Well this is just weird…WTH happened to this guy in 6 years

[Kaleidoscopia]

BBC charity removes promo video featuring Southport murder accused

Axel Rudakubana appeared, aged 11, as Doctor Who character in 2018 advert for BBC Children in Need

You will be delighted to hear then that you are utterly mistaken.

My dear, gentle, kind uncle was paranoid schizophrenic. He tried to strangle to death the 90 year old mother who had always stood by him, who he loved and also loved him. He almost succeded and went to hospital for a long time but she still firmly said "He's my son and I know he's ill and didn't mean it".

That is what extreme mental illness can look like. It is hell for all involved.

That's why they should be detained in a secure hospital

I don't know what happened here but the onset of acute mental illness in late adolescence is one of the saddest things to see.
I worked in Adolescent mental health. I saw more suicide from young people diagnosed with schizophrenia than harm to others, although I did see occasional incidences of severe harm to others.
I saw previously intelligent , apparently ordinary teenagers start to lose all interest and then experience terrifying delusions of acting on messages from aliens, being poisoned from vapour trails, seeing demons and insects in their food. Sometimes it took time for the problem to be taken as seriously as it needed to be.
The initial negative symptoms of schizophrenia before it became florid could feasibly be misdiagnosed as Autism.

Have you ever had one of the thoughts (there's a name I can't remember) where it pops into your head something like "throw the plate of food" or "drop the cup" or "turn the steering wheel"
Perfectly normal thoughts if you get them occasionally!

I started to get ones like this but more intrusive (I won't specify) and they scared me, but I was aware enough to walk straight to the doctors who saw me. It turned out to be a med I had been prescribed for another health condition interfering with my antidepressant

But they won't go away. So it could be something like "cats are going to kill you" but it's over and over in your brain and won't go away. It's the first thing you hear in the morning and last thing before you sleep, but you don't sleep as it's just this repeating itself over and over again. Add the lack of sleep and..

So how does that work? Did the new Home Secretary get a list of people who have previously indicated that they don't mind spending the rest of their life in prison and make a few phone calls saying "Fancy a bit of mass murdering"?

Or are you one of the people who thought that the Sandy Hook kids weren't actually dead?

I think you're very wrong about that, and show a lack of understanding of the complexity of mental illness.

Also, I don't think that he will be shown any 'leniency' if it's shown that he acted under the influence of an unchecked mental illness - it doesn't get you 'off', it gets you commited to a psychiatric hospital where you are held until you are no longer considered a threat.

"Authorities making this decision tend to be cautious, and as a result, defendants can often be institutionalized for longer than they would have been incarcerated in prison"

So, no, I don't think it's leniency you should be worried about, even if you were correct that people often go off their meds because they just 'choose' to.

I do too @Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong

I completely agree.
Until we sort out our woeful MH services, more incidents like this will be inevitable.

I have a 17 year old autistic son. He doesn't like his photo being taken and I and his friends respect that, taking photos without consent is really disrespectful. I hate having my photo taken too so there are naff all photos of me, certainly none on social media that the press could steal.

I find it bizarre how obsessed some people are with seeing his face now, like it is going to tell you anything about him or why he did as he did.

Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking about today (the brother). He is a straight A student at Uni.

Lots of people with mental illness sadly committ suicide every year.

No so they would be like government assets from very young. Like mt ultra project in america for example. I haven't looked at sandy hook in detail so don't have an opinion about it , but do I think false flag events take place to progess government agenda , regretfully yes . 911being a prime example

So this is completely speculative I know nothing about this tragic case but yes it is possible for actions taken as a result of a psychotic episode to be both complex and planned. What makes it psychosis is that the person has become unlinked from reality and is experiencing delusions +/- hallucinations. However the delusions and the behaviour they drive may be very complex.

Eg if this was in fact caused by psychosis eg secondary to schizophrenia the perpetrators experience could be something along the lines of knowing with certainty that Taylor Swift is the antichrist, this being supported by experiences of her speaking with you telepathically but also sending cryptic messages by television / media / song lyrics, seeing her with your own eyes transform into the form of a demon etc, knowing with certainty that children are a particular dance club are not children but are actual demons in disguise because you can literally hear them whispering in your head and you can see their true form etc, plus you may be receiving direct instructions from God (eg only this course of action can save the world) etc.

Clearly I have just made that up (purely speculative and one of a thousand possibilities) but that's the kind of experience people with psychosis can have - they may also be unable to rationally question their psychotic experiences (eg to ask themselves the question "is this real?") because their brain isnt functioning properly to even give them a chance of recognising reality - I guess a parallel would be to being in a dream (or rather a nightmare) where no matter how crazy it gets you aren't capable of asking whether it is a dream.

People with psychosis are generally averse to violence as are normal people and actually psychosis leading to violence against others is v v rare (psychosis leading to self harm or suicide is far more common). So sadly I think it is much more likely that this is essentially misogynistic terrorism.

However, if it is psychosis the offender truly isn't responsible and I have a great pity for him. Psychosis is not a "get out of jail free card" because actually 1) you're pretty likely to end up indefinitely in a high security forensic mental health unit with no end to your "sentence", 2) severe schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses have dreadful effects in themselves (emotional numbing, inability to function, loss of personality, frightening experiences including delusions, hallucinations) as do the (absolutely necessary) medications needed to treat them (medicines only really take away things like delusions and hallucinations and cant help as much with problems like feeling numb, slow thinking, apathy etc) - that's a life sentence in and of itself and you are also extremely likely to die prematurely, 3) if a reasonable measure of recovery and insight is possible (best case scenario) you are left with the appalling knowledge that you didn't actually kill demons but innocent children.

It's not easy/possible to fake psychosis and you wouldn't want to. You are better off just being a horrible terrorist criminal.

Many years ago when my brother was in uni he made friends with a young man his age who was part of their uni social group (they were all 18 or 19 yrs old), nice lad, into sports, smart and good student. One day Mr nice lad went to a store, bought a large knife, came back to the campus, walked to the dorms and killed a female class mate out of the blue, they were not romantically involved nor too close either. During psychiatric evaluation the young man turned to be schizophrenic (unbeknownst to him), had suffered a psychotic breakdown, didn't remember a thing of the brutal murder nor he knew why he did it. I'm not sure if he's still in jail or not as this happened long time ago ( it hit the news at the time). So yes, mental illness is usually quite common in these random attacks that make no sense whatsoever. In most cases of psychotic breakdowns the person will be hearing voices telling him/her the children playing infront of him are "evil beings out to get him" or some crazy lunacy of some sorts.

(by the way "Mr nice lad" was a white British boy, not that it really matters a mental illness affects people of all genders and etnicities)

Of which there are only 3.
The legacy of decades of underfunded services.

If they’ve committed a heinous crime. But you can’t lock up patients indefinitely just because they’re on anti-psychotic medication. Loads of them will never suffer from another episode, and even those with long-standing illness like my DM will have long periods of being well in between the relapses.

@Reedroo Exactly what I was thinking.

So when this kid was one year old, Gordon Brown's government paid his parents to raise him as a sleeper agent, so that if an incoming Labour government needed an excuse to bring in some draconian restrictions on personal liberty 16 years later, little Axel could be activated to murder some girls and then spend the rest of his life in prison for the cause.

Yes, that all sounds entirely plausible.

I think this needs discussed much more widely and openly.

Young, autistic men who are socially isolated tend to find their own communities online. They can be echo chambers and can be incel / far right/ radical Islam etc. The undercurrent in all is often misogyny and a feeling of rage at women for all sorts of reasons. Increasingly there seems to be a desire to be notorious.

It's also perfectly possible to have comorbidities like OCD, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

The one thing everyone will probably agree on - the current state of mental health provision in Britain is disastrously poor, especially for adolescents. Ask any parent who has sought help for a child. Unless they are actively self-harming they will be at the back of the queue.

Agreed, I think most posters will never have experienced the terror of someone having a manic or psychotic episode and so cannot reconcile it. You cannot reason logically with someone who is in the midst of this sort of health crisis, and often they are still very physically able and can carry out whatever delusion is in their head. My great aunt had bipolar, she walked out her terraced house leaving all the gas on, in her nightie and walked around an extremely insalubrious area known for drugs in the middle of the night singing at the top of her lungs. Fortunately she was found and neighbours phoned emergency gas company before anything happened to them or to her. But the alternative is pretty scary. My relatives used to dread the call from the police/hospital you name it. She would be ok for a while on meds but would soon stop taking them randomly due to the side effects and the cycle would start again as soon as she was stressed or triggered. The truth is the way the conservatives have run down the NHS and health and social care it's not flaming wonder we have these kinds of awful things in the increase. The help isn't there in the quantities and locations it's needed and COVID may even have increased mental health issues. More money needs to be spent urgently on mental health care. But there are so many areas in trouble too...the care system is another one.

I haven’t had updated training yet this year (we have it annually at work from various mh charities endorsed by the council) but a bell rang in my brain when hearing about ethnicity relating to mh issues.

From the well known source ‘the internet’. Black or Black British people. 23% of Black or Black British people will experience a common mental health problem in any given week. This compares to 17% of White British people [2].

Edit: the quote is from Mind.

Sadly I completely agree.

If it is schizophrenia then I don't think people here do understand. People with schizophrenia will often be being told by who they believe is another person (in their brain) to do dangerous things. This frequently includes injury to others and to themselves. Often this 'person' will promise great things if they do XYZ. It's not an excuse of mental illness, it's a dangerous disorder that makes people feel completely controlled and have no capacity to understand that the voices are not real. Same with psychosis.

We will have to see if this was mental illness or something else.