Schizophrenia; Care or jail-time?

Left to Right; Frank and Gerard about 1942!

Last night’s 4 Corners program on the ABC featured the story of a young man who after many years of abhorrent behaviour ended up killing 6 people. It traced his days as a young boy who went through school whereby according to the friends and teachers he already showed up as a boy who was different, with strange behaviours who was increasingly becoming more and more erratic and dangerous. At 14 years of age the school went into lock-down as he had taken detonators to school. He gave as reason;  to blow up the school and get even with his fellow students for picking on him.

https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/time-bomb/11196092

James Gargasoulas was a troubled young man. The ABC decided to spend seven months on the story in order to point out that the tragedy not only could have been, but should have been avoided. It was clear that his spree of crime and violence was well known to the police and for some years. Nothing was done about him and one wonders why when the signs were so overwhelming and his behaviour so unpredictable that nothing was done to try and find out why his behaviour was so unpredictable. Why did it not get picked up that his mental state was in need of serious diagnoses and given some kind of mental examination and care? The only thing sure was the continuation and repeat of his unpredictable behaviour. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia but none-the- less sent to life-time jail. He killed 6 people. It seems that the only place for mentally ill people who commit violence in Australia is jail.

This whole episode brought back the story of my own brother, Frank. He too was unpredictable and given to bouts of rage and violence. His behaviour too started well before adulthood. He too stood out and was different. His behaviour became unmanageable for my parents and at one stage after have stabbed one of my brothers with scissors was taken in and put in a mental hospital. This was back around 1958 or so, when Frank was just 19, and I was one year younger. His stay in that mental institution was something out of the middle ages or Bedlam. He would be wrapped in wet blankets to try and subdue him! Wardens would walk around with keys dangling from belts. I am just regaling memories of a period when I too was still a young man.

(Right) My dear brother Frank in Holland, a few month before he passed away.

It was a horrible situation.  Our family suffered badly during that period. There was (as so often) a Royal Commission in the affairs of that Mental Hospital, Callan Park, but nothing improved. I am not sure if mental health has improved in the intervening decades! I doubt it. The episode of James  Gargasoulas is proof that mentally ill people remain undiagnosed and not given due care, no matter what happens, and what terrible deeds result from their unpredictable nature due to that illness.

At one stage my brother Frank jumped from a bridge and badly mangled his foot. After many years of bureaucratic battles my parents managed to get him back to Holland where conditions for mentally sick people already then were much better. For the rest of his life he was given good care and was no danger to others or himself. He spent a lifetime in a care institution where he would be managed  and looked after as well as possible. He would be given good care for his physical well being. He had an income for his cigarettes, clothes, or whatever he wanted. He had his own room with TV and suitable mobility equipment towards his latter years. He died almost two years ago aged 79. Below is a photo taken a few moths before he passed away. His life was not wonderful but he was given good care.

Frank could easily have ended up like the poor boy from Coober Pedy, James Gargasoulas now in jail. He killed six innocent people. It could have been avoided!

Aged Care.

An old man in Sydney

Hold onto your seatbelts folks, it’s going to be a rough ride. This Monday a TV programme on ABC 4 Corners will feature the state of Australia’s Aged Care. It will be broadcast in two sessions. Something to look forward to during the following Monday evening as well. The Government getting wind of this program, decided to now have a Royal Commission into aged care. Royal Commissions are made to quieten down things.  It shows the Government ‘doing’ something. We sometime get a bit restless and there is nothing like a Royal Commission for the Government to subdue us into passive acceptance of whatever might be happening.

Aged care has always been the weedy neglected garden of few countries, including Australia. If you survived the years of receiving the miserable pension, you have been well warmed up for the end of it all in a retirement village. Many of you would have seen the footage of several videos on TV whereby elderly aged-care recipients were bashed up or assaulted.  The videos were a result of family members’ concern that often their elderly parents showed repeated bruising or festering wounds. A daughter or son would install a secret camera hoping to catch the assault and have it as proof. In many cases it showed assaults taking place. Police took action and a paddy wagon was shown whereby the nurse was led into. That’s just one case where he was caught.

How often does this happen? I can’t say I look forward to that kind of journey.  If it happens I will not keep any slippers near my bed or other implements that might get used as weapons to attack me. Certainly not hard cover books, magazines, hard fruit, coconuts. Just imagine getting hit over the head by a copy ‘Of Human Bondage.’

It is more a reason to stay well away from nursing homes no matter how well they advertise themselves. I don’t believe footage of an elderly retiree around the communal aged care home ‘The Setting Sun’,  sipping a chardonnay while swirling around with a svelte 89 year old. The elderly gent is more likely to get bashed up by his own slippers as shown in one video where an enraged nurse hoed into the defenceless old man.

It’s not getting any easier. Is it?

Milo in the fox trap. “2017 is knocking”

A few more days and it will all be over, but don’t let this fool you. Anything is still possible! Christmas time is as unholy as ever. It seems that even football is now to be avoided at all costs. This, the latest of sexual abuse in the English speaking world;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_football_sexual_abuse_scandal

Twenty police forces are now investigating! Can you believe it? What is it? Is it something in the English fish-chips?

” By mid December, in response to allegations from 350 individuals, The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, several football clubs and over 20 UK police forces had established various inquiries and investigations; on 21 December 2016, 155 potential suspects were said to be involved in alleged abuse of 429 individuals at 148 clubs.”

Mind you, Australia is also at the forefront and riddled with sex scandals. No school, no matter how exclusive or expensive has been found lacking with ‘School Masters’ ( a silly title if ever there was) sexually abusing their students. In fact the more exclusive the worse it seems to get. Cranbrook, Kings College, Scots College. They all queue up like tin soldiers. Former students are fronting up in Royal Commissions telling of their dreadful abuse by former teachers. Headmasters were flat out confessing they should have put a stop to it. But…they did not! One teacher after years of abusing students was finally sacked but given a glowing reference and a handsome pay-out figure. Can you believe it.?

I just thought to update you of the latest, before year’s turning.

I spoke with Harley next door giving condolences for the loss of his beloved chickens. That’s the thing with foxes. They are cruel and kill for the sheer fun of it. It’s not as if they kill and eat one for hunger. Just like us humans really. Kill for fun. The Syrian massacres the latest sample of killing for the sake of killing. A horrible dance macabre. A bacchanalian killing field. And then those serious black suited men sitting around conference tables arranging buses and tut tutting about peace?

Anyway, poor Harley felt a bit rotten about it all. His faithful but dead Barnevelders laying and lying all over the place. (but not with eggs) ‘For once I did not lock them in’, he said looking me in the eyes, a trace of guilt. It reminded me of how the foxes had struck many times on our farm. Dead ducks, chickens and so often too. Foxes, at least the Australian variety, can climb fences. We ended up with the chicken pens having wire over the top as well. A fortress type enclosure was the only way to go. Yet, rarely would one see a fox. You could spend years living in the outback, never see a fox.

As a last resort we bought a strong wire cage as a fox trap. It had a trap door that would clamp shut after the fox had entered to get to his prey. We were told to put in a dead bird and to handle the cage wearing gloves. Any human scent would deter the canny fox. They are smart. Nothing happened. No fox ever trapped. One morning I checked and poor Milo our Jack Russell was inside the trap, looking sheepish. At least he hadn’t touched the duck. It was too smelly. When we sold the farm it must have found a new owner.

Milo in a fox trap. Oh dear!

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. (Publishers)

Frank on the left. Gerard with hair sticking up. In Rotterdam.

Nothing tried nothing gained!

As someone has pointed out before, WordPress is a form of self- publishing already. Why go through another version and paying for it? True, but my default position has always been the joy of writing down words. It probably dates back to my days of queuing up for confession before finding out that the old priest enjoyed Ma paw and her five nimble daughters just as  much as I did. Fancy signing up for a vow of life-long celibacy at fifteen before becoming a man of the cloth? Is it any wonder they used to whack school children mercilessly and revengefully with the strap or bamboo stick.  They were the benevolent ‘Brothers’ teaching at de La Salle colleges all over the joint. The guilt, and ‘that’ guilt that lingers for a life-time. They now queue up at Royal Commissions with the victims wanting justice and re-dress. But I am straying.

Even though the joy of writing is the reason, I am not that much without vanity to not actually linger fondly over the idea of my words getting published on pages of a book. It must be supremely satisfying to notice a complete stranger picking up ones book and leafing through it. Can you imagine?

This is why through the last week or so, I have been honing the synopsis of the book, ‘Almost There.’. It has to be as good as possible. Even the first few words might well determine a further read or a delete. Editors do that and get paid for it. Manuscripts sail rough seas and in many cases end up on rocky shores shared by depressed sea-gulls. They might well be tempted by snippets of some of those lost words.

So, over and over the synopsis I go. I have decided to send the final version to forty publishers in forty days. It could well be within the law of averages that I get a bite. In the (likely?) scenario that nothing comes of it, my second default position will then kick in.  I’ll pay for a nicely bound with large lettering book to be published by G.O.

In the meantime I find it all very exciting.  So, for starters I submitted to HarperCollins already and this Monday it will be Hachette’s turn with an improved version of the synopsis and fifty pages of the edited version of the book. We shall see!

I have finally, after almost coming to blows with my dear Helvi, managed to get the Amazon Kindle on my computer transferred to a portable device. It took weeks and no matter how often I pressed Sync., it refused to walk over to my laptop Kindle. I searched for an answer but found none. My laptop still doesn’t sync with my computer. It comes up with mysterious messages of an ‘unregistered Certificate.’ I tried everything but finally joined Amazon.com.aus  again separately on the laptop and transferred the bought copies of books by Roderick Hart and Hilary Custance Green. I can now read them at my leisure and don’t have to sit in front of the upstairs computer. I look forward to some solid reading of both writers. I like both already.