Frenzied Bottom Feeders

Jami-Lee Ross In The Best Place

A week or so ago we were discussing with a colleague the trials and tribulations of one Jami-Lee Ross and the National Party.  We were bold enough at the time to suggest that Ross was possibly showing signs of manic behaviour that would only get more extreme over time until he received medical treatment.  Our boldness in making such an observation was based significantly upon our experience within our extended family of manic-depression.

Our experience has been such that we can testify that the affliction is no laughing matter.  We also have had experience of the difficulty of getting suitable and appropriate medical intervention.  The fundamental problem is that someone in a manic phase believes themselves to be the only rational person in the room.  Their heightened personality characteristics often make them seem to others to be truthful, compelling, insightful, clever, and far smarter than the average bear.  Getting that person to acknowledge they need medical help can be very, very difficult.  More often than not they are left "free" to go on their way, becoming more and more extreme in attitude and behaviour until they do serious damage to themselves or others.  The media's salivating over every word Ross has uttered in the past ten days had made this the more than likely outcome.

The law is structured in such a way as to presume the person in question is a free, responsible citizen.  Therefore, before police and medical specialists can become involved there is often a desperately difficult period when the afflicted person is left to their own devices.  It is a time of heightened risk.
  If, for example, they have a vehicle and a license such people are allowed to drive.  They (naturally) have a high degree of misplaced confidence in their abilities as a driver.  They can end up putting others, let alone themselves, in danger.

On the other hand, if they do themselves (and/or others) harm it can be the key to persuading the mental health authorities that involuntary apprehension will be justifiable in law.

When the relevant medical experts become sufficiently alarmed, they can arrange for the police to pick up ("arrest") the manic individual, who then can be involuntarily confined to a psych ward in a hospital. This is the stage now reached by Ross.  Such people do not lose all their civil rights, however.  They can request a hearing before a judge and argue their case for release from involuntary apprehension.  We have witnessed a judge make an absolutely stupid decision--releasing a manic person back into the community at great risk to himself and others.  At this point the wider family can do nothing but hunker down and wait for the next catastrophe which will warrant the police and health authorities to re-apply the Mental Health Act.  On the brighter side, however, most judges we have dealt with over such matters are both wise and experienced.

When consigned to the medical wards, the objective is to stabilize the patient under a regime of drugs which gradually eases the manic aspects.  The patient is able to return to a state much closer to normality, rather than living in a mental frame whereby they think themselves to be a Master of the Universe.  When this stabilization has occurred, the psychiatrists are then able to start working on longer term solutions that will allow the patient to return to the community.

As we noted above, if Jami-Lee Ross has been going through a manic episode, he is now in the best place possible for the moment.   Privacy, on the one hand, and support from family and close friends, along with continued treatment by the health authorities,  is vital at these and subsequent stages.

We fear, though, that the media will continue to hound Ross upon his release to the point that the work of the professionals will be rapidly undermined.   Will the sensationalist media behave?  We hope so.

We fear, however, that sensation and partisan politics will prove too much a pull for the frenzied bottom feeders.