Poor, poor woman

[Mookie81]

Complete lack of support and nowhere to turn.
A terrible deed but I feel so sorry for her.
And where the fuck was her ex? Living in Spain while she was driven to despair.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9186243/Olga-Freemans-friends-reveal-agony-trapped-flat-son-loved-dearly.html

The underlying sentiment is the person does not view their autism as something they have it's something they are. Though it reads as jarring or grammatically incorrect, the preference would be for is, for that particular group. I understand the preference for identity first language and it is what I prefer myself. I don't know any other autistic people who describe themselves as being ASD though, only autistic or aspie.

I have a lot to say about this as a single parent of autistic children I have endless compassion for Olga and her son. There is little help available and you have to jump through hoops, make yourself utterly vulnerable and exposed to access it and only to often have doors slammed in your face or to receive the sane useless referrals. No one can understand except those who have seen shades of this kind of autism in our children what it like to be cooped up with no support with a child who screams and self harms,not suffer endless sleep deprivation and isolation . To
Love your child as deeply as any other mother abs to see their dreadful confusion and pain snd to not have any hope for them or for yourself. To be driven mad by sleep deprivation and worry for them. The ex husband made me so angry talking about visiting art galleries with this child who was severely autistic as if it were a a different boy. Fine for him to live his life abroad snd then be devastated . I bet he minimised and gaslighted her continually refusing to listen to what things were really like . And society also can on the one hand condemn and imprison this mother and on the other leave a child vulnerable to this sort of stress by tolerating the systematic destruction of the state which provides services to support vulnerable children and adults . Furthermore it is acceptable that learning disabled people are having DNR orders s slapped on them at the moment in our hospitals during this pandemic but that is accepted? When healthy autistic boy like Oliver McGowan -can be given anti psychotics which killed him despite his parents telling medics this would happen and that is brushed aside . We treat autistic people and their families with great cruelty and when this sort of tragedy happens we refuse to look at our hand in it.

Dad is a wealthy man who chose to move to Spain and leave his ex wife and profoundly disabled child living in vastly reduced circumstances and zero support.

Anyone who defends that kind of behaviour is the one who is illogical @5zeds

Absolutely right Clymene.

Agree. Despicable

Expensive flat, respite/special school, living with his mum???? It honestly doesn’t sound like he was doing a runner. You may all have more info than me but I know lots of families who live like this. A flight to Spain takes a couple of hours pre-Covid. He may be a total arsehole but the set up is unremarkable.

@5zeds

Expensive flat, respite/special school, living with his mum???? It honestly doesn’t sound like he was doing a runner. You may all have more info than me but I know lots of families who live like this. A flight to Spain takes a couple of hours pre-Covid. He may be a total arsehole but the set up is unremarkable.

All I can say is your bar is set very low @5zeds. And you are defending him, whatever you say.

@5zeds

Expensive flat, respite/special school, living with his mum???? It honestly doesn’t sound like he was doing a runner. You may all have more info than me but I know lots of families who live like this. A flight to Spain takes a couple of hours pre-Covid. He may be a total arsehole but the set up is unremarkable.

Olga was a lawyer prior to giving up her work to care for their child. I'd say that cheap for London 2 bedroom flat in Acton was more than paid enough by her herself.

She was also Russian and living away from any family who might have helped provide care, which makes the celebrity photographer father moving to Spain away from his disabled child even worse.

@Sunsun21

I have a lot to say about this as a single parent of autistic children I have endless compassion for Olga and her son. There is little help available and you have to jump through hoops, make yourself utterly vulnerable and exposed to access it and only to often have doors slammed in your face or to receive the sane useless referrals. No one can understand except those who have seen shades of this kind of autism in our children what it like to be cooped up with no support with a child who screams and self harms,not suffer endless sleep deprivation and isolation . To Love your child as deeply as any other mother abs to see their dreadful confusion and pain snd to not have any hope for them or for yourself. To be driven mad by sleep deprivation and worry for them. The ex husband made me so angry talking about visiting art galleries with this child who was severely autistic as if it were a a different boy. Fine for him to live his life abroad snd then be devastated . I bet he minimised and gaslighted her continually refusing to listen to what things were really like . And society also can on the one hand condemn and imprison this mother and on the other leave a child vulnerable to this sort of stress by tolerating the systematic destruction of the state which provides services to support vulnerable children and adults . Furthermore it is acceptable that learning disabled people are having DNR orders s slapped on them at the moment in our hospitals during this pandemic but that is accepted? When healthy autistic boy like Oliver McGowan -can be given anti psychotics which killed him despite his parents telling medics this would happen and that is brushed aside . We treat autistic people and their families with great cruelty and when this sort of tragedy happens we refuse to look at our hand in it.

Standing ovation for this post.

And all power to you Sunsun

@Sunsun21 brilliant and moving post. Thank you.

@Sunsun21 perfectly said x

Namechangedspecifically - I have thought about her almost every day since it came out in the news - I am so sorry for your friend . There will be many others like me. It is such a difficult thing and one which is not talked about. You are not allowed to talk too
Much about how hard it can be parenting a child with additional needs. Women are under great stress and strain. We are not all just baking and mending and making collages with the kids as this government flippantly suggests. She is not alone. There have been many more such deaths due to these lockdowns. The pitiful support for parents of children with additional needs and autism and the lack of inclusion and social opportunities for these children and their parents had been exacerbated by this pandemic but it is a longstanding and deeply unfair situation for which we will all pay as a society in the long term.

Sunsun21
🙏🙏👋

That absolutely ridiculous to say a person must have an absolutely identical experience to come to any judgement of actions

As that isn't what I said, this point is utterly irrelevant.

@5zeds

Expensive flat, respite/special school, living with his mum???? It honestly doesn’t sound like he was doing a runner. You may all have more info than me but I know lots of families who live like this. A flight to Spain takes a couple of hours pre-Covid. He may be a total arsehole but the set up is unremarkable.

That's not expensive for a flat in Acton, which is hardly a luxury area. Hard-won SEN provision and respite care which were removed arbitrarily and unlawfully are not the height of luxury either.

@5zeds

the lack of routine is crippling for autistic kids. for SOME autistic kids. Some of them are thriving without the stress/demands of school

Absolutely. But since Dylan clearly wasn't thriving, what exactly is the point of this?

@Arobase

That absolutely ridiculous to say a person must have an absolutely identical experience to come to any judgement of actions

As that isn't what I said, this point is utterly irrelevant.

Well it is what you meant when you said...... Unless your experience is identical to Olga Freeman's, up to and including susceptibility to severe depression and psychosis, you are no better qualified than anyone else to say she should have reacted differently.

@5zeds

If you have no experience of this level of disability/isolation/exhaustion then surely rather than telling those that do that they lack empathy when they try to highlight the victim not the killers experience is a bit like explaining racism to the BAME community if you are white or what it’s like to be a woman if you are male to a female? A child died. He was not a dog howling nor a list of challenges. He isn’t here anymore because a woman killed him. Now she may have been psychotic, and she may have lost the power to make anyone of the myriad of options she could have taken that didn’t involve killing a vulnerable child, but the way this is positioned, and written is awful.

Exactly right.

Absolutely. But since Dylan clearly wasn't thriving, what exactly is the point of this?

There isn't one - she just wants to keep arguing.

@Clymene
Is Olga guilty of killing her son? Absolutely. But Dylan's father and the support services which were snatched away from Dylan are also to blame. Yes Olga is guilty of manslaughter. No, Dylan’s father is not to blame, nor is Ms Surpickaja who provided 12hrs/week care for Dylan in his home even during the lockdown.

She didn't kill Dylan because she was at the end of her tether, or was fed up with him or because she decided it would be a mercy. She was psychotic.. No, she was not psychotic. If she had been, she would have been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder by now. She wasn’t. She was diagnosed by Dr Bird as having a “severe depressive episode with psychotic symptoms”. This diagnosis means that while she had symptoms, they did not reach the level to be called any of the psychotic disorders nor was she suffering from psychosis otherwise the Dr would have stated that. And depression is a mood disorder, not psychotic, So, no, she wasn’t psychotic at the time of Dylan’s death. She was in touch with reality she knew she was killing him and knew when he was dead.

So the only question here should be: was her psychosis preventable? And the answer to that seems to be probably yes. Which brings us back to who else was responsible. Since she didn’t actually have psychosis, then she was the one responsible for her actions, not the father hundreds of miles and an ocean away in Spain and not Ms Surpickaja, Dylan’s other carer.

@Clymene
saying that you have mental health issues but have managed not to kill your children is unbearably glib.

Hmmm. Well no, it’s the opposite, the assumption that those with psychotic disorders like mine are glibly expected to be violent murderers. There is a real stigma in society today that assumes we are more likely to harm or kill another person, when statistically that is not the case. We are only more likely to harm or kill our selves.

@nolongersurprised

After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, healthy individuals show symptoms of psychosis similar to those observed in schizophrenia, new research shows

And

Prior research shows that prolonged sleep deprivation can actually cause a syndrome indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia

Reposting from the study up thread. With schools closed, no father being actually useful, no respite she had no sleep.

True. And if Olga had that she would have been diagnosed with APS or Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome by Dr Bird. But she wasn’t.

APS is a syndrome characterized by sub-threshold psychotic symptoms (in severity or duration) and which was associated with a very significant increase in the risk of development of a full-fledged psychotic disorder (schizophrenia spectrum, psychotic mood disorder, and other psychotic disorders) within the next year.

Again, she was diagnosed with a “severe depressive episode with psychotic symptoms” meaning she was sub-threshold for actual psychosis.

I feel so sad for them both.
She was so sleep deprived and broken that she experienced psychosis...a mental illness that could happen to anyone..and could result in any of us doing terrible things...She had tried to seek support. I am suprised that there hasn't been many more cases like this due to lockdown and no provision for these families despite how vulnerable they are. Heatbreaking

APS is a syndrome characterized by sub-threshold psychotic symptoms (in severity or duration) and which was associated with a very significant increase in the risk of development of a full-fledged psychotic disorder (schizophrenia spectrum, psychotic mood disorder, and other psychotic disorders) within the next year

But, like all the psychotic diagnoses its diagnosis is dependant on the presence of the symptoms over a set period.

There’s nothing in the article to suggest that Olga had seen a psychiatrist for her deteriorating mental health. As far as I’m aware, all psych diagnoses that involve psychoses are dependent on duration of symptoms.

An assessing psychiatrist can’t give a specific psychotic diagnosis without some idea of the timeframe of symptoms.