actions. She seemed disconnected from any feelings towards the dead baby, as if it had never existed in the first place. The brains of murderers look different from those of people convicted of other crimes—differences that could be linked to how they process empathy and morality. You can imagine the outrage of the police officers who’d conducted this search, believing it to be abduction, only to find that the mother had disposed of the baby herself. She was not psychotic, but the pregnancy had been unplanned and unwanted – she was immature and isolated and suffering A 2017 study found that, in patients with lesion-induced antisocial behaviour, the brain damage was located in areas that were part of the brain’s moral decision-making network. ( 1) A later study looked at a large group of over 800 incarcerated male criminals and found that those who had committed homicide showed markedly decreased grey matter – nerve cell tissue – in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain often associated with rational thinking and suppression of instinctive or compulsive behaviour. ( 4)

Seb became consumed by an overwhelming hypervigilant fear. For survival reasons, fear shifts the balance of our concern from both self and others towards just the former. As a consequence, the influence of inhibitory predictions of the victim’s suffering is diminished. Seb was not completely mute, but there was good reason to doubt his ability to make a proper defence to the charge of murder. My impression was that he was not being deliberately obstructive. I needed to come to a view on whether he could properly engage in the criminal proceedings; in other words, was he fit to plead? The final decision rests with the judge, having considered the evidence of two doctors. I filed my report to the solicitors stating that he was, in my opinion, unfit to plead. After studying hundreds of high-profile cases from around the world, she says three stand out most – American serial killer Ted Bundy, Ipswich murderer Steve Wright and British doctor Harold Shipman. She added: “Psychology is so important when it comes to breaking down the reason why a person has committed an offence.Whodunnit' doesn't matter so much, not to a forensic psychiatrist. We're more interested in the 'why'.

Now Dr Charles, 34, from ­Edinburgh, is passing on her expert knowledge to Scotland’s next generation of forensic psychologists. She is set to host a series of fascinating lectures detailing her experiences on a number of cases.I'm Sana Qadar and you're listening to All in the Mind. Today, a peek inside the minds of murderers. Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Link to Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening

Richard Taylor: I only really fully learned the story whilst writing this book and family members were opening up about it. And obviously, I got their permission to say as much as I have said in the book, that this was a psychosis, this was a postpartum psychosis where she essentially lost touch with reality, although, like the case of Stella North that we talked about, it wasn't totally straightforward, but she ended up initially in prison custody at a women's prison, Holloway, where I later ended up working. And I think my decision to take up the post at Holloway may have been influenced by this family story, a sort of curiosity. Again, it wasn't something I was consciously thinking about when I took up that job. But she ended up in psychiatric hospital and had a range of treatments. She ended up having psychosurgery, which is pretty extreme and no longer used. And so her story helps illustrate the whole issue of infanticide, but it also tells us a little bit about the history of psychiatry and how treatments have changed. Sana Qadar: One such case Dr Taylor breaks down in his book involves a man he's dubbed Jonathan Brooks. One particular case in this group caught my interest. A young woman, Tamara Atkinson, had been admitted to the medical ward, suffering with poorly controlled epilepsy. She’d been accused of poisoning her own child with her anti-epileptic medication and then presenting the child to the doctor with

Chapter 11

But when we got to his cell, Seb had covered himself entirely with his blanket and remained still. When the officer opened the door and announced why we were there, there was no sign of a response. Feeling self-conscious about talking to a blanket in front of an audience of three officers and a trainee doctor, I introduced myself to Seb and said that I was there to see if there was anything else that could be done to help. And then, of course, a child may die as an extension of child abuse. So there's nothing…I think this chapter in my book, some readers have said they had to read it with their eyes closed because these are not easy, not easy cases to digest. But there is a pattern, there is a typology, you could say, and you can break down these horrific offences into certain scenarios that seem to crop up with sort of disturbing regularity, you might say.