Oscar Pistorius Has GAD - GUILT Anxiety Disorder

Guilt and anxiety

(My first blog is ‘Who Put the Story in Pistorius?’; the second is ‘I Don’t Remember What I’ve Forgotten’).

So, for anyone out of the loop, who’s wondering whatever happened to the Pistorius trial, here’s an update.

The psychiatrist Dr/Ms Meryl Vorster (apologies if I have her name/title wrong – an internet search showed different spellings and a different title) testified for the defence that Pistorius has an anxiety disorder called GAD. Anyone heard of this before? Nope. It stands for Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Heard of it now? No. Hmm. My sister says ‘Guilt Anxiety Disorder more like’ (he’s guilty – he knows it, we know it, he knows we know it and now he’s a bit worried about it) and people on Twitter are saying it stands for ‘Get Another Defence’. Vorster claims he’s probably had it for years, that it might have stemmed from the amputation of his legs when he was so young, pre-language. Isn't it lucky that she’s been able to diagnose him with this just as he’s about to go down for murder? Anyway, it does exist (GAD is a long-term condition that causes you to feel anxious about a wide range of situations and issues, rather than one specific event – I’d call that long-term condition LIFE.) She didn’t even interview Pistorius until after he had been cross-examined and it was evident that nothing else the defence had tried had worked. She arrived at this conclusion by interviewing Pistorius and his family and friends. Great – they’re bound to be completely objective! They’re more likely to ask ‘So what can we do to get him out of this mess?’

As a toddler

Vorster doesn’t sound very credible to me. Asked to define ‘hyper-vigilant’ (I’m not sure why – isn’t it pretty obvious what it means?), she describes it as being over-vigilant (what a brilliant definition – that’s made it so much clearer – no, that’s not what hyper-vigilant means actually – it doesn’t mean that you’re more vigilant than the situation demands; it just means that you’re extra vigilant and it’s not necessarily a bad thing).

She’s asked about Oscar’s demeanour when she spoke to him and emphasises that he was crying and retching and that she believed his distress was genuine. I think Nel tried to get this dismissed as irrelevant – it is – and what’s more – it’s only her opinion. His distress might very well have been genuine – I just don’t think it has any bearing on his guilt. Anyone would be distressed after shooting in cold blood somebody they once professed to care about. You might assume that his distress was proof of his guilt.

She says that with a GAD sufferer, ‘if one is placed into an environment where one’s safety is at risk, levels of anxiety would increase’. Ok but wouldn’t that be true of anyone whether they had GAD or not? That’s not a symptom of a disorder; that’s a normal reaction to a situation, surely? I’m not convinced by her testimony simply because she comes out with nonsense like this.

Briefly happy

She says when facing danger, ‘we can either fight or flight’. ‘Flight’ isn’t a verb, love. It’s a noun. You mean ‘flee’. But I still don’t think that someone who was truly anxious would race towards the perceived danger but again this all presupposes a fact that hasn’t been established, that there was any danger at all to be anxious about. I hope that the judge does not lose sight of this. If you believe, like me, that Oscar heard nothing unusual, just chased his girlfriend into the bathroom to kill her, then whether he has GAD or not, is neither here nor there. We do not need then to question why, feeling anxious, he would go to confront the intruder because he knew all the time that there was no intruder. Let me stress again, for those of you who haven’t read my first two blogs, we only have Oscar’s word for it that he heard anything and that this led to him going for his gun. Given that there was no intruder, couldn’t we assume that he didn’t hear anything, that instead he cornered his girlfriend in the toilet in a moment of absolute fury?

I’m entertained once more by Sky’s reporting. Besides the use of words that don’t exist – my favourite is ‘negativate’ instead of ‘negate’ (yes, Llewellyn Curlewis, that was you) – now they say ‘Dr Meryl Vorster choosing to remain anonymous’. You just said her name – she’s not anonymous. She simply chose not to be shown on TV. What do they think it means?

Judge Masipa

Anyway, the doctor testifies that she’s seen Oscar’s anxiety increase over time – she’s only known him days so it must have been as his case disintegrated around him. Quite understandable. Vorster claims Pistorius’s ‘disorder’ does not constitute a mental illness that would require the judge to order a psychiatric examination so I’m at a loss as to why Nel would step in to insist that Oscar be referred for psychiatric assessment (particularly as his case is that Oscar murdered his girlfriend, not that he suffered from an illness that caused him to shoot an imaginary intruder; his case is that Oscar didn’t for a moment believe that there was an intruder); it seems to play right into Roux’s hands. And then I’m equally bemused as to why Roux would object, bleating that nothing in Vorster’s report suggested that Pistorius was ‘incapable of appreciating wrongfulness’. As usual, I completely disagreed with Sky’s experts who all maintained that this referral wasn’t Roux’s intention and that it was highly unlikely the judge would agree to it. I’m sure (and am right) that she will. And I’m pretty sure this was Roux’s intention. Then they said that this assessment would help the prosecution not the defence. I don’t get it. If it is proven that Oscar has any kind of mental health issue, he could get away with having killed Reeva. It could pave the way for an ‘insanity’ defence. He could be deemed ‘not criminally responsible’. (From judge’s decision: ‘The accused may not have raised the issue that he was not criminally responsible, but the issue raised on his behalf cannot be ignored’. Who raised it on his behalf? Nel.) People have said that Nel did this to avoid it being grounds for appeal later but I’m starting to believe my South African friend, starting to wonder if the whole trial is a farce, with a foregone conclusion, that there will be no justice for Reeva. He has said it’s simply a question of keeping the trial going so that everyone gets more money.

Roux and Nel truly adversaries?

As it stands, this is the equivalent of a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for Oscar and a get-out clause for the rest of the court. It’s a win-win for the judge as it gets her out of her awkward position, between a rock and a hard place. Now she can pass the buck.

Nel is meanwhile becoming less and less articulate, saying things like ‘Oscar should not have been a firearm’ and ‘the psychiatric factors which is a mental illness’. Huh? And why is it that neither he nor the judge can pronounce psychiatric? In her decision, Masipa states ‘It is clear that Mr Pistorius has a psychiatric illness’ but this is almost the opposite of what Vorster said earlier (see above) unless we’re making some kind of esoteric distinction between mental and psychiatric. We only have a defence witness’s word for this. It isn’t clear at all. Doesn’t it seem incredibly convenient to her that this ‘illness’ should suddenly be diagnosed at this crucial point in his life and never really have been noticed before. And how many people with GAD have killed someone as a result of their illness?

Unsurprisingly, Oscar’s family is ‘comforted’ that the judge is being so ‘thorough’ and accepting as gospel the words of one psychiatrist. You betcha they’re comforted. I really feel for Reeva’s family; they must be despairing and starting to believe that justice will never be done with everyone abdicating their responsibility at the first opportunity. I pray that common sense and logic will prevail, that the lawyer with the best hand will win but it's starting to seem as if the cards have been marked, and that no one is acting as an advocate for Reeva.

Reeva Steenkamp deserves better