To have some sympathy for Nicola Edgington?

[lougle]

Report from BBC

This woman had killed before. She knew she was a danger to the public. She dialled 999 four times to tell them that she needed sectioning to prevent a killing.

I know she did what she did. I can't imagine what her victims' families are going through.

I do feel some sympathy for her though. She tried to get herself out of circulation.

thanks for posting that snowy, that was a very balanced and interesting read people should read to establish the full facts surrounding what the officers on that day did and didnt do.

i do not routinely pnc check everyone i come into contact with. maybe i should start but then the need to justify them increases. within our force using the radio is discouraged to save money and we rely heavily on other devices which can often fail.

Hmm Bridget, I think your comments about BPD are a little offensive! I same old stereotypes about how 'they're manipulative, they're attention seeking, they only care about what they want'. I have lots of personal and professional experience with working with patients with PD and the way they are spoken about and treated is appalling. They are the most discriminated patient group in mh services by a country mile, and comments like yours, and the judges in this case, only serve to reinforce these ignorant attitudes.

Obviously BPD is a v different illness to schizophrenia but they do have psychotic episodes, hence the term 'borderline' as they were supposed to be on the line between psychotic and neurotic and show traits of both.

Just because she had BPD doesn't mean she wasn't genuinely having a psychotic episode and was therefore not responsible for her actions. People with BPD ( and there are several mnetters with this dx) have enough shame and self-hatred as it is without comments like yours adding to the negativity and stigma.

Thanks snowy that was a really good analysis of what happened. I hate the fact that the police are blamed for everything in the media when they are just the last port of call when every other agency has failed.

I agree with that JaceyBee.

The implication is that BPD is a choice

JaceyBee, thanks for that explanation of why BPD is called that. I've often wondered.

Thanks vicar:
i do not routinely pnc check everyone i come into contact with. maybe i should start but then the need to justify them increases. within our force using the radio is discouraged to save money and we rely heavily on other devices which can often fail.
It's outrageous that cost should be a factor in checking on people's background.

That blog post is interesting.

yet more incompetence and pathetic excuses from those in 'authority' who should be doing their jobs.

and yet it will keep happening, they never seem to learn.

to vicar and plum. It's always interesting to hear your views.

thank you.

plom and my posts echoed each others so very closely and yet we were writing them at almost the same time....it is a vicious circle and a very sad one, and one faced by police and NHS not to mention all other partner agencies up and down the country.

today i looked at applying for another job within council services for the youth offending service....thought it would be a good move and not such a huge leap from the police to that....bear with me - there is a point to this.....

so i rang up and enquired about it. It was a full time position, looked good. Untill i was basically told that now funding for youths who are remanded in custody has to come from council budgets thanks to a change in legislation recently, so that the role was basically to argue a case for the council to prevent young offenders being remanded in custody. To argue that the risks could be managed within the community.

so now i see why some of our more 'delightful' young offenders can, for example, seriously assault an elderly gent with rocks, hospitalising him with serious injuries, and still be out wandering the streets to cause more mayhem mere days later while awaiting sentence.

it seemed the polar opposite of what i do now. But just as frustrating no doubt. in the end i didnt bother applying.

everything is coming down to ££££££. it doesnt seem to matter whats at stake.

JaceyBee, thanks for clear explanation.

It really gets my goat when people try to draw a line between 'manipulative', mentally ill people and 'normal' people. If we define 'manipulative' as 'behaving in a specific way to get what you want', I have never met a 'normal' person who was not manipulative attention-seeker. Even naice people.

Surely the difference is that 'normal' people have learnt socially acceptable ways of manipulating people to get the attention we all so sorely need (reciprocal relationships; a bit of give and take) that 'abnormal' people, through illness or bad luck, haven't had chance to learn?

Two things happen then, which make the situation worse. The first thing is that 'abnormal' people behave oddly, so 'normal' people are even less inclined to be warm towards them - which exacerbates the odd behaviour. The second is that the 'abnormal' person doesn't get 'fed' in the way that we get 'fed', a zillion times a day - by the returned smile, the 'how are you', etc etc. So the need for attention - and hence the odd behaviour - grows.

MH is about relationships, not 'normal' people vs. 'abnormal' people.

That's not the same as saying no one is responsible for their actions.

I think this makes sense.

It's only called borderline personality disorder in the DSM TheCat, in the ICD they call it 'emotionally unstable personality disorder' which is a bit more what it says on the tin, although no less pejorative!

Pestkontrol your point about manipulation is spot on, couldn't have put it better myself. Of course we all manipulate people to get what we want! We'd be fairly screwed if we couldn't! To me, when used in those terms it smacks of 'faking it' which is utter bullshit.

Reading through this thread and the blog that was linked earlier has touched me.

I don't have much to add to the debate despite agreeing that there are some huge issues here that boil down (it seems) to budgets, culture and responsibility, unfortunately I don't see any solution in the mess presented.

I would like to say though, that the police who have commented here and on the blog have struck me as incredibly caring people. Frustrated, worn down and angry, but always at the heart of their comments is a genuine concern (bordering on despair) for the people with MH issues that they are dealing with.

The frustration is palpable, but the pure humanity is commendable. If nothing else can be taken away from your careers that is something that you should all take pride in.

I entirely agree with Iamsparkly :) I feel very privileged to get 'your side of the story'. It's so enlightening (and vicar, I really hope you find your 'home' very soon)

I will say again that when i was very ill - the policemen who came to my house were very caring & helpful, I was scared when i knew they were outside but they had a lot of empathy & that reassured me a lot.

My sister's a nurse in a MH trust. She's had patients attack people because they know perfectly well it's the only way to get back into the system. A patient attacked her for that reason, leaving her with permanent hearing loss. It's frightening. Some patients are manipulative but good grief, it's a ludicrous system where someone has to be manipulative in order to be taken to a place of safety when they are at risk of harming themselves or others - that's what sectioning is for, fgs!

(On a happier note, a psychiatrist once recounted the story of a patient who would probably qualify as manipulative - when an innocent young GP was called out to section the patient, he turned up in a flash BMW and parked it at the bottom of this patient's block of flats, in a not-very-desirable area. Patient threatened the GP, got hold of his car keys, jumped out of the window and drove off in the flash car!)

I think that the reason i didn't get the help i needed for my mental illness for months was because i'm not a manipulative person ironically!

Ha love it.
But honestly we can't fill our beds with everyone who says they will harm themselves or others. There just isn't enough beds. But scarily if you walked around a psych ward you'd equally know half the patients don't actually need to be there, they just know which buttons to press to get themselves a bed.
The difference here obviously is she killed before, and 6 yrs that doesn't seem long at all and probably but time the trial went through, then it would have been more like 5. 5 or 6 yrs doesn't seem like a long time to treat someone and rehabilitate them following somerhing so serious as killing your own mother, and her poor poor mother, to be killed by your own child is awful.

the system failed the victim not the murderer.

I think there's a difference between having an understanding of the fact that it is often mental illness that drives people to kill other people. In fact I think it can be assumed that on the whole, murderers are not of sound mind, and having sympathy for said murderers. Harold Shipman, foor instance, was well documented as having a personality disorder and adiction issues, yet I don't see anyone having sympathy for the fact he murdered 300 plus of his patients, or Fred West for having murdered however many people he did, or Ian Brady for murdering the children he did, or Peter Sutcliffe... Having asked for help doesn't negate the fact she consciously went on to kill someone - in cold blood - purely because she could.

She should never have been released in the first place, and IMO should never be released again.

Yes the system failed, but I do not have sympathy for someone who can tell the authorities she is going to kill someone and then goes out and does it.

The system was in the wrong for not having prevented a murder, but the fact the murder happened was still the responsibility of the murderer.

TheSecondComing i hope your friend gets better; those suicidal thoughts do go eventually or lessen, at least.

I was told that the only person stopping me from killing myself was me - that's how helpful the CMHT were.

Now i'm only getting those feelings occasionally, hopefully your friend will start to recover at some point too.