AI
Saturday, July 30, 2011 1:32:09 AM
Many faces of evil
Des Houghton
From: The Courier-Mail
July 30, 2011 12:01AM
THEY'RE OUT THERE: There are many faces of evil like that of Norway killer Anders
Breivik. Picture: AP Source: AP
ANDERS Behring Breivik, the supercilious psycho who calmly slaughtered 76 innocents in Norway, is not a one-off.
'Killers learn from other killers'
In fact, there are an unknown number in Australia who could be like him.
The chilling warning comes from Peter Neame, one of Australia's most experienced psychiatric nurses and author of books on suicide and the predatory behaviour of the criminally insane.
Neame has been nursing violent inmates for more than 30 years and believes the de-institutionalisation of the mentally ill has gone too far, exposing the community to dangerous lunatics like Breivik.
"People think that mentally ill patients are better off at home in the care of their families, and for 90 per cent of sufferers that is so," Neame says.
"The other 10 per cent need long-term care and need to be committed - whether their families like it or not.
"The community has to be protected from them."
Neame, 60, president of the Goodna branch of the Queensland Nurses' Union and an office bearer with the anti-suicide lobby White Wreath, says there are seriously ill people just like Breivik who have slipped through the mental health safety net in Australia.
They are misfits and loners sitting quietly at home, nursing grandiose, destructive delusions.
In his demented state, 32-year-old Breivik saw himself as a Christian warrior, not an ultra-right jihadist.
He wore ornate military uniforms but was not a member of any military organisation.
"They might appear normal but a small percentage of mentally ill people are programmed to kill," says Neame.
"The ancient Greeks have a word for it: thanatos, meaning death force.
"It's completely opposite to normal behaviour. Remember that most of us want to live happily and enjoy our lives. We are intrinsically programmed to live. Even if we are badly hurt in a road accident and are unconscious, our bodies will fight to stay alive.
"Some seriously paranoid, delusional people are exactly the opposite. They have no scruples, they are hard-wired to kill from conception. I imagine Breivik is like that.
"They are particularly dangerous because they wrongly believe they have the moral authority to kill.
"The believe God is on their side.
"In their delusional state they believe they are right and the rest of the world is wrong."
Neame sees similarities in behaviour between other mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh, Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski and our own killing machine, Martin Bryant.
And there is a copycat phenomenon.
"We all learn from one another," he says.
"Killers learn from other killers, and mass killers learn from other mass killers."
McVeigh's apocalyptic anger against his own government led him to construct a bomb which killed 149 adults and 19 children in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Sentenced to execution, he died declaring: "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."
Unabomber Kaczynski, a neo-luddite mathematician, carried out a mail bombing spree in the US that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.
Bryant's murderous rampage at Port Arthur in 1996 was one of the most deadly - until Breivik came along.
Bryant was convicted of murdering 35 people and injuring 21 others in the Tasmanian massacre.
He is serving 35 life sentences plus 1035 years without parole in the psychiatric wing of Risdon Prison in Hobart.
Like Bryant, Breivik planned his assault meticulously, and chose a most vulnerable group to target.
It seems to be the philosophy of many misguided terrorists: Why hunt tigers when there are so many lambs for slaughter?
Neame says one section of Breivik's 1500-page manifesto was plagiarised from a similar tirade by Kaczynski.
Breivik described himself as a Knight Crusader against multiculturalism but was a depressed loner who, like Bryant, had troubles while growing up.
Breivik appears to have been deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about Islam's supposed threat to Western civilisation.
But Neame believes it is not really about Islam, God or politics.
"It has nothing to do with Islam or multiculturalism," he says.
"I detect a lack of lines in his facial expressions. That indicates to me
he has severe neurological problems. That is the key to mental illness."
So we can forget the inflammatory political rhetoric. It's pathological, not ideological.
Neame adds: "People who harbour paranoid ideas are extremely dangerous because some time down the track they may act on those delusions.
"In the 1970s we said these people can be managed and be sent safely back into society. To my mind this is demonstrably untrue."
He says studies from the US to Sweden have found that 0.5 per cent of any population are chronically violent and psychiatrically disturbed.
They should be identified and held indefinitely.
And perhaps the terrible Norway tragedy will highlight flaws in our own mental health system.
Neame is critical of the frontline assessment of disturbed people, especially those contemplating suicide who are taken to hospital emergency wards.
Mental health examinations are not rigorous enough, he says, and often involve a pat question-and-answer session.
"Breivik would have flown through his Q and A," he says. "It's very likely they would have found no evidence of mental health problems at all."
Neame says well-meaning attempts to remove the stigma from mental illness by keeping people out of hospital have backfired. In the 1960s there were hundreds of beds set aside in psych wards. "Now there are no medium to long-term mental health beds set aside in hospitals where patients can be properly assessed," he says.
Instead, the jails have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill, he says. He says nearly every homeless person sleeping rough in Queensland has a mental illness.
Neame also believes the suicide rate would drop 50 per cent if all suicidal people were admitted to hospital for a two to four-week assessment.
He crunched the numbers for Australia and New Zealand when researching a book.
"For every bed closed, more than seven people die by suicide and more than one by murder," he wrote in 1997.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/des-houghton-many-faces-of-evil/story-fn6ck620-1226104571117
Qualification: repeat Breivik was sane enough to write his manifest, and to email so many just before his 'insane' acts.
Sane enough to be tried as such, imo, and an eventual result as Bryant's would be most just.
Des Houghton
From: The Courier-Mail
July 30, 2011 12:01AM
THEY'RE OUT THERE: There are many faces of evil like that of Norway killer Anders
Breivik. Picture: AP Source: AP
ANDERS Behring Breivik, the supercilious psycho who calmly slaughtered 76 innocents in Norway, is not a one-off.
'Killers learn from other killers'
In fact, there are an unknown number in Australia who could be like him.
The chilling warning comes from Peter Neame, one of Australia's most experienced psychiatric nurses and author of books on suicide and the predatory behaviour of the criminally insane.
Neame has been nursing violent inmates for more than 30 years and believes the de-institutionalisation of the mentally ill has gone too far, exposing the community to dangerous lunatics like Breivik.
"People think that mentally ill patients are better off at home in the care of their families, and for 90 per cent of sufferers that is so," Neame says.
"The other 10 per cent need long-term care and need to be committed - whether their families like it or not.
"The community has to be protected from them."
Neame, 60, president of the Goodna branch of the Queensland Nurses' Union and an office bearer with the anti-suicide lobby White Wreath, says there are seriously ill people just like Breivik who have slipped through the mental health safety net in Australia.
They are misfits and loners sitting quietly at home, nursing grandiose, destructive delusions.
In his demented state, 32-year-old Breivik saw himself as a Christian warrior, not an ultra-right jihadist.
He wore ornate military uniforms but was not a member of any military organisation.
"They might appear normal but a small percentage of mentally ill people are programmed to kill," says Neame.
"The ancient Greeks have a word for it: thanatos, meaning death force.
"It's completely opposite to normal behaviour. Remember that most of us want to live happily and enjoy our lives. We are intrinsically programmed to live. Even if we are badly hurt in a road accident and are unconscious, our bodies will fight to stay alive.
"Some seriously paranoid, delusional people are exactly the opposite. They have no scruples, they are hard-wired to kill from conception. I imagine Breivik is like that.
"They are particularly dangerous because they wrongly believe they have the moral authority to kill.
"The believe God is on their side.
"In their delusional state they believe they are right and the rest of the world is wrong."
Neame sees similarities in behaviour between other mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh, Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski and our own killing machine, Martin Bryant.
And there is a copycat phenomenon.
"We all learn from one another," he says.
"Killers learn from other killers, and mass killers learn from other mass killers."
McVeigh's apocalyptic anger against his own government led him to construct a bomb which killed 149 adults and 19 children in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Sentenced to execution, he died declaring: "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."
Unabomber Kaczynski, a neo-luddite mathematician, carried out a mail bombing spree in the US that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.
Bryant's murderous rampage at Port Arthur in 1996 was one of the most deadly - until Breivik came along.
Bryant was convicted of murdering 35 people and injuring 21 others in the Tasmanian massacre.
He is serving 35 life sentences plus 1035 years without parole in the psychiatric wing of Risdon Prison in Hobart.
Like Bryant, Breivik planned his assault meticulously, and chose a most vulnerable group to target.
It seems to be the philosophy of many misguided terrorists: Why hunt tigers when there are so many lambs for slaughter?
Neame says one section of Breivik's 1500-page manifesto was plagiarised from a similar tirade by Kaczynski.
Breivik described himself as a Knight Crusader against multiculturalism but was a depressed loner who, like Bryant, had troubles while growing up.
Breivik appears to have been deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about Islam's supposed threat to Western civilisation.
But Neame believes it is not really about Islam, God or politics.
"It has nothing to do with Islam or multiculturalism," he says.
"I detect a lack of lines in his facial expressions. That indicates to me
he has severe neurological problems. That is the key to mental illness."
So we can forget the inflammatory political rhetoric. It's pathological, not ideological.
Neame adds: "People who harbour paranoid ideas are extremely dangerous because some time down the track they may act on those delusions.
"In the 1970s we said these people can be managed and be sent safely back into society. To my mind this is demonstrably untrue."
He says studies from the US to Sweden have found that 0.5 per cent of any population are chronically violent and psychiatrically disturbed.
They should be identified and held indefinitely.
And perhaps the terrible Norway tragedy will highlight flaws in our own mental health system.
Neame is critical of the frontline assessment of disturbed people, especially those contemplating suicide who are taken to hospital emergency wards.
Mental health examinations are not rigorous enough, he says, and often involve a pat question-and-answer session.
"Breivik would have flown through his Q and A," he says. "It's very likely they would have found no evidence of mental health problems at all."
Neame says well-meaning attempts to remove the stigma from mental illness by keeping people out of hospital have backfired. In the 1960s there were hundreds of beds set aside in psych wards. "Now there are no medium to long-term mental health beds set aside in hospitals where patients can be properly assessed," he says.
Instead, the jails have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill, he says. He says nearly every homeless person sleeping rough in Queensland has a mental illness.
Neame also believes the suicide rate would drop 50 per cent if all suicidal people were admitted to hospital for a two to four-week assessment.
He crunched the numbers for Australia and New Zealand when researching a book.
"For every bed closed, more than seven people die by suicide and more than one by murder," he wrote in 1997.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/des-houghton-many-faces-of-evil/story-fn6ck620-1226104571117
Qualification: repeat Breivik was sane enough to write his manifest, and to email so many just before his 'insane' acts.
Sane enough to be tried as such, imo, and an eventual result as Bryant's would be most just.
Discover What Traders Are Watching
Explore small cap ideas before they hit the headlines.
