William Atkins
Tuesday, 07 October 2008 20:23
Science -
Health
Page 2 of 3
The
summary of Dr. Mullen's ANZFSS 2008 talk include the following:
“Social prominence has always come at the price of attracting unwanted attentions. The residencies of heads of state, like the White House and Buckingham Palace, are magnets for the disordered and discontented. In the age of terrorism the problems have become even more acute for protection services of differentiating those who make threats from those who pose threats, those who are harmlessly mad, from those dangerously psychotic, and those for whom stalking is an end in itself from those who are preparing to attack.”
It continues,
“The presentation will present data on threateners, stalkers and attackers drawn from studies on those who have targeting the British Royal Family, and British and European politicians. The most dramatic findings are the very high rates of major mental illness not only among the large numbers who create a nuisance but also among those who launch serious attacks. Political motivations and delusional states are not mutually exclusive, nor do severe mental disorders preclude planned attacks. Threats are a commonplace among the communications to political leaders and heads of state, but attacks are fortunately rare occurrences. A significant proportion of attackers do however give warnings which are all too easy to overlook amongst the noise created by the army of the disturbed and mostly harmless.”
Mullen announced at the symposium that about 600 people were able to gain assess to a member of the Royal family, according to the fifteen years of data analyzed by the Mullen team of researchers.
Of this number, 17 attacks were actually carried out on the staff or protection service personnel of the Royal family, along with damage to Royal property.
Of the files analyzed, Mullen’s team was able to differentiate between VIP stalkers and other incidences. About 3,000 incidences, out of a total of 8,000, were deemed to be performed by pranksters or drunken people, or accidently.
Thus, of the 5,000 people that were considered stalkers, about 80% of them were found to have a serious psychotic illness such as delusions, hallucinations, and schizophrenia.
Dr. Mullen states,
"We didn't expect such high rates of psychosis. It was very surprising to us.” [New Scientist]
He added,
"Just under half were people writing letters repeatedly that were usually threatening or inappropriately amorous.”
Page three discusses a new method of handling celebrity stalkers inside of the U.K.
