In two hours I knew that Marine was broken man
WHO MET BLACKMAN IN JAIL AND GAVE KEY EVIDENCE
THERE had been a lot of publicity about the Alexander Blackman case, and when I was asked to review the medical evidence last year I approached the task with my usual air of healthy scepticism.
As an independent expert providing key evidence for his appeal hearing, I had to put all the previous coverage out of my mind to reach my own conclusions.
As Sgt Blackman was already in jail, the police and Crown Prosecution Service were no longer interested in the case and I had to do my own information-gathering.
I placed an advert with the Royal Marines Association inviting Marines who served in Afghanistan in 2011 to contact me, which yielded around half a dozen responses.
Last year, I interviewed him for two hours at HM Prison Erlestoke in Wiltshire. He is a man of few words – as per the ‘John Wayne’ description he was given in court – and I had to tease his story out of him.
The picture which emerged was a man who was broken by his six-month tour of Afghanistan in the summer of 2011.
But what does being ‘broken’ mean? And how did I reach my conclusion that Sgt Blackman was mentally ill when he shot dead a wounded Taliban insurgent?
I reached the same conclusion independently as two other psychiatrists who gave evidence at Sgt Blackman’s appeal – that he was suffering from a type of mental illness called an adjustment disorder.
An adjustment disorder is the the state of mind where a culmination of stresses so affect you that you’re no longer able to function properly. You may still be able to carry out everyday tasks, but your ability to think through the consequences of your actions can be gravely impaired – with potentially lethal consequences.
For example, we know that a third of young people who kill themselves are affected by an adjustment disorder.
It was my evidence – and that of the other two expert witnesses – that an adjustment disorder also had lethal consequences in Sgt Blackman’s case and was the reason he killed the insurgent. Adjustment disorders vary hugely in severity – Sgt Blackman’s was at the severe end of the spectrum.
They are by no exclusive to military life – they may be the result of traumatic incidents such as a car crash, losing your job or the break-up of a significant relationship.
Often people recover from them within six months with the support of family and friends with no dire consequences.
So why is an adjustment disorder diagnosis in this case significant? Because it led to disastrous consequences. When Sgt Blackman killed the insurgent, his judgment was so impaired he could not think through the consequences of his actions. Here was a man on whom his gruelling six-month tour of duty had taken a devastating toll.
In psychiatry we talk of the ‘stressors’ – or stresses – that lead to mental illness. These included his father’s death shortly before his deployment, the punishing 50C heat in Afghanistan, feeling isolated due to the lack of visits from senior officers to his outpost, the killing of a young lieutenant he had mentored, narrowly surviving a grenade blast and the low security at the base which led him to fear that he and his men could ‘have their throats cut in the night’.
He was a highly rated soldier with an exemplary record who had toured Iraq and Northern Ireland. But by the time he pulled the trigger, he no longer cared about the values he held so dear – he just wanted get himself and his men home safely. AS with all mental-health conditions, it is a truism that most people who are suffering with an adjustment disorder will not seek help for the condition.
Around 10 to 15 per cent of Armed Forces personnel have adjustment disorders – in a way, it is surprising it is not more.
As I told the Sgt Blackman’s appeal hearing: ‘ There is no such thing as a Rambo type, an Arnold Schwarzenegger soldier, who can face all sorts of stresses and appear to be invulnerable. That sort of person only exists in the cinema.’
In Sgt Blackman’s case he did not have a mental assessment before his trial, something that is routine in civilian murder cases. This was highly unfortunate.
Britain requires service personnel to carry out arduous duties in harsh conditions.
I was a Royal Navy doctor for 23 years and served under the UK’s military covenant, the core principal of which is that servicemen and their families should face ‘no disadvantage’ compared to civilians.
It is a regrettable that this principle was not applied in Sgt Blackman’s case, and the Government should consider making mental-health assessments mandatory for servicemen facing serious criminal charges.