of racist bullying and the anger issues worsened to the degree that he was excluded from school. He returned two months later, armed with a hockey stick and attacked another child. He was forcibly restrained by teachers.
There was a diagnosis of autism and he subsequently went to a school for children with special needs but he wasn’t there long and dropped out in favour of being at home. Even so, teachers visiting his home were often giving police protection, because of concerns about his potential for violence. His parents, according to a family relative, tried to keep him away from other family members. It seems as though they recognised a problem but didn’t know what to do about it. Or, if they did, no-one “official” was there to help.
At one stage, he was referred to Prevent, the organisation used to intervene and prevent young or vulnerable people being radicalised into a terrorism cause, but he was signed off there, too, because his “obsessions” did not fit the bill. I sound flippant, I don’t mean to. The choices were too restrictive. A box-ticking exercise is not suitable if you’re dealing with a potentially life-threatening situation. And they were. The lives of three small girls.
The buzz phrase nowadays is “red flags”. Well, there were plenty of those when it came to this individual and there will be plenty of those when another tragedy occurs.
The message of this terrible and tragic story is that it’s not good enough for politicians to say: “This must never happen again.” How can it not unless real lessons are learned and are not just sentences that are so overused they have evolved into clichés. That means the state has to accept that it should have been – and should be – there to protect us as a society. And it means that we as individuals also have our part to play.
We can and must have empathy for children who seem to be suffering but we cannot allow our own wish to give a young person the benefit of the doubt to cloud our judgment. If someone, somewhere had really looked at the wide range of troubling information that was already available to the state on this youth, they could have done something about him. That something might have included putting him a secure place for treatment. This terrible situation means that we as a society are all losers, not just the grieving family of those dear little girls.