SHAMMING MAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 190, 12 August 1922, Page 27

SHAMMING MAD.

(By A DOCTOR.)

A question that is being freely asked is this: '"Is it possible for a clever convict to escape tie gallows by pretending to be insane?" The answer is "Yes." But doctors have always to lie on their guard against this, atnd an intimate knowledge of mental disease may be required to enable them to detect the malingerer. Knowing', far example, that insanity seldom comes on suddenly, they will look for 'evidence of' its existence before the crime was committed. Failing such evidence, they will investigate carefully the mode of onset of the "illness" to see if it corresponds to the usual incidence of mental disease. " .. The family history has also to i»e studied in caeq mental instability may prove to have been inherited; apd a careful scrutiny of the symptoms presented by the patient generally enables the examiners, who must see the case independently of one another, to arrive at a true diagnosis. The difficulties that confront the impostor are enormous. To be consistent -with his assumed "madness," he may have to go for- days without food or sleep. The latter is well-nigh impossible for anyone but x%e unhappy lunatic. The popular idea of madness is continual frenzied excitement, with incoherent conversation and erratic behaviour. The strain of keeping up a deception of this kind is so great that fraud is soon detected. Many arg the pitfalls into which tjje sham "lunatic" may be enticed. Anyone familiar with ap asylufli knovrs 'that a visit from a stranger puts a patient on his guard, with the result thr.i, he appears to be far more sane than he actually is. Not so with the malingerer. It }s in t|.e presence of visitors that he displays his wildest bursts of excitement and incoherence —symptoms which exhaustion compels him to abandon whenever he is alone. It is an almost invariable rule that a real lunatic will declare emphatically tha 1 . he is perfectly sane. He will account for his rjdicuJoUß fancies in the most ingenious way, but—admit that he is mad? Not he! The pretended lunatic, on the other hand, never asserts his sanity. The clumsy actor may pflten "be "caught napping" in this way. Ask him to name some common article such as a penny, a pocket knife, or a pencil. From fear of showing sanity he will, as likely as not, name the objects wrongly. A truly insane person, if he did not feel insulted, would smile in a superior way at having to humour you in your madness. But he would probably answer quite correctly. The lunatic is generally reticent about his delusions, but when an impostor adopts them, as a rule he keeps harping on them continually. Jlany other points ef difference indicate that to feign insanity successfully requires skill, patience, awi knowledge far above the Mail."