To hope William Cornick spends at least the next 50 years in prison if not the rest of his life.

[smokepole]

William Cornick should never be released from prison, for his horrific and brutal attack on Ann Maguire. The judge has sentenced him to a minimum sentence of 20 years, no doubt based on his age. However, despite his teenage years and the stupidity and thoughtlessness that comes from these years his crime was so appalling he should spend the rest of his life in prison.

The only country that sentences children to full life terms is the USA, that is called a injustice by most of the world , because it does not allow for rehabilitation of children. William Cornick can not be rehabilitated for this crime and despite what the European court of human rights will say , he should serve the maximum sentence available under English law "Life in Prison".

The parents of Cornick must be living in a nightmare, wondering how they have bred such an evil child and thinking they are to blame for not stopping him from committing this heinous crime.

I think the other kids just thought he was being a bit of a prat and showing off - no-one expected him to do what he did. My cousin's ds is in the school and was at primary school with him - he says when he heard it was Will his immediate reaction was that the person telling him must have got it wrong. In retrospect the signs might have been there, but he probably was not presenting any differently to his peers, family and teachers than any other moody and sometimes irrationally pissed off teenager.

I agree with the sentence, but think it's tragic and feel for both families. I don't know how you get beyond this, every day must feel like a nightmare.

Espii

I have worked in two of the three special hospitals. A lot of what you said is nonsense.

And mental illness is not a carte blanche rationale for the 'balance of mind' test. You have to prove that the mental illness caused the balance of their mind to be disturbed enough for them to not know right from wrong at that point in time.

People with mental illnesses that are affective may know this or they may not. People with mental illnesses that are psychotic may know this or them may not. A person with a personality disorder may know this or them may not. No psychiatrist or court of law relies on blanket theory.

Neither do we just 'drug up' people with antisocial personality disorder and there are decent non pharmaceutical treatments for PDs too.

Some very ill informed statements.

Those with personality disorders are extremely hard to help, you can basically only help them with meds, he doesn't need meds, he needs actual help.

espii, that goes against everything I have ever read about personality disorders. Normally it is said that meds don't help the personality disorder AT ALL. At most they can be used to treat things that are co-morbid with the PD, like depression or anxiety.

May

You are right. That statement is a load of crap. We do not 'drug them up.'

I agree Annie, and every book I have read on the subject agrees too. I have no idea where espii is getting her "facts", but she is very ill informed, yet passing her half cocked opinions off as facts. What she is saying is categorically wrong. She is saying that someone with (for the sake of argument) narcissistic personality disorder or borderline pd can only be treated/helped by taking drugs. And that is just wrong. No drug available anywhere in the world will cure (or even help) npd, bpd or any pd. At best drugs can be used to treat things that coexist along side pd's, like depression or anxiety, but only intensive therapy, and a willing patient, will help the actual pd.

I think Espii comes across as very young, very close to these events, and very shocked.

People also do not grasp that MH diagnoses are fluid and can change and develop. A broken leg or pneumonia are what they are. They may develop complication but essentially the aetiology is pretty standard.

However with people who have mental illness, a psychiatric team may completely revise their diagnosis or treatment because the psyche is such an individual and quirky thing.

Mayy - yes there is no definitive drug therapy for PDs. We also have to take into account the fact that there may well be a dual or triple or even quadruple diagnosis involved- a learning disability, a mental illness and a personality disorder. Oh and possibly self medication with drugs or alcohol too. Teasing out which is the chicken, which is the egg or indeed if there is one can take years. Also trying to ascertain which 'bit' of the illness or condition we are seeing at a given moment and therefore trying to treat is a whole other issue. It is not simple and what makes it worse is that kind of nonsense being bandied around.

Maybe she is, maybe she isn't BUT lots of us are shocked and close to it and manage to refrain from making such dangerous, sweeping assessments.

I think Espii comes across as very young, very close to these events, and very shocked

she stated the following

"I've read a lot about murderers as I work in law. I've watched documentaries, I've read books, so I know quite a lot about a murderer's personality."

The "I work in law, I know a lot about these kinds of things"

when she blatantly wrong

is just inexcusable.

No matter her age.

If people post that they are professionals working in MH, like Annie, or they are professionals working in the legal field, like espii, then I hold them to higher standards than I do other lay people.

if she just wants to have misinformed rant based on emotions, I am fine with that. But she shouldn't preface it with a summary of how educated she is on the subject.

Iwas

I would always encourage any service user to ensure they can question and even argue with their psychiatrist if need be :) It is absolutely acceptable that you should be able to ask them anything and if you feel you cannot, then your CPN or patient advocacy service should be able to help you. As an RMN I always encouraged my clients to question, to ask 'what is this drug and why am I swallowing it?' to debate negotiate and participate in their care plan. There should be no no room for the psychiatrists ego (or any other HCP's) to get in the way of care.

Certainly ask them to go through their process of differential diagnosis and show you how they arrived at their conclusions. Then you can start to clarify where you think you might diverge. To be honest, nobody will ever be a perfect fit. The criteria for diagnosis should only operate as a start point. Ideally.

Thanks Helen for that explanation as I didnt think I had said anything wrong, I did quote what someone else had said which I assume is the origicnal deletion because I wasnt sure if the poster was trying to be sarcastic or not.

Havent caught up with rest of thread yet but a few things taht stick in my mind is there is a whole range of different personality disorders, of which Psychopathic is just one. Im concerend this will increase public misconceptions about PD, especially Borderline PD, which might not be "curable" but is certainly treatable these days. And yes there is no durug for a personality disorder but drugs can treat the sypmtoms eg anxiety.

Iwas

Oh yes, service users like yourself can be a pleasure to work alongside- service users with agency and knowledge and assertiveness can threaten some HCPs sadly, especially when cuts have made time, tools and resources so scarce. It can be tempting to encourage patients to be compliant to make the 'job' easier but that is such a damaging and retrograde step. I did quit a while ago because I was mentally and physically exhausted but am slowly moving back into the clinical field and involved in activism too (although that doesn't tend to make one popular w. trust directors )

Apols for slight hijack too.

Regarding what Dinglethdragon said earlier (in response to another poster) about his classmates.

Firstly, I do not blame them at all. They must blame themselves though, and I feel very very sorry for them, especially the friend who was FB messaged with the exact plans. The burden of personal guilt he has been made to carry by Will Cornick is awful.

But what it made me query is that is it so normal for teenagers to be discussing violence, knives and murder that it made all the others just think "oh that's just Will being a prat" and not "I am totally shocked he just said that, it is so out of the ordinary that I feel the need to tell someone". I don't have teenagers so I don't know, but I am shocked by the possibility that what he said might have sounded normal enough that no one thought that he was serious. He was open about it and as far as we know it was just dismissed.

I would imagine if anyone had warned anyone about him, or if he was waiting for a referral or anything like that, it would be all over the papers by now with talk of "failings in the system". There has been no talk, so I can only assume that no one took him seriously because what he was saying was a fairly normal thing to say.

I do apologise for being misinformed, but i do recall them just giving my shizophrenic uncle drugs to make him feel normal and to not go on another episode.
Thats where that statement comes from.
thats my experience with MH.
I so apologise. really. I'm sorry. I was however speaking from experience and that is how I understand it. I never said I was educated on the subject, i simply meant that that is what I know, and that is what I understand about it.
I also mentioned he won't want the help, wouldn't that make it extremely hard to help him? personality disorder or not?

schizophrenia is not the same (or even similar to) a personality disorder

we put plaster casts on broken legs, we treat bacterial infections with antibiotics. But it would be pretty pointless to put a plaster cast on someone with a bacterial infection, or to give antibiotics to a person with a broken leg

as pointless as comparing a PD with schizophrenia

if your sole experience of mental health disorders is limited to one uncle with schizophrenia, then possibly saying something like "I work in law, I know a lot about the mindset of murderers" is misleading.

Schizophrenia is not a personality disorder - they are not remotely similar Espii but I appreciate your graciousness.

If somebody is deemed a risk to self or others then they can be assessed for a section under the mental health act which, if imposed, can compel a patient to take medication. But that can only be medication that is for that particular condition.

I have so much sympathy for the pupils to whom he showed the knife and who were warned not to say anything. What a terrible and revolting position they were put in. I suspect he chose who he disclosed to very carefully.

26Point2miles

I had similar thoughts to you i.e. how did he manage to get through most of his school years as an exemplary student and then change into someone capable of murdering a teacher.

The fact that he appeared to act normally until around puberty, which conincided with a diagnosis of diabetes, leads me to believe that he did not have a life long personality disorder and wasnt suffering from a condition that he had been born with such as sociopathy or psychpathy.

A lot of young people can experience sevre mental health problems around puberty and in their teens. Self-harming is more prevalent then than in younger children. It sounds as though this boy had friends and certainly wasnt ostracised by his classmates for appearing in anyway odd. I cannot believe that the school did not notice thatbhis behavior had become very disturbing as the threats he made appear to have been common knowledge within the school.

I was going to say that its surprising that he was still permitted to attend school when he had much such threates, but school can be very slowto deal properly when a student displays difficulties and the extent of this boys true problems were probably masked by the fact that he was intelligent and, until relatively recently, had been a model pupil.

If he is suffereing from psychosis that has emerged around puberty then he is clearly mentally ill. Medication will probably be able to control his symptoms. As for releasing him, he will probbaly be released one day. He has not been deemed mentally ill and committed to a secure hospital for an indefinte period. He has been dealt with as a sane crimminal. When a man who killed 3 policemen in cold blood is realeased, then it is almost a certainty that this young man will one day be released.

He didn't have an exemplary childhood- there were lots of little signs BUT the lack of mental health input in schools cannot help in the missing of such signals.

He also had an episode of self harm.

LilAnnie so you think the other pupils had suspicions he would follow through on his threats and were, quite understandably, afraid to report him as a result? As opposed to thinking that he was just using empty threats?

When I was at school, I had a knife pulled on me. I laughed, walked off and never reported it because I genuinly believed (and was right) that it was all just bravo. I can't remember why I didn't report it anyway, but it was probably because the school never took anything seriously anyway.

No I don't. But having read the medical testimony and that of others, it is clear that he was far from the problem free, happy pupil the papers would like him depicted as to fit into their 'monster from nowhere' narrative.

I feel huge sympathy for the pupils but I place no blame upon them for what they did or did not do. They are children and why should they be more equipped to spot or manage a potential problem that was so subtle, many adults missed it?