Criminals often try to feign mental illness in order to reduce punishment. How do psychologists determine who is pretending to be crazy?
On April 25, 1979, six-year-old Ethan Patz went missing in New York. This event marked the beginning of a movement to find missing children in the United States and contributed to a change in American law. The day the boy went missing has been declared National Missing Children’s Day in the United States. The Patz case was investigated for 38 years. The verdict was handed down on April 18, 2017. Pedro Hernandez, 56, was found guilty.
For 3 months, journalist Thomas Macmillan wrote regularly about the course of the trial. Some of the questions he heard in the courtroom caught his attention. For example: “Do you find it difficult to communicate with other planets?” or “Do you have strange sensations in your body? Do they only appear on Tuesdays? How about: “Have you ever felt like someone was following you? At such moments, the appetite increased?
You don’t hear that often in courtrooms. Usually they ask: “Where were you on the night …” to find out if the suspect had motives and the opportunity to commit a crime.
The mindset of the mentally ill is much more orderly than many people think.
But in this case, the defendant allegedly suffered from a mental illness, and forensic psychologists, who were called in as experts, told how questions help determine whether he really is ill or feigning.
There is a whole branch of psychology dedicated to exposing malingerers. The mindset of the mentally ill is much more orderly than many people think. And most of us have absolutely no idea what they are really going through.
In the case of the murder of Ethan Patz, the problem of exposing a possible simulation was especially acute. Hernandez was arrested in 2012, he told the police that he lured Ethan into the basement of a store in Soho (Manhattan area), strangled him and got rid of the body, which was never found.
Lawyers argued that their client slandered himself. Defense witnesses stated that Hernandez’s IQ is below normal, he suffers from a mental disorder, due to which he is unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The prosecution called these facts into question, suspecting that the defendant feigned a mental disorder in an attempt to escape punishment.
Sometimes forensic psychologists realize that the defendant is really sick
Battles at the intersection of psychology and jurisprudence often take place within high-profile trials in which the accused are said to be insane. James Holmes, who committed the mass shooting at a movie theater in Colorado in 2012, underwent a psychiatric examination before the court, which was supposed to determine whether he really suffers from schizophrenia.
“Son of Sam” – serial killer David Berkowitz was examined several times, as a result, it was established that he was sane enough to stand trial, although Berkowitz himself stated that a dog ordered him to commit murders.
Sometimes forensic psychologists realize that the defendant is indeed ill. For example, last December in Ithaca, New York, a man killed a UPS delivery driver who believed he had actually killed Donald Trump.
Relatives of the victim said that the accused was trying to feign insanity, but two psychologists who examined him came to the conclusion that he was actually ill and could not stand trial.
The strange questions McMillan heard in the courtroom were part of the Structured Complaints Survey (SIRS). This is one of the most commonly used tests to detect the simulation or exaggeration of the symptoms of mental disorders. Its creator, Richard Rogers, described how psychologists and psychiatrists use various tests and survey techniques to identify fakers.
An ignorant person may think that feigning a mental disorder is easy – it is enough to behave irrationally and come up with “crazy” symptoms. In fact, the symptoms of mental illness do not appear randomly, they have a certain pattern that is known to specialists.
“Simulators usually don’t know which symptoms often go together and which ones almost never go together,” explains Rogers. This is the basis of one of the strategies for detecting deceivers.
In fact, it is extremely unlikely that a paranoid person will have an increased appetite during a flare-up. Therefore, if the subject reports such a combination of symptoms, this gives reason to suspect something is amiss.
Really sick people don’t talk to other planets
The questions on the test are designed to identify fakers who do not understand how real mental illness manifests itself. For example, if a person answers “yes” to the question of whether he has ever established a connection with other planets, this gives reason to suspect him of deception. Really sick people almost never have these kinds of delusions, says medical examiner and psychiatrist Tali Walters. According to her, delusions are usually somehow connected with the real life of the patient.
Thus, during the Cold War, mentally ill people in the United States were often convinced that the Communists were plotting against them. Walters had a chance to examine a mentally ill man who, shortly after the September 11 attacks, shot a policeman, while he himself was sure that he was participating in the war in Afghanistan. “All these ideas are somehow related to reality, although they were completely fictional,” she says.
In most cases, if the patient constantly complains of new and strange symptoms, this is a reason to suspect him of a simulation. “If you think it’s worth coming up with as many of the most unusual symptoms as possible, you are unlikely to be able to deceive the doctors,” says Rogers.
In order for the deception to look convincing, the simulator needs to understand the mechanism of mental disorders. “He must correctly determine how much the symptoms he complains about affect behavior, and how much he is “aware” that they are abnormal,” says Rogers.
Since this requires acting skills, one of the most effective strategies for exposing fakers is simply to watch them for longer, a few days or weeks. “I’ve never seen a person who could feign illness 24 hours a day for 20 days, it’s too hard,” Walters says.
If someone claims to hear voices ordering them to kill people, but you observe how they communicate normally with others, laugh and joke, and have no sleep problems, it is very likely that you are a malingerer.
We don’t know anything about the deceivers we haven’t been able to expose.
The expert will definitely get acquainted with the suspect’s medical history and communicate with his relatives to find out if the symptoms of the disease appeared before the crime. It is unlikely that anyone will believe a simulator who suddenly suddenly “appears” symptoms of the disease immediately after his arrest.
Yet Rogers makes one reservation: “We know nothing about those deceivers whom we have not been able to expose.” The final and most important assessment of the defendant’s condition is made by the jury, and often they have to be guided by opposing assessments of experts invited by the defense and prosecution.
Pedro Hernandez failed to fool the experts. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years.