It happened Sunday evening, in Rosemont. Josée-Anne was coming back from jogging. She decided to go to the convenience store, a few steps from her home. Suddenly she heard cries of death.
A few meters from Josée-Anne, a guy was attacking a woman. The spouse intervened. The attacker received a few slaps before being pinned to the ground by passers-by.
I checked with the police: the man in question was psychotic. Schizophrenic, he heard voices on the sidewalk. And those voices told him to attack passers-by, to avoid some imaginary punishment …
Arrested by the police, he was taken to hospital.
Josée-Anne, in a panic, took refuge at home on the run. She’s not a figure of speech: she suffered a panic attack. Because the scene brought back painful memories to him.
I have already told you about Josée-Anne Choquette (1). She then decided to speak publicly after the attack she had suffered in the middle of the street, in February 2020, just before the pandemic: a schizophrenic had attacked her with a stick, in the Rosemont district. It was the second woman he had assaulted in this way.
Her attacker was found not criminally responsible. Josée-Anne, at the time, understood this state of affairs: she understood that this man’s place was not in prison.
What she never understood was that her attacker was quickly “released” by the psychiatric hospital.
Josée-Anne’s physical scars disappeared, almost two years after the assault. The scars she now wears are invisible. They are no less real. “Since then, I’m sure I’m scared when I go out…”, testifies Josée-Anne.
I would like to point out here that Josée-Anne’s assault in February 2020 was filmed by a surveillance camera. It’s no exaggeration to say that Josée-Anne was on the brink of death: her attacker was aiming for her head with the same vigor that a baseball power hitter is aiming for the home run.
Fortunately, he slipped just before hitting the target …
“Since then, I’m scared, but I’m going out anyway,” she said. My relatives say to me: “Look, it’s like being struck twice by lightning… The risks that it will happen to you again to be attacked, what is it, one in ten million?” ”
And there, Sunday, in front of her house, another schizophrenic attacked another passerby, at random. What are the risks ?
The invisible scars started to heat up: “It could have been me,” says Josée-Anne.
Police say the assailant who attacked the passerby last Sunday has been suffering from schizophrenia for more than a decade. He was not taking his medication.
I repeat here what I wrote in August 2020, after interviewing Josée-Anne: she does not want the mentally ill to be imprisoned. She wants them to be treated.
“There, the guy who attacked this woman in front of my house, he wasn’t taking his medication. Looks like the guy who attacked me. As a society, what do we do when someone refuses to help themselves? What will it take for us to act? ”
Small parenthesis, here, very personal. A few years ago, I was targeted by a schizophrenic who believed he was Christ. For him, I was the antichrist. He would knock on the windows of a place where I worked, asking to see me. He would send me personalized videos, inconsistent monologues that could last up to an hour.
I had spoken to people around him. It was explained to me that the guy refused all treatment, that he did not “believe” in drugs. I had spoken to his psychiatrist, who had told me – not to mention the case of this particular patient – that when a patient refuses treatment, it is very, very hard to “keep” him in the hospital. against his will…
The guy finally let go of me.
I do know, however, that he was fixated on other people.
So, to answer Josée-Anne’s question, what do we do, as a society, when a person with psychosis refuses to help himself?
Answer, by breathing through the nose: we do our best within the limits of the law.
And we keep our fingers crossed.
Some disrupt, kill (2).
If you walk around Montreal a bit, it’s obvious: more and more neighborhoods are open-air psychiatric hospitals. I have been pointing this out with dread for years (3).
There are many reasons. One of these reasons: access to affordable housing in Montreal is increasingly difficult. There are fewer and fewer rooming houses (4) (5).
As a result, the most vulnerable among us find ourselves more and more on the streets. Among them: people who have serious psychiatric problems. Josée-Anne’s abuser, for example, was homeless.
It’s hard to take care of yourself when the hospital releases you and you have nowhere to go, when you have no home.
In the street, it is possible that you fall into “drugs” which are not prescribed by the doctor, which will agitate even more the voices which are in your head. You may get disorganized at high speed, in the street.
As Montreal loses affordable housing, more and more sick people will roam the streets.
And unfortunate interactions, like the one Josée-Anne suffered, will multiply.