A Saturday in November just before closing time in a clothing store in downtown Munich. On the escalator, a man pokes a ten-year-old child in the neck and shoulders with a knife from behind. Out of nowhere, perpetrators and victims do not know each other. Customers overwhelm the man, the boy comes to the hospital seriously injured. The attacker, a 57-year-old stateless person, is taken to a mental hospital. On the morning of the same day, a 27-old Syrian injured four men, some seriously, in an ICE between Regensburg and Nuremberg. There too: the perpetrator and the victim did not know each other, the attack came suddenly, the perpetrator was referred to a clinic as “mentally abnormal”. The 32-year-old Somali was once housed in a psychiatric clinic,who stabbed three women in Würzburg in June.
Karin Truscheit
Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.
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The cases from Bavaria line up with similar acts across Germany: In December 2020, a 51-year-old "psychologically problematic" German used his car as a weapon in downtown Trier, killing five people and seriously injuring dozen.
Two years earlier, in April 2018, a 48-year-old German raced into a street café in Münster, and four people were killed.
He was also considered "mentally unstable and disturbed".
What can be done so that mentally problematic people, mostly men who have often been the focus of doctors and police beforehand, do not suddenly stab people or run them over with the car?
Psychiatrists and forensic experts emphasize two points in particular: low case numbers, but also little room for maneuver.
The vast majority of people temporarily admitted because of exposure to others do not kill anyone.
So the crimes are isolated cases - compared to hundreds of homicides each year by mentally healthy people.
But even in individual cases, people are ultimately dead. And the options for preventing these rare cases are limited.
No family, no circle of friends
A classic case would look like this: A man waving a knife in a train station hall and yelling that he was going to kill everyone. The police come, the “mentally suspect” man is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, the general psychiatry. He is being treated for a psychosis, a delusional disease in which he perceives his environment as a threat against which he wants to defend himself. The man is examined, treated and given medication. After a few days the acute psychosis subsided, he no longer screams, realizes that he was in a state of emergency and that nobody is trying to kill him. So acute it is not dangerous. The doctors would like to keep it there, preferably for a few weeks. Because they know: The man has no "social reception room",who gives him support and can reduce the risks of repeated psychosis. He does not have any work, consumes drugs, has no family, no circle of friends. Who will make sure they take their medication? Who will get help in time if they get psychotic again? Doctors advise the man to stay longer so that he can be thoroughly stabilized. But the man doesn't want to. He goes. And nobody can stop him.