1) does the alleged fact that his mother was mentally ill, he himself had attempted to commit suicide once, and his brother had also suffered from some sort of breakdown before (I get all of this from the brother’s Guardian interview) perhaps suggest that he did indeed have an inclination towards mental illness? Isn’t mental illness hereditary and don’t suicidal tendencies suggest that kind of inclination?

2) does the fact that he first asked for help and then didn’t keep his appointment, suggest that he was not really in need of help, but rather was exaggerating his mental state in the face of criminal charges? (so when he was offered help he didn’t bother to turn up)
or could it equally suggest that he was in two minds whether he needed help? (so he cried for help on one occasion, and was then in denial of needing it on another)

And blokes (it usually is blokes) who get referred for a mental health assessment just before they’re due up in court, particularly when they say “I think I need counselling. My mate’s having it”.

I do often wonder why I didn’t turn out like my two brothers; the best answer I’ve managed to come up with is that, since I was bullied more, I ended up with a simmering hatred of ‘that kind of person’, which gave me the energy to get an education and escape to more stable middle-class climes. I certainly don’t have a ‘social responsibility’ gene that they lack, or something equally fantastical.

Fiona Pilkington repeatedly asked for help (from the police rather than mental health services) due to the gangs who were abusing her, and killed herself and her daughter when it became all too much.

By comparison Raoul Moat only suggested he needed he needed psychiatric help on one occasion (as far as we know) and that was at a time when he was sitting in front of a bunch of social workers and police facing criminal charges. As I said in the original post, spend enough time in mental health and you quickly learn to be suspicious of people who suddenly declare, “Oh no, I need help with my mental health problem” when they’re in trouble with the cops. Besides, he was promptly offered a psych appointment and he didn’t attend it.

Incidentally, mental health services wouldn’t have been able to help Fiona Pilkington either unless the police had got their act together first. It’s widely-acknowledged that psychotherapy for ongoing abuse is completely useless. The first priority is to stop the abuse, and THEN you offer therapy.

As A.H. Halsey puts it in his foreword to “Families Without Fatherhood” :

“The children of parents who do not follow the traditional norm (i.e. taking on personal, active and long-term responsibility for the social upbringing of the children they generate) are thereby disadvantaged in many major aspects of their chances of living a successful life. On the evidence available such children tend to die earlier, to have more mental illness, to do less well at school, to exist at a lower level of nutrition, comfort and conviviality, to suffer more unemployment, to be more prone to deviance and crime, and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered.”

There’s nothing we can do about it, though. As Sunny so perceptively pointed out a month or so back, people who have children and don’t get married wouldn’t be any more likely to stay together if they DID marry each other. His conclusion is that people who don’t marry are just the kind of people with low commitment to the relationship, who are more likely to split (aka desert the kids), married or not !

unless siblings are identical, they are all subject to different environments

I don’t think you’ve quite grasped this genetics thing, have you?

It seems Mum was mentally ill – the interview describes some psychosis. Angus Moat alleges Mum was also emotionally abusive and didn’t show maternal warmth.

As Flowerpower says above, Angus Moat seems to have come out better-adjusted than Raoul – from the Guardian interview, that might be because apparently their step-Dad was physically abusive to Raoul but not to Angus. Even so, Angus describes struggling with his own demons. He refers to having been given nicknames like “Angry Angus” and “Anguish”, and has used antidepressants and psychotherapy.

What I dislike about the news reports is the suggestion that if Raoul had seen a shrink, then he would’t have committed the murders. Even with the best mental health services in the world (and Lord knows we haven’t got that), it simply isn’t realistic to expect psychiatry to be a giant social-engineering project that sorts out all the fucked-up aspects of the world. The brutal truth is sometimes fucked-up people do fucked-up things, and it can’t always be predicted if/when they’ll do them.

Besides, Raoul Moat was offered a psychiatric assessment, and he didn’t turn up.

I’m guessing he had too much caffeine. Or he lost some music reinstalling iTunes. Or he heard ‘My Family’ was coming back.

I’m yet to read any actual *informed* comment on Moat. I don’t need anyone to ‘guess’ on my behalf.

He had exactly the same family upbringing as Moate: dippy hippy mum; absent dad.

At the risk of stirring the nature vs nuture thing again – the two lads had different dads.

So basically your article spells out how social/mental health services can get it badly wrong and help create conditions for conditions at least similar to Moat’s

No, dysfunctional and social family conditions generally “help create conditions for conditions at least similar to Moat’s”.

People like Moat can be helped by social and mental health services – but only when they’re children. As I said, in the original post, “don’t feel that there’s much that psychiatry could have done to “help” him, unless interventions had taken place at a very young age.

Abuse can be stopped during childhood and post-abuse therapy can be provided, but that is not the same thing as expecting psychiatry to change the personality of a 37 year old man from a violent psychopath to that of a law-abiding citizen.

What seems to me to be the case with Moat is that the man was very serious trouble just waiting for the cork to blow. The responsibility for his crimes rests with him. But that doesn’t stop the medical and prison services looking at their actions too.

“There is evidence anyway that traditional treatments like psychotherapy make psychopaths worse.”

Where is this evidence?

Raoul Moat killed the guy who smacked Rihanna in the face?

Sounds like a fair cop to me.

(j/k)