I hope you haven’t been following the story of Valdo Calocane, a man who stabbed three people to death in Nottingham back in 2022. To no one’s surprise, Calocane was suffering from “mental health problems” when he committed his obscene crimes. Reports don’t state specifically what was wrong with him, although the word psychotic was mentioned, and at one time reports the BBC that he believed “that he was being spied on by his housemates and by MI6, and that his family was under threat“. So paranoia too. Clearly, a very sick man and I use the word sick advisedly. I couldn’t think of anyone sicker.
Who knows if the NHS, and so by definition the government, is responsible for a situation whereby someone who, it seems from a distance, should not have been allowed on the street full stop and should have been banged up for life, as he surely will be now. But what an indictment this story is of our mental health services, or the lack of them.
You might be forgiven for being fearful that there are plenty more people like Calocane out there and maybe there are. But here’s the thing: us mental people are far more likely to hurt ourselves than anyone else. It’s just that when someone particularly unhinged is let loose, the consequences are often catastrophic. So what can we do?
Well, we could take the very issue of mental health more seriously and not be jolted into temporary action when something like this happens. If people like him are out on the street when they shouldn’t be, well, why? Did someone deem him to be a fit and proper person to be walking the streets given his history of major issues, did they think he had overcome his psychosis or, frankly, did someone fuck up? And if they did fuck up, how and why? Crucially, was any of this tragedy down to a lack of resources?
It makes me think given I am someone who is at the low end of the mental health spectrum. Wallowing in my own pool of self-pity, I have seen at first hand the decline and near collapse of NHS mental health services. When I was a kid, aged around 12, and suffered from night terrors and panic attacks, I saw a psychiatrist for the best part of a year, taking every Tuesday afternoon off school in order to be treated. In my twenties, I was seen by an actual Mister, not a mere Doctor, at Southmead Hospital. Now, there’s next to nothing. Have six weeks of basic counselling, take antidepressants; job done. I can’t help thinking that those who are not a threat to life and limb, apart from their own life and limbs, are seen as not be worth bothering with. Why waste money? He’s not going to kill anyone. Offer the same advice as my grandad: “Pull yourself together!”
Calocane didn’t pull himself together because he was an actual psychotic, regarded somehow as not being a threat to the public when he clearly was. Tell the families of university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and the school caretaker Ian Coates that he wasn’t a threat. Yes, I don’t know the facts but those left behind deserve to know how and why their loved ones died. A simple, unavoidable “one of those things” or something more sinister?
I kept hearing Rishi Sunak – yes, him again – repeatedly saying he would “do what it takes” to get people through the Covid pandemic. How about, then, doing what it takes to ensure that mental health is accorded the priority status it deserves. No more tax cuts, Sunak, until you’ve fixed the NHS.
Calocane ended and ruined people’s lives and whatever his mental state, it is hard to feel sorry for him. And, if I am being honest, I don’t. I haven’t got it in me anymore. I am trying to be kind but sometimes, I feel, there is a limit. I’m probably wrong on how I feel but what’s a blog without honesty?
Best not to follow Calocane’s story, beyond the link I posted at the top. We’re not all like that, us mental folk, but the system needs to be better for all of us, better indeed than nothing. And nothing is pretty well all we have these days.
