Uncouth Reflections

Atypical Neurotic writes:

When I first heard of this on Monday evening, I was in very little doubt about what had happened, especially about the likely identity of the perpetrator and the reason for the crime. This is also the second time in ten years the same thing happened in the same part of the country. People are hopping mad.

This is yet another case where tragedy and farce need to by plied apart by Occam’s crowbar. But of course they won’t be.

In this particular instance, a South Sudanese national whose application for asylum had been rejected this summer was relocated to a refugee center in the western fjords pending being returned to Spain. Spain was his point of entry into the Schengen Area and where he had first applied for asylum. Under the Dublin II rules, he was required to return to Spain to await the outcome of the application process there. Instead, like so many others, he decided to go “asylum shopping”. What he did not know is that there was virtually no chance that his application for asylum in Norway would be accepted. According to this morning’s Aftenposten, no South Sudanese national has been granted asylum in Norway either this year or in 2012. However, now that this man has been charged with three homicides, he may get to stay indefinitely.

While ordinary Norwegians seethe (just read the comments on the newspaper websites – the ones that still dare to allow people to vent their anger), the usual suspects among the great and good are positioning themselves to declare their unwavering support for the institution of asylum while asking the rhetorical question “How could this happen?” But these days, asylum seekers are not what they used to be.

Marie Simonsen, the political editor of Dagbladet had an op-ed piece in today’s paper that contained a lot of good sense. However, one of her conclusions got stuck in my craw:

Da bør det være statens oppgave å sikre en forsvarlig helsetjeneste av hensyn til pasienten, familien og samfunnet. Regjeringens satsing på psykiatri må også komme denne gruppen til gode. Kunnskapen og forskningen finnes. Det er spørsmål om å ta den i bruk.

Then it should be the government’s task to guarantee a decent health service in the interest of the patient, the family and society. Government initiatives in the area of psychiatry must also benefit this group [war-traumatized asylum seekers]. The knowledge and the research exists. It is a question of putting it to use.

Is it? Is Ms Simonsen aware of the resources that will have to be diverted from an already starving mental health service, which with notable (and wonderful) exceptions, has been “escalated” to the familiar treatment-in-the-community model that focuses on meds instead of beds? Who will have the linguistic and cultural qualifications to screen asylum applicants for trauma and other mental illness? What support networks can the mental health service offer? And, more to the point, who will not be receiving care because resources are being diverted to people who might not even have the right to remain permanently in the country? The Russian émigrés fleeing from the Bolsheviks and the Cold War refugees from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other former East Bloc countries were never this much of a burden.

I suspect that despite the rational nature of his act (he gets to stay, after all), the perp will be declared mentally ill just like the one in 2003 and sentenced to “treatment” for an indefinite period. The more he protests that he is not crazy, the higher the dose of meds they will insist on giving him. The combination of, say, 40 mg of olanzapine and its metabolic side effects, with the sequelae of vitamin D deficiency will mean that as a sub-Saharan African at 60-odd degrees north, he is not likely to live past 50 (he is in his 30s now). He will no doubt linger as a zombified and diabetic ward of the state for the rest of his life. And if he was not mentally ill when he hijacked that bus and killed the driver and the other passengers, he will be soon. That’s the beauty part of meds. How can you tell the difference between the underlying disease and the side effects? If only he had simply lammed to Oslo, he could have set up shop with his fellow African refuseniks as a “freelance pharmacist“.