Louis Theroux: The people who are not guilty by reason of insanity – A review… Kind of.

It seems the BBC are on a bit of a mental health hype at the moment. I mean this only as a positive. But first off we had ‘Life After Suicide’ on Tuesday night (17th March), and now we have Mr. Theroux back on our screens with another gripping documentary.

In case you somehow have never heard of Louis Theroux I will give you a quick bio. He is an English born television personality. You may have heard of him from shows such as: Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends (Which is available on Netflix, and well in my opinion a must) and Louis Theroux: The City Addicted to Chrystal Meth (also available on Netflix). He also has a kind of famous cousin, Justin Theroux. He is the one with Jennifer Aniston.

So now we have that covered, last night (22nd March) saw the first of the two part documentary on BBC Two ‘The People Who Are Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity’ (NGRI). In the US state of Ohio there is a unique hospital called, Ohio’s Summit Behavioural Healthcare Hospital. This is for people who have been involved in a crime but are considered not guilty due to their mental state.

Instantly greeted by a rather pleasant Johnathon. He is thirty nine years old and has been in the hospital for seven years for his crime. To the untrained eye his room seemed pleasing, he had been allowed to decorate to make him feel at ease.

Even with this description you can’t help but be curious as to why he is there. Johnathon had in fact killed his father, stabbing him to death, whilst in a haze of his mental illness. But the American justice system saw him as NGRI, and sent him to the psychiatric hospital. This is something truly shocking, but Louis seems to still keep to his faux naive interviewing style, not pushing Johnathon to say anything he is uncomfortable with.

This is a style that clearly works for him, as all the patients show a level of trust in him. His way of speaking to a patient later on in the show really portrays him as a caring human being, trying to find true human interest stories. Not just the medical side of it all.

Johnathon seems to be showing rather good progress whereas other patients seem to struggle to understand the severity of their crimes. Louis meets a nice elder lady called Judith playing a game of cards. She has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but she does not accept that is true. She also does not believe she stabbed a woman on a bus with a pair of scissors. When Louis asks about the crime Judith says: “I was there, and those were my scissors but I didn’t stab her”.

In their second meeting Judith tells Louis and the doctor she is Jesus Christ. Which seems to be a common thing in a lot of mentally ill patients.

I say this in relation to Brian, another patient Louis met. His crime was also very horrific, he beat his own mother to health with a baseball bat, and this was because he believed she was possessed by the Devil. Brian was a Pentecostal Christian, and before his conviction had been a pastor. Whilst in treatment he had to deal with believing his mother had been possessed, which he now believed was a pointless act, because he believes the Devil cannot be killed.

Unfortunately not all patients recover as well. At a mental hospital in Columbus we meet Eric. He appears as a genuine nice guy. He is pushing a trolley filled with ‘comfort items’ for other patients. Eric is older than the other people Louis has met, but he conveys a gentle caring man.

He had first been imprisoned in 1985, he was found NGRI for robbing a beauty parlour. After four years in the hospital, and working his way up the trust ladder, Eric was allowed out on a weekend pass. This was his relapse. Eric had stopped taking his medication, and shot two complete strangers in a bar. Twenty six years on, he is still in the hospital and has not been allowed such privileges again. He is a reminder to the hospital as to why they have to be so careful.

These are all just personally highlights of the documentary so far, it shows a very different justice system to ours in England. So much more was in the show, so I would highly recommend watching it, to hear all these people’s stories.

Part two to be released Sunday 29th at 9pm on BBC Two!

Watch Louis Theroux: By Reason Of Insanity - Part One: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05nyysy/louis-theroux-23-by-reason-of-insanity-part-1

Watch Life After Suicide: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05n2922/life-after-suicide

Sources: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/23/louis-theroux-by-reason-of-insanity-psychiatric-hospital-review

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31962182 - Image also from here.

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