Dr. Dawg

Kayla Bourque and the disorder of psychiatry

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Kayla Bourque is a 22-year-old BC resident who enjoys inflicting suffering on others. She tortured to death her family dog and pet cat, for which she is doing an absurdly short stretch in jail. She has fantasized about killing homeless people, and was found on her arrest to have a “murder kit” in her possession—syringes, a knife, a mask, and restraining straps.

Judge Malcolm MacLean called Kayla Bourque a “psychopathic and narcissistic” “sexual sadist” who’s obsessed with gore and violence and has shown no guilt or remorse.

…”She was intelligent and articulate and preoccupied with inflicting harm and pain on others,” said MacLean.

He said Bourque showed no empathy and psychiatric reports showed she was a sexual sadist with “multiple sexual deviations.”

She suffers from a number of personality disorders, including psychopathology and narcissism, and “felt no guilt, shame or remorse.”

He said she will likely require supervision for the rest of her life and she “presents a moderate level of treatability,” but her rehabilitation has less likelihood of success if voluntary.

“She’s at a moderate to high risk to harm others,” particularly children, the elderly and the disabled, said MacLean.

Under the BC Mental Health Act, a “person with a mental disorder” can be involuntarily confined in a psychiatric institution. Here’s the definition:

“person with a mental disorder” means a person who has a disorder of the mind that requires treatment and seriously impairs the person’s ability

(a) to react appropriately to the person’s environment, or

(b) to associate with others;

But, incredibly, the psychiatrists on the case will apparently not certify her as such. She will be walking the streets in a mere few weeks, looking for prey.

Bourque was a Romanian orphan for the first crucial eight months of her life in 1990. Conditions in those state orphanages were appalling, and the healthy and rapid infant development that arises from bonding was likely stunted. It is perhaps not all that surprising that Bourque cannot form normal relationships. She is a deformed and dangerous person, but she was likely made that way.

Nevertheless, to know all is not to forgive all, and certainly not to permit all. Bourque is a threat to everyone around her. Permanent institutionalization at Her Majesty’s pleasure would seem the obvious, socially responsible course to take.

The DSM-IV, the psychiatrist’s working manual, is a vast compendium of alleged “disorders” that in theory, at least, permits the psychiatrization of almost anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow definition of “normal.” It offers cover for the institutionalization of people who talk back to authority and for the incarceration of drama queens. But somehow, in this instance, it has failed to function.

So here is the bottom line. After all the hand-wringing is over, a psychopath will soon be terrorizing society. Yet there is nothing to be done, we are told, except to impose onerous parole conditions on an apparently bright and inventive young woman, and follow her around at great expense for the rest of her life.

This is, to use a technical term, madness.

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This page contains a single entry by Dr. Dawg published on November 30, 2012 10:53 AM.

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