Two Tuesdays ago [9 July 2019] I read a book called Geeks, genes and the evolution of Asperger syndrome [2018: University of New Mexico Press].
Geeks and genes is an evolutionary developmental non-fiction work written by Dean Falk, Hale G Smith Professor at the Florida State University, and a senior scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Eve Penelope Schofield who is a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing and publishing at the Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
Eve spent the years between 4 and 15 [1995-2006] in the USA and she spent her 16th and 17th years at a school where lots of Aspies go.
On pages 155-58 of Geeks, genes and the evolution of Asperger Syndrome, Schofield says
[...]I had a good and fun childhood with only a few things that needed improving, but I have some specific suggestions[...]
These suggestions include
controlled interactions in inclusion and mainstreaming programmes [155] {Eve attended 3 mainstream schools}
if the first bullet point cannot be done; specific schooling can be done
find a school which has a foreign language or cultures programme - Eve studied French and Spanish in her middle school and Japanese on her own through her passion for anime
encourage use of interests
figure out what you want to do by middle school
sporting activities - Eve does tae kwon do [156-7]
don't handle the emotional development by yourself
On page 158, Schofield says:
"Gran [Dean Falk] asked me to make a list of what parents of children with Asperger syndrome need to know, or do, to help their children have a good future. This is what I wrote":
Aspies may not always understand what is being talked about around them.
They may sometimes dominate conversations.
They may have specific coping strategies or habits which seem disconcerting or strange to others. Let them do these things.
Some tastes or textures in food will cause Aspies to say they strongly dislike them.
Some hypersensitivity may remain from when they were younger.
By the time they are teenagers, some Aspies may have come out of their shell a little socially, but that doesn't mean they are ready for serious relationships with the opposite sex.
There may still be problems with temper control.
Be gentle about shifting them out of a high-concentration state of mind. They might not take being interrupted well.
Be careful with your language. Aspies might take what you say seriously.
Try to limit teasing. Because even if affectionate; they may not like it.
Try to encourage their scientific interests.
Try to forewarn them against severe changes in routine.
Try to give Aspies their own space.
Try to involve them in the real world instead of letting them languish in their minds.
Push them to learn some life skills so that they can become independent.
Give Aspies as much love as possible.
The videos on this blog in order: Father and Son by Yusuf Islam; Cat's in the Cradle; The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics; It's my life by Bon Jovi in Bucharest.
Fiedler is interviewing him and having a conversation.
He is talking about the farm and the kangaroos and feral animals who live there.
He has an apartment in Kings Cross.
“Does living on a property change the way you see the world?”
When he was small he tilled the soil with donkeys and no motor vehicle or electronic appliances.
LNL is a wireless programme.
William Smith Adams - what you saw is what you got - no fragmentation of the personality.
These days people have multiple personality disorder - change and reconfigure and …. In contrast Grandpa was just grandpa.
He had a quiet wisdom and tranquility.
Bob Ellis called it the curse of interruption. - now is a great neon lit search lit sign which lasts a neurosecond -ahem, a nanosecond!
Reverend Charles Adams.
Sue Ellen Smith was Adams’ Mum. She came from Maryborough or did they live there?
Phil is two years old. His dad is writing a sermon. There is this vast thunderous noise and he looks up through the peppercorn trees and the sky is on fire.
He crashed through this door - thunder and lightning - he went to his father for comfort.
His first memory is apocalyptical.
“How so,” asks Fidler.
“A terrible sense of dread and mortality”.
A tiny farm on the outskirts of Melbourne - he was about four when it happened - and he was terrified of death and infinity and mortality.
It was dreadful and full of terror.
Christianity was the family business - he tried to believe in Charles’ god and failed miserably.
The Congregational Manse.
He joined the Communist party when he was 15 years old. 1954.
He felt the sting of poverty? Was everyone poor around?
The whole area was gentrified and something.
He went to school in badly hand-made clothing and a bike he was ashamed still to have pedalled.
Bullied for being an oddball and for being poor.
Kerry Packer was called a boofhead - so was Phillip Adams!
Reverend Charles called him Headling as a middle name. Kid with the big bum called Bottomley - it was like that.
A large papier-mâché head which he filled with brains - he didn’t quite decide to fill his head like that.
The only safe escape was books for Philip - the East Kew subbranch of the library.
Grandma and Grandad would send 2 romance books form the street - and also William books he would read for the 50th time and Biggles too.
The librarian went up the step and took Philip an adult book - The Grapes of Wrath.
All kids feel the battle and victimhood of injustice - something systemic and significant.
Your life is a walk in the park compared to others.
Mother partnered with a sleepy businessman who was abusive and violent.
His father didn’t protect him when his life was appalling - father was weak and appalling.
He broke off relations with his father and never spoke for 30-40 years until he died.
The poor businessman - PA made a bonfire of the PB/SB with his mother - at least his stuff.
Michael Burke is the guy’s name. Al Garnett character - ignorant and offensively unpleasant.
He must have been some kind of anti-father. And he tried to murder Philip - he was not a nice person.
Philip tried to protect his mother. He died too easily and painfully from a heart attack.
It was a ceremonial bonfire - suits; Lodge apron; [he was a Freemason]
Fidler’s dad could not bear to see a kid in a bad situation - and Philip supports children’ refuges like the Emblings.
The playground was not a playground - it was a little “hell on earth”.
The cruelty of children on each other - child-on-child abuse. It was just as bad as adult-on-kid abuse.
Blend and merge at the end of every school day.
With incredible shame - Mongoloid would be hanging out on the swings and PA and friends would pick on him.
The first refugee kids were arriving from Europe - PA was 6 to 14 when it was all happening. [1945-1953]
A shamed memory of what children do to children.
How did Philip choose to be an optimist? Not going to live that wounded self - a larger; more enthusiastic life.
On the cosmic level - you live in a meaningless universe without purpose - you give it a subjective meaning - meaning in another sense.
Philip’s meaning was trying to seek and find judgement. He was radicalised.
Comedy and humour was another radicalising and cathartic force for Philip - love is more congenial on balance.
Laughter contains great truths and he was a columnist for everyone - very inclusive
John Clarke had a genius for a compassionate satire.
He left because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary when he was 17 [1956].
Then you put a concentration camp on the utopia and it gets bigger and bigger and the utopia gets smaller and smaller.
A monumental claim collapses from its own contradictions.
-ology became suspect.
He was expelled? resigned? it was a time of chaos - it was the Prague Spring which was the final straw in 1968. That was when he was 29.
He stumbled into the Labor Party and was very embroiled in it.
More recently he resigned in a huff about the Kevin Rudd coup.
Rudd doesn’t have many friends - Philip is one of them.
Utopianism is mad and nuts and it leads to greed, grief and unintended consequences.
The most sterile and capitalistic endeavour you can be in - advertising.
The demands of the huge multinational clients - every boutique agency is run by an ex-Communism and Trotskyist.
The cunning plan to offer things people can’t afford. Manipulating the masses.
The late 1950s and 1960s - Australia had no film industry and there was ONE Australian play - that would be Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
An odd Australian Council in advertising agencies - Schepsisi and Carey and Bruce Petty.
Amazing things done with the Australian film industry with Gorton and onwards.
The conquest of Australia House! Snags being cooked!
“How did you get away with stuff like that?”
“Nothing like a camera with you to engender resistance”.
Beresford/Humphries/Adams and Bazza McKenzie and the government executive. The GE was on the phone.
Please try to avoid too many Australian colloquialisms.
He was very proud that he kept his promise - Knock your dunny down into the grass.
“This is a family show”.
Converted them back into proper English - shove your head up in the dead bear’s bum. And the correct English translation is stuff your cranium…
Then we talk about the major columns in THE AUSTRALIAN and THE AGE.
Newspapers didn’t used to have columns -they were news wall-to-wall.
Graham Perkin was a legend - “Newspapers are in their dotage, don’t you realise,” said Philip Adams.
“Our newspapers will become a sagging lump.
“They’ve already seen the news and it’s on flipping television”.
Perkin took that on board and Adams was the first columnist for the Age.
He wrote about meaninglessness and could do this at intense and extensive length.
He had two pages in the Age and was encouraged to ramble.
John Singleton said he was a million words in desperate need of an editor.
And everyone else was doing it too - and he got lots and lots of letters.
There are 600 boxes of correspondence which are in the bowels of the National Library in Canberra.
They were in the farm in the shearing shed and rats were gobbling them up.
He would get some 20,000 letters. He would answer them all with his dictaphone.
Invariably now the letters are e-mailed.
He never wrote a poem - he dictated it.
We would go to the Bulletin or the Nation Review and he would do the same with correspondent.
How does he deal with abusive letters?
Bill Leak had a terrible letter from Timms - “Your offer that I should marry your daughter interested me greatly. Please send photo” he said as reply.
Which arsehole did it come off?
To this day it was delivered in perfect order from Australia Post - they can’t even deliver a Compact Disc without breaking it!
Did it have some structural integrity to it?!
Fidler was in a comedy group when he was younger.
and 2GB was when PA was working - “Total vision is a passing fad. Radio will outlive the passing parade like a cockroach”.
“radio was like two of you the guest and the listener sitting at a small table”.
That is why Gladys was invented - it wasn’t a joke about low ratings.
It’s a truth - it’s not a mass medium - it’s not like television - that broadcast energy.
You’re not shouting like - it amplifies the human ego - look at the shock jock phenomenon.
Don’t beat visitors or listeners with a point of view or your point of view.
Fidler can’t think of another guy like Adams [Adams is a bunch of guys, yes?].
2UE was considered a radio hellhole - RN was considered a Station of Lecturers.
Robyn Williams is an awesome science communicator since the 1970s and 1980s.
When he arrived at Radio National - it still talked to people like a university lecturer talked to a student. philip thought it was wrong.
Honorifics: forget them! Address the guest by their first name.
Then you’ve got to be two people talking - remind them how important they are at first.
You take people as you find them in an Australian egalitarian way.
Oh, yes, the book of australian jokes - the Hawke joke.
“There are 2 corpses on the Hawke library - one is a wallaby and one is a politician”
“There are skid marks on the wallaby”.
Isn’t that fantastic in that irreverence? So was Keating especially about Gough Whitlam.
PA collects ex-Prime-Ministers. And diplomats who have to behave themselves in office and then they tell the truth ex-officio.
They tend to be wounded - and yes politics is a very cruel profession.
When Keating was reduced to human rubble.
Rudd did not leave the political process entirely unfazed or unscathed.
And, yes politicians do age at this accelerated rate.
You’d swear it was 20 after 5 or 10 years leaving office.
Advice from J Lang - watch how politicians treat drivers cleaners waiters nurse flight attendants.
And Keating DID marry a flight attendant - Annita Iersel.
80th birthday - people express great happiness when he bounces back from the grave.
A question to Ita - Ita is not in the first flush of youth herself.
Alan Jones admit to being just 70.
John Laws is 85.
Someone is 95 and still on the air [1923, right?].
Australians are not good at #talkingaboutdeath
We say that they’ve passed away or passed.
They will the sentence to be over as soon as it’s said.
Humanity is bad about talking about death.
Refusing to admit to its reality leads to pyramids and cathedrals.
As long as we deny death/prolong life as far as possible we will not be fully human.
Life is all too brief - to waste an hour of it is a blasphemy.
Stop deflecting and stop pretending and live in the moment and rejoice in it.
The chance of us being here is vanishing remote - it relied on the dinosaur asteroid.
The spilled seed in copulation. We can’t really be here - and yet we are. Enjoy it.
The fact that anything exists at all - carbon molecules organising themselves in to diamonds.
“Tahnk heavens’.
Living next door to Kerry Packer who was a fellow atheist.
He hated plutocrats on principle.
A $10,000 investment for The getting of wisdom - Packer can you pay for it? Invest it?
The excuse to visit in Melbourne Adams’ office - and there were several alpha males.
It’s 100000 or nothing. And then there was the cheque corrected.
For dinner in this working class restaurant in the Cross.
Kerry was a very serious dyslexic and he found reading impossible. So he became an interrogated who sucked information out of anybody.
About 3am in the morning he wanted to know What was a black hole and Adams quoted Stephen Hawking.
That’s what I’ve got inside me - a black hole.
The kids John and Heather Embling looked after - so was Kerry Packer damaged by a monster father.
Adams’ attitude really softened and then they became best friends.
Adams was Packer’s closet confidant - closest, I mean.
His choice was beyond bleak - don’t do it to James!
Don’t make it into an intergenerational issue - but James is seriously mentally ill - and he has the Packer curse in spades.
1648 - the slide into authoritarian leaders. Putin; Duterte; Trump - a lot of these people are ELECTED!
Could Australia elect authoritarian leader or leaders?
Kicking a the norms of democratic behaviour.
Someone who was born a week after he was - July 1939 - by this leader.
JOHN WINSTON HOWARD. The appalling treatment of refugees. Involvement in the horror of the War in Iraq.
In complete definiace of what the public wanted - the mass marches.
The perverted killing. He chose to accept the nonsense by Dubya and Bliar.
Trump hasn’t done anything really bad - yet.
Prorogue the parliament - advise the Tax Department - advise the police to attack the political enemies.
Violence against democracy - it is in peril.
He jokes when he talks about the United States as a failed state.
Comparatively healthy democracy like Australia.
“Do you still look at the Universe with Awe and Fear”?
“Wonderment and dread” - his wonderment has increased.
The test of a great idea is that its opposite - life is short and it is very long. You can do amazing things in your lifestyle.
The little boy who was terrified of fire and thunder still live-in 80-year-old Philip.
There are more stars than there are grains of sand in Earth. Billions of suns and moons out in the universe.
Many people still believe that God has a role in it or it is.
He can understand the need.
Fidler grew up with science fiction - travelling from planet to planet like country to country.
The distances between planets - a powerful idea! The vast unspeakable gulf between planets in the solar system.
We’re just beginning to understand the Great Paradoxes that advanced brains cannot even begin to comprehend.
It numbs the mind and it exhilarates. It is a dazzling fireworks display.
How is space able to bend? He puts his head up against this idea [Fidler] - it is a contra intuitiveness which doesn’t put against our cave brain.
They stair at their computer screens - they fill their time with their smartphones.
A lack of curiosity - an interest in the Kardashians - more than a cosmic adventure with a rocketship.
A wacky idea - in the future you could upload their consciousness - PA would be up for that - he doesn’t doubt - he’s more interested in artificial intelligence - hand on evolutionary process to others.
Humans will be pets and playthings for advanced robotic creators that look on us with sentiment.
He doesn’t want to have his future uploaded - a pseudoeternal life.
He doesn’t want to be stuck in heaven with people who he has successfully avoided.
Most people will be in Hell - Israel Folau said that - PA was on the list three times.
How are things better than they were when you were a young man?
Favourite aphorism and story - Pablo Casals was 80 and he survived the Spanish Civil War - press conference in Madrid - cogitating and complaining about the terrible mess of the world.
How the world was cuffed - he stopped when he heard his own voice hanging in the air.
Two sentences cannot fit together - they do it perfectly. “The situation is hopeless - we must take the next step”.
That is the whopper - we must take the next step.
We cannot surrender to it - it is the human nature to make things better.
Remaining curious is the best shield against depression and ennui [Fidler].
And knowing nothing is also interesting.
He wrote a list of things that he knew nothing about - astronomy to zoology.
He knows less and less as the common human knowledge increases.
A sense of defeatism and excitement and intensified curiosity.
“I will no longer be permitted to be curious and I will be curious that I’m no longer curious”.
PA’s favourite theme - Wombat Waltz by Elena Kats-Chernin.
I know her very well from Out of tune: the myth of Shine.
She was able to help the Helfgott family around the time Shine was starting to be really famous - Les and Margaret in particular were very affected by the lies/libel on the person of the late Elias Peter Helfgott [1916-1975 z.d.] during the years he was teaching David and Margaret music and the late 1960s and early 1970s before his death.
At the time [1997-98] she represented SANE Australia and the Schizophrenia Fellowship.
I think she was part of ARAFEMI for a while too - and all these organisations became Wellways.
[twenty-six minutes into the hour - twenty minutes after JM] Pershall begins.
She has an American accent of course. [she grew up in Iowa? Idaho?]
“Mrs Pershall you made a statement to the Royal Commission”.
She talks about the exposure to the mental health system in Victoria through her daughter Anna.
Sit forward a little bit! Commissioners need to hear!
She is 30 [turning 31 this year/2019] - she has a really good relationship with her family and has positive work.
Dame Phyllis [Frost] Centre is a maximum security prison.
She killed someone.
Commissioner asks about Anna’s early years - and early childhood. Signs and symptoms.
Before she went to school she was a delightful and happy child who looked like a little fairy - she was off with the fairies.
She never begged people for toys - she asked for re-runs of the Addams family.
She wanted a hand that got things for you.
She was surprised when Anna asked for this thing.
Anna hated school from the beginning. She had been so happy before school.
After school she would cry.
Partly because she preferred to imagine things in the backyard with Duplo characters and she didn’t like being told what to do in a structured environment.
They didn’t appreciate her spider fantasies - she would prattle on - the children isolated and ostracised her.
She wasn’t physically bullied the Pershalls didn’t take it seriously [there is Mary and Katie her elder sister and maybe a father].
Being shut off the group was a hard thing for Anna’s development brain.
In early high school everyone else was trying to fit in. Anna tried to be happy.
Her family wanted her to smile and be happy at home.
When she was 14 [2002] she restricted her intake of food. Mary didn’t take too much - she has beautiful skin and didn’t want acne and had always been skinny.
Anorexia was around body image - Anna had never been concerned.
Watermelon and diet Pepsi was her diet - she agreed to go to the paed in the RCH.
Her condition was compromised - her heart was on a monitor at night. It was a shock!
She was treated as an outpatient until she was 18 and received excellent care and Mary is grateful to the health system.
She was seen once a week and the doctor is still in contact. For an hour each time - she was protective of that relationship and valued it highly.
She saw a RCH counsellor. [thirty-three minutes into the hour - seven minutes after the start]
Her teens were not trouble-free. She did find a friend and she was very attached to this friend - she would do anything to keep this friend on side.
She and her friend were walking down the street. Enraged Anna so much that the friend was paying attention to someone else
She kicked a thick plate glass window and the police called twice.
Anna had been train-surfing to impress this friend.
Setting boundaries was a message to Pershall - the counsellor was a support to John and Mary - especially the train surfing incident.
Anna is putting her life at risk - she is staying up most of the night. She was 16.
The summer before she went into year 11.
You have to go to bed at 2130 or 2200 - she agreed - Mary was uneasy.
There was a roll of bedding to look like a body - Anna had run away at 2300.
“Teenage runaway”
She had lived with her friends dad on the other side of the river with her friend.
She returned in time to begin year 11.
Pershall talks about those couple of years at uni which were her best.
She went to a senior secondary college and made more friends who appreciated her individuality intelligence and quirky sense of humour.
She went to university to study psychology and met a devoted young man. They still love each other to this day.
She became so sick that it didn’t work out.
They had hope that when she had been in so much pain - as she matured they hope it would get easier for her.
Third year of university - she started to say that people didn’t like her at university any more and it was too hard.
“Just get your degree - I won’t nag you to do anything else,” said her father.
Expected by family and others to get a job or do her studies [postgraduate].
She just didn’t know how to be an adult. [Let her be the kid she could never be!]
Promised her they wouldn’t nag her - she was still living with the boyfriend and the mother.
And they moved into the boyfriends’ house.
She stopped living with him. He still adored her-he couldn’t do anything with her.
Intelligent girl with a good vocabulary. Our tools were words; do this; try this.
We realised she was deteroriating with acholo and drugs.
She moved back when she was 24 - the extent of her a[lcohol] and d[rug use].
She didn’t have a glass of wine at night with her family.
It was mostly synthetic cannabis and she smoked bong after bong.
She moved home after a year living that kind of life until she was 25-ish?
She had a few markers - auditory and visual hallucinations - childhood fantasies?
Mental health was always fragile.
Cannaboids were very harmful to her brain.
An activity - getting dressed up and going on the train. That was one activity she enjoyed.
She looked a lot younger than she was - a size 14 child’s dress in Kmart.
She put on lots of makeup and was very attractive and her method was to talk to random guys and start a conversation.
They would give her drugs and attention and she would live with them.
John and Mary and Katrina wouldn’t know where she was.
She would be gone for days.
Towards the end of 2013 a man gave her ice on the train.
It was a terrible period - she came back a few days later in a very fearful state.
Look what this guy has done to me - cigarette burns.
Self-injury and she really liked ice and this guy.
She rang in a distress state - he’s holding me captive. I went to a neighbour’s house.
She was 95 kilometres away.
She went back to him a few days later.
He was going to kill her? That was the Pershall worry.
They could not restrain her - she had to let go.
Katie was the sister - calling the police - trying to get help through the mental health system.
Attach the words mental health to Anna - alleviate her pain they did their best.
She was slipping away further and further - there was no way to help her.
Reached out again to Dr D - hooked in with systems.
[So I missed about ten minutes of the livestream].
There is something about a box of knives and sharp edges. It is a constant strain.
December 2014 she was using ice - she couldn’t live in the home any longer.
She was scheduled to detox - she would get the maximum amount if she went blotto - for the 3rd time.
She would hook up with people on the Internet and dating sites so people could see her - they were drug addicts.
When was he going to come back?
Scary to be afraid in your own home.
They were apprehensive of her - Katie received calls that the parents were replaced by imposters.
These evil incarnations - [is this splitting?]
She was headed off to detox and met a guy for the weekend and smoking a lot of ice.
Someone rang and accused of horrible things. They had it they were exhausted.
You can’t live with us any more - the last time she was in the Pershall house.
She was admitted to a locked psychiatric ward - she couldn’t control herself and the Pershalls couldn’t.
3 hours later - she was in the emergency ward - she was picked up naked in a service station in Footscray.
They tracked down the service station and the nice young man who had been on duty - she walked in and asked if she could use the restroom and was totally naked.
And stripped by the door and was seen by people working at the service station and people used it.
There were gangs after Anna who would take her - yet she wanted to be in the ward which she was for one week.
She was transferred later on to an involuntary ward - they had a plan to put her there after a while.
As soon as she got into the ward. She was picked up by an older man and she was taken away - they had no say and it was such a disappointment; they were horrified.
“Why weren’t we involved?" She wasn’t capable of making a decision - the guy took her for that reason - he was a security guide.
He was known through a carers’ group - hours of respite so John and Mary had time to themselves.
Then the older man and Anna had a romantic relationship.
Saturday night in the middle of winter - very angry about not being able to go home.
DIdn’t speak to Mary for a few weeks - neither did Jim.
In the emergency ward again - admitted under the Mental Health Act.
If you meet her there you will be able to see her. Mary was excited because she would see Anna again.
the SG said it’s not visiting hours? You’re not allowed here?
Mary had to go away - nothing she could do - one more disappointment.
Flash forward a few days: when she went to the psychiatric ward during visiting hours.
There was lots of coughing and microphone feedback.
There was a guy on shift and got to know Anna - secure psychiatric care - he would do anything and everything she could.
What a predicament - she couldn’t look after herself.
“I need to stay here. I need the help they are giving” the PiC - “you can’t have a bed just because you want it”.
Go to a boarding house - go to Jim’s place. Things were stolen at boarding houses and Anna felt unsafe for that reason.
the PiC that night - “Can’t you keep her?”
“If you care so much about your daughter, why don’t you take her home”?
Mary had other people to consider - Jim had to kick her out.
Briefly describe the time Anna lived at the older gentleman’s house - the man who ended up being killed.
She had an endless supply of guys she knew - they met at detox - he knew a place in the outer suburbs - older man sublet his rooms - Anna ended up there.
It was an interesting place - it was in disarray - a vibrant community around this older man.
Mary came to know the O[lder]M[an] quite well. He had a lot of very close friends who spent time in the kitchen watching SBS and yelling in various tongues and drinking lots of sweet white wine.
Mary mentions in her statement - how many times the guys called the police to stop Anna attacking them?
It was at least twice that she knows about. They called the police - they didn’t retaliate.
She’d shown - she could be strong and violent - that window when she was an anorexic teenager.
She had this powerful anger - she wanted this house when she was quite stable - she wanted the guys to clean it- she got violent when she wouldn’t.
Mary got to know the guys - this girl doesn’t need to be arrested, said one guy.
She didn’t receive any treatment - Anna herself spoke about being afraid of her violent outbursts.
She called Mary - ‘I can’t believe it Mum” - she said his name - what am I going to do? - she knew she wasn’t in control of herself.
We couldn’t get it and she couldn’t get it.
22 November 2015
Anna was pregnant - four months pregnant - she had really tried to do the right thing because she wanted the baby and to get healthy.
She tried not to drink or do drugs.
Lots of voices in her head - synthetic marijuana - they told her awful things and never went away.
Alcohol and prescription medication too - she tried not to use these substances.
She ran out of weed and cigarettes.
Katie did her prescriptions for Anna - she never used it as it was supposed to - she did take it to sleep.
Her brain just imploded.
A call from the police - expected a “dead call”.
It was a “killed someone else’ call.
That time on she has been in custody the last three and a half years as of July 2019.
She serves 17 years - 13 years non-parole.
“As it turns out that prison life is better for Anna than I hoped”.
Partly because she has structure imposed on her.
High dose of antipsychotics and Lithium and antidepressants.
She feels she is actually learning to have relationships.
No-one asks her about her drivers licence or jobs - she does prison jobs.
She can work on how to get along with other people.
The relationship we all have - she can relate to her sister as a sister rather than as a carer.
She could never have a conversation - she talks about her interests. Wait and try to bring her out.
And she is very well-liked in prison and they get help with various English assignments.
Given your experience - what changes do you see necessary? [commissioner question]
Think about children and they can actually have a mental illness - it didn’t occur at the time.
Quiet children who don’t demand attention. - when they get into crisis there is an approach where families can be listened to.
They were never listened to or consulted.
Dismissed as drama queens - exaggerating the extent of Anna’s problems.
As a family there should have been much better accomodation - crisis and longer in a secure environment.
Strange people and getting drunk.
Stabilise and rational decisions.
Anna will always need support to be an active contributing member of our society.
Other people in her position - it will cost a lot of money.
A lot of money to be in prison because of similar issues.
Pershall is excused.
Commissioner question:
Dual diagnosis of mental illness and addiction - what would improve in these scenarios?
Three years ago when they were trying to get help they found it extremely frustrating that they tried to get her in the residential centre for those with addictions; she as turned away because she had mental illness.
She found a place in a park and she was relieved. She got a few residential weeks of care.
She might not have enough Seroquel - she stuffed it into her underpants.
Against the rules - you can’t be here.
She was turned away from both places because of the thing they didn’t treat.
May the witness be excused?
Lunch break. [fifteen minutes at the top of the next hour].
