Mental Health : Lethal Loss - Dying For A Dad - Raoul Moat

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By Art De Rivers - Picture By : Silvis Rivers

In some psychological therapies dealing with developmental emotional damages and their post trauma effects, early parental loss is uncovered or indeed an emotional void where a parent/s and good care should have been . Resolution is not easy at all because unmet need is a form of deep pain and defenses such as falsely empowering rage is often relied upon to divert the pain.

Rage is very important though because if therapeutically guided it acts as both a potential gateway back to pain and grief (the tearful acceptance of truths and losses) however it can without help, also act as a vent for the attempt to overwhelm a bad past by building a body and Ego of "power" and "strength" against the vulnerability of unrecognised needs . It takes either good emotional development to grieve properly (a holding parent) and if not grief needs aiding by a skilled therapist - its not a soft way forwards . Its tough to truly grow by resolving such pain .

In talking to some mental health Users in Birmingham and a couple of therapists there was a converging sense that Raoul Moat's victims were a part of raging hurt response to him discovering he no longer had an emotional "place" with his girlfriend . He was in no-one's heart and care. His tough defense was overwhelmed with pain . Yet what was seen and felt in this tragedy was also the way Raoul Moat finally uncovered his need for a father shortly before he apparently executed himself .The BBC reported he stated near to his end :

"I didn't have a dad" ......"No-one loves me"

The mental health Users all claimed they could see his dramatic suicide coming . A couple said they could not watch the UK media-wild-west manhunt of it all and the somehow indecent media exploitation of the Moat story .. It was socially ugly in all respects . The police though at least had tried to show understanding earlier when they sensed and were advised this was a man in some mental anguish, loss and pain .

Questions do need to be asked about the prison's knowledge of his state, and his aftercare plan after he was recently released . Its easy to understand why some mental health Users would sympathise because the UK is still underserved by therapies which brave human pain and help people face it .Grief about bad family dynamics is all too often still off limits and unhelped .

If a person's pain about poor care (as a child and adult) is voiced - it is usually not heard enough . For some mental health Users this is slowly lethal and many of us who have been in this field for decades know it is also applicable to many more people other than those labeled "mental health Users" ..

Jack said :

"Chain mailed emotions
And flesh feudal castle
Steel muscles and mountain jaw

Only the bullet rang out
Across the moat and opened
The heart's last police patrolled door

No-one listened to me in prison
And rejection by a woman was the final
Dynamite fizzling straw

A man took my place
While I was dying for a guiding dad
And a lifetime of warmth to the core

I spat out my weakness and
Built my castle cannon body of bricks

But finally my loss
And no helping father
Gave me a gun
And I died for a dad with its fire and tricks .. "


For the Victims of Raoul Moat and his secret pain that exploded.