Do you think that Burke was mentally sane? Not if you look at old videos. He looked cool and calm. Just repeating everything like a song. I don't think he was clever enough for this, no the patsygate here
Sure. You can be mentally sane and still have personality disorders.
My son is an adult now and he is a narcissistic psychopath with borderline personality disorders and bipolar 2. I raised that child from the moment he was born and he was literally born this way. Nothing from his childhood accounts for these issues. Dude is more sane than most people I know. He really started showing overt signs between 8-9, but I saw things before that.
We all spent time in personal therapy, family therapy, marriage therapy, etc. My son was placed in a few treatment programs specific to these disorders. He stayed at one for 3 months. The rest were either weekly appointments in someone's office or someone came to the house to do it at home.
The therapy was intense and our lives felt like they were out of control even though they were probably the best almost anyone could have. My husband and I grew so much closer together during all of this.
My relationship with my son was incredibly close too. By the time he was about 17 most of his overt symptoms were gone and he was able to control himself better outside the home. Now he seems almost like a "normal" person but he's not. He never will be. And that's ok.
My point is, at no point during any of this was he ever "insane," at least not for long. There were a few times when he would be in psychosis that would require emergency hospitalization so he was not a danger to himself or anyone else but a nice shot of haldol and a couple of days in hospital and he was fine.
The age of psychiatric consent in our state is 15 so once he was old enough to refuse psych meds he did. The work he did from 15-18 was with no drugs. Very intense mindfulness training and what's called MST, multi-systemic therapy. At 18 he moved out of the home.
Those years were literally the worst. Like, I can now get through any hard times in life because all I have to do is remind myself that there was a time a few years ago that I had to become 100% ok with my death at any point in time. My only request then was that I not see it coming. Imagine being in your 30s and grappling with your mortality because of the danger someone is to you, not because of disease or an accident. Now imagine the person that's a danger to you is your only child. Good times.
Anyway, my point is, you can have personality disorders and still be sane. You don't have to be in a rage or psychosis or in the throes of some dissociative state. You can be a normal, happy, well-adjusted, loved, cherished human being and still have no capacity for love or a sense of right and wrong or to feel empathy.
From the outside looking in my son seemed completely normal. People, even my own family, used to call me a liar for making up his death threats, unexplained deaths of family pets, etc. Nobody had a clue except the people I trusted the most, in whom I confided. We had 3 complete sets of all medical records. My best friend kept a set at her place. My mom kept a set. We kept a set locked up in our bedroom. I kept a digital set in my desk at work and locked in my safe at home. This was so the authorities could be provided these records should my husband and I ever go missing or were murdered.
I could tell you stories that would keep you up at night. But really, all I'm trying to point out is that sanity vs insanity is a legal construct that has nothing to do with real life. The issues I see in BR that I saw in my own son were never about sanity. They were always about the terror and horror that existed behind closed doors.
Oh one more thing, personality disorders are not diagnosed in children because it is possible with the correct types of mental and behavior therapies that the brain can be rewired to make connections that failed to connect while the brain was too young. You can be anywhere from 25-27 before your brain stops growing so if you engage in DBT, (dialectical behavior therapy,) in time for for a long enough time, it is possible that you will never again act on violent thoughts or tendencies. I have no idea what BR's life was like behind those closed doors but it is possible that he hurt his sister on many occasions that we will never know about. And if he was in DBT and/or DBT for long enough periods, he could appear to be almost "normal" today.
(The main difference between the Ramsey's life and ours is that I refused to have any more children for fear of what my son might do to them and my fear that I might create another child whose brain synapses regularly misfired.)
Sorry this post is so long but if you have specific questions about anything I've written here, ask me. I will do my best to answer according to my personal experiences and knowledge about personality disorders that I've garnered over the years.
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