A Wisconsin woman accused of stabbing her classmate to please horror character Slender Man more than a decade ago asked a judge again Friday to release her from a psychiatric hospital.
Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, filed a petition with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren seeking her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The petition marks the third time in the last two years she has asked Bohren to let her out of the facility.
She withdrew her first petition two months after filing it in 2022. Bohren denied her second request this past April, saying she remains a risk to the public.
Well, there’s concerns here. The mind was able to be convinced of the reality of a clearly fictional character. The mind concluded on murder, of all things, as a solution to something. The mind did this almost entirely on its own, despite what it’s been taught and witnessed of others.
Because people can’t read minds, things observed of that mind will be very carefully assessed. Things like showing vivid imagination, unusual reaction, unusual phases of personality or empathy change, etc. And being so young, connections were likely shaped and formed in impressionable years and these are the hardest to undo; essentially things like personality are established by 12 and the core of it remains relatively unchanged for the entire life.
She could be ready; she could’ve been ready a few years ago. But it is the job of experts to ensure that mind is extremely unlikely to do that again, and that it isn’t vulnerable to change when released. Get that wrong and the loss is much higher than what is currently occurring.
That is one of the biggest difficulties when dealing with psychiatric patients- there is no straightforward “blood test” to determine what’s really going on.
While other branches of medicine can do an x-ray and see a broken bone, or do a blood test to determine blood sugar, mental health diagnosis relies on observation of the patient, interpreting their answers to questions, and relying on some amount of self assessment.
If the patient is intentionally “presenting well” in an attempt to “get out of the loonie bin”, it can make diagnosis and assessment extra challenging.