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PROMOTING EMOTIONAL HEALTH AND CLEAR THINKING
Editorial: Volume 8, No. 2 — 2001
Only connect ...
ALL too many of you may have missed a recent three-part Radio 4 series called ‘Forgive and forget?’ devised and presented by writer and journalist Melissa Benn. It was a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of the painful, sometimes empowering, sometimes impossible, process of forgiveness of those who have inflicted terrible pain, whether mental or physical, on others. Several of the voices heard were those of relatives of murder victims, or those working to help them. All expressed the relatives’ intense need to understand what drove the perpetrators to harm their loved ones.
One of the people interviewed was a man called Bobby, a former convicted armed robber. He now runs the charity Unlocked, which helps ex-prisoners and tries to keep young people from embarking on a life of crime. He made clear the inadequacy of conventional calls to treat violent criminals purely by removing them from society: “Those who say ‘lock ‘em up and hang ‘em’ are more psychopathic than we are. We need to look at causes, not just the effects.”
One would suppose that people who work in the caring professions would deem it important to take account of the kinds of circumstances which lead vulnerable individuals to turn to crime, or to inflict on others such pain as was once inflicted on them — indeed, to look at what motivates particular human behaviour. This issue contains two articles which describe powerful and effective approaches for helping child sex offenders acknowledge their own experiences as children and take responsibility for their crimes as adults (see pages 11 and 17). But we also highlight the tragic experience of many people labelled as suffering from psychopathy or personality disorder, which psychiatrists have opined to be untreatable, and who therefore, if violent, end up with prison sentences and no help (see How We Are page 2). Yet such ‘conditions’ are only untreatable if neither the individual nor the professional in charge is willing to look at the meaning of the behaviour. The result is that we end up wringing our hands helplessly when faced with the casualties of our failure to make the right interventions at the right time.
This applies in health care and social welfare and other areas of life, as much as it applies in crime. Dr Grahame Browne describes (on page 36) how asking the right questions can almost magically alter outcomes with sufferers from chronic musculo-skeletal disorders. Amanda Shields (page 30) shows how offering help to older people with physical difficulties before their problems become seriously disabling significantly improves their outlook on, and enjoyment of, life. (It sounds like pure common sense, but it isn’t often done.)
What is striking in such cases — and these are just a couple of examples — is how profound change can be set in motion in such simple ways. For Bobby of the charity Unlocked, the process of his turning his life around started with a probation officer’s offer, at personal risk, to take Bobby unhandcuffed to see his dying mother. (Bobby had been taken to the hospital to visit his mother once before but she was mortified that he was in handcuffs, so he had refused the chance to visit in handcuffs again.) The product of a seriously deprived childhood, Bobby had managed to carry out his crimes without a conscience because victims were seen as ‘rats’ (and referred to as such) and not as human beings. The probation officer’s selfless offer (“He had a lot to lose and nothing to gain. No one had ever done anything for me before”) enabled Bobby to start seeing — and connecting — with human beings again.
We can all relate to, and help, others more effectively when we eschew easy labels such as psychopath, heartsink patient or troublemaker, and connect with the human need that lies behind it.
The Editors
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