Dear Muslim community leaders, (placing the politics of Iraq aside, I am pro-victims and don’t side with any oppressor regimes) before condemning a brother who has committed a heinous act, please understand the nature of his mental illness. The Australian authorities and the media have conveniently dismissed the fact of his illness when condemning Khaled Sharrouf, but you all have jumped on the same bandwagon towing their condemnation lines that inadvertently plays in the hands of the war of terror narrative, and that Islam is an evil religion. Just the other day, former army chief Peter Leahy’s made a provocative warning that Australia should prepare for a 100-year ¬battle with Islamic radicals intent on terrorist attacks. We have enough psychologists, specialised to consult with the community who could have explained the nature of this mental illness to you all and to give you a clear indication that untreated, Khaled was merely acting out behaviours that are consistent with being in an acute phase of psychosis. It was only last year in Bankstown, that a brother who was also experiencing a psychotic episode decapitated his father’s head as well. Yet, condemnations came rolling in one by one with no foresight into the nature of such psychiatric conditions. Why? For whom do your press releases benefit? It definitely does not benefit us at all and we are merely doing what they expect us to do, condemn and distance. When was the last time you saw other communities were following the same apologies that we give. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric condition, a mental illness. It affects the normal functioning of the brain, interfering and disrupting with a person’s ability to think, feel and act. Whilst some people can improve and recover completely over time, for many others, it is a prolonged mental illness, which can involve years of distressing symptoms and disability. When people suffering from schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate treatment to manage their symptoms they will experience persistent symptoms of a psychotic nature. They will experience whilst acutely ill, confused and disordered thinking, delusions of a false belief which is not held by others of the same cultural backgrounds, and hallucinations where they see, hear, feel, smell or taste something that is not actually there. The hallucination are often those of disembodied voices which no one else can hear. If he were charged in any court, he most probably would have been cleared from understanding the nature of his offences at the time of committing them (but still jailed) on the grounds of his mental illness at the time of committing those offences if he was not taking his medications. Its not as if he has a pharmaceutical depot available to him in Iraq that will enable him to be treated and managed with anti-psychotic medication. End of clinical and forensic psychologist rant.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 03:15:01 +0000
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