Sibulan Best Posts in Thread: Son who ate mother's entrails charged with parricide – Negros police

Good news! The gov. Filed a case and he is in the Dumaguete jail.

 

By law no suspect for any crime can be held for over 48 hours unless someone files a case. My close friend is a neighbor and swears they are all on alert because the monster is alone in the house. He says the police are on patrol watching closely.

 

Risk assessment is a tricky business in mental health care. Particularly if most folk knew who was on the streets in our own domiciles let alone the Phils. Natch, most days go by without an unfortunate event like this.

I know the place in Valencia and frankly I wouldn't ask many of the staff there to risk assess whether or not my two year nephew will wet himself overnight. There are some good people that work there. But risk assessing whether or not someone who's psychosis might be stable will take a street substance and then go murderously buang is a judgement call I don't think the resources are there for in the Phils. After all there are a million plus out there who take shabu regularly, some of these will go on to commit ghastly crimes too.

Knowing the place in Valencia, overcrowding, inhumane conditions, lack of resources ad infinitum possibly led to someone who was quite poorly but stable being 'released'. Said releasee necked/smoked/jabbed a psychosis inducing/exacerbating substance and folk sadly died. You can bet he won't be released ever again. I don't think anyone could have prevented this given the parlous state of mental health care in the Phils. It probably was a disaster foreseen and just waiting to happen.

C

 

Could it be that the cops are hoping the villagers will kill the monster? Are we sure that he was released or is it just a story? I can't imagine him being set loose. He is either loony and a danger to other, or he is a drug user who committed a major crime. Or some combination of both. None of that translates to putting him back on the street.

 

Whilst I generally agree that the war on drugs is a failure, that harm reduction strategies, legalisation/licensing of many drugs would be a possible step forward for the misery experienced by many users I think I need to provide some information here.

Yes, certain drugs do exacerbate underlying illnesses and/or 'bring them on'. Shabu or methamphetamine, cocaine and cannabis with a heavy THC content being but a few that come instantly to mind. In my career I've seen too many kids with psychosis that in my view was made worse by cannabis (generally seen as a relaxant, but more anxiolytic in property as any user would testify who has experienced paranoia!)

Amphets and their cousins stimulate, sleep deprive and exacerbate the centres of the brain associated with dysfunction (as seen in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery studies) in psychosis. No doubt this poor chaps psychosis was made worse by ingesting whatever he smoked/injected/swallowed.

In terms of why he wasn't on an atypical neuroleptic is easy to answer. A couple of years ago a poor lady in my baranguay endured first episode psychosis. No drug usage, just quite unusual...puepural psychosis...that's where post natal (or indeed very severe depression) can go.

Being the helpful sort I wrote to a local professional suggesting a certain compound for treatment. He went bananas at me as no Filipino patient he knows could afford this type of treatment. Having good intentions and no suss got me into hot water.

Anyway to cut a long story short, said lady is on an 'affordable' but not very effective compound now. Every now and again the family tell me they can't afford this treatment and would it be ok if they stopped/cut the dose? Aye, the Phils...yada yada.

Most psychotic patients are disabled by negative symptoms. They don't go on mad killing sprees. It looks to the layman like severe depression with a touch of the 'odd'. This was very unusual and no doubt made worse by street substances. A salutary warning to those that dabble.

Now, at the cutting edge, and not my field there are some 'creative' sorts at work in psychiatry as we speak using ketamine for treatment resistant very severe depression, MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin derivatives for a range of other disorders. Pretty out there stuff in my view and as a practitioner in the field I'm waiting on more large scale studies/approval by government/professional bodies before I reach for my pad in clinic.

Then again, who I am to preach? I probably ingest the most harmful drug on the planet too often and too excess. Now where's my Don Papa?

C