Research File #1: RICKARBY

Dr.G.A.Rickarby MB BS FRANZCP Member of The Faculty of Child Psychiatry RANZCP MANZAP: Consultant Psychiatrist is a world-renowned expert on adoption and past adoption practices.

Dr.Rickarby has diagnosed many mothers who lost babies to adoption in the past as now suffering from major dissociative disorders directly cause by their minds inability to cope with such a shocking trauma.

• Pathological Grief
• Major Depression
• Dysthmia
• Post-Traumatic stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Dissociative Disorder
• Situation Stress Disorder
• Panic Disorder
• Personality damage associated with psychiatric illness as a sequel to loss of a baby to adoption
• Personality damage associated with long-term Pathological Grief
• Disorders and incapacity in human relationships
• Failure to bond with subsequent babies

Dr.Rickarby explains the nature of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: ‘There are a series of elements: A major trauma (death, threat of death, disaster, loss, horror): the compulsive intrusion of the trauma into both waking consciousness and dreams, with fixation of memory onto specific elements of the trauma; major avoidance of situations, circumstances or people associated with the original trauma; major dysfunction and disability as a result.

‘It is a central issue for mothers who have lost a child to adoption because it is related to some other diagnoses and damage …’

‘In the mother’s case it is to be noted that PTSD is hardly ever existing on its own but in association with Severe Pathological Grief in one form or another.’

Pathological Grief is a condition that is also overwhelming, untenable and unbearable, and itself causes breakdown into Major Depression and other condition listed above.
After the loss of the baby, to adoption, the first stage of shock, numbness and disbelief may persist because the mother cannot face the finality of the loss of her baby and the feelings of rage, guilt, depression that might overwhelm her. The numbness and disbelief are protective against this emotional second stage of grief.
This may persist for a long time and may be associated with naïve beliefs that the baby with be returned or some ‘nice’ Social Worker will appear to help the return.
Many find the next stage, which they enter after they accept finality of the loss, produces such anger and despair they revert to the first stage.

Others stay in the second stage of major feelings: they cannot accept the implications of their loss and thus cannot mourn.
This arrest is not understood and people readily become irritated with them as they return to the issues of their arrested grief.
Such damage is to be seen in the context that when a mother loses a child from babyhood to middle age, the loss is untimely and has other bad outcome features; the most stable and mentally healthy person becomes similarly afflicted.
Others are stuck in the stage of mourning, going back again and again to the same issues where they cannot get satisfactory answers.
There are supra-pathological variations of pathological grief, particularly where the grief is totally inhibited and denied, and the grief goes underground coming out in the unconscious release, such as over-protection of other children, binding and intrusive behaviour, irritability, and unexplained depression.

Pathological Grief may cause more psychopathology in the long run because it may become worse in later years because of its renewal with the stage of development of the lost child or at changes in the life stages of the mother.

However, PTSD may also take a chronic form in the mother’s life.
There would be hyper alertness to separation from a later child, sometimes precipitated by a strong sense of the child being in danger, a family law crisis, a grandmother or even the mother of a school friend alienating the child’s affections, or even minor illness.
Another form would be fear and hyper alertness about hospitals.
This could create a major crisis when another fear was about losing the child because of sickness or accident.
Reading the newspaper or seeing other media coverage about adoption issues or loss of children can easily set off post-traumatic images of the original loss and the circumstances.

Being alone in a vulnerable situation (even a supermarket) can produce a return of overwhelming helplessness of the original experience in the maternity hospital. Anniversaries of admission and birth can cause intrusion of painful and traumatic images. Frightening dreams of a post-traumatic nature can occur decades later, sometimes precipitate by an event such as described, but often occurring during a fever or brought back by a drug effect from preparations bought over the pharmacy counter.’

Consent Taking.
The widespread myth that the mothers were prematurely sexualised, promiscuous and irresponsible was used to render them more powerless, guilty, shamed, as a lever to humiliate them, and to make consent taking easier.

Practices associated with Consent Taking:

• Isolation
• Suggestion
• Incarceration
• Forced labour
• Repetitive indoctrination
• Humiliation
• Coercion
• Subjugation
• Power imbalance

It is pivotal in that without these ‘associated practices’ a great proportion of mothers would have kept their babies.

Major Depression.
Major Depression is the more severe of the depressive disorders; suicide is a sequel of Major Depression and should be the subject of a research project.
In mothers who have lost a baby to adoption major episodes frequently are triggered by the baby’s birthday, Christmas, close contact with children, as a decompensation of factors aggravating Pathological Grief and PTSD, and sadly and destructively, following the birth of subsequent children.
Major Depression then takes the form of a malignant Post Partum depression. Bonding with the subsequent infant is then a major problem.
The mother’s subjective experience is one of being overwhelmed by the memories of her lost baby, the first birth and its circumstances, and the subsequent time in and out of hospital without her baby. She is terrified this will happen again, and is pining and searching in her mind for the lost baby. It is difficult for her to focus on the real baby.
This is so different to the public myth: ‘She’ll have another baby and will really be over it then’.
To those who work with these women such public ignorance is galling, particularly when such phrases represent the general community attitude.

The vast majority of mothers who lost a child to adoption are seeking recognition of what was done to them, the humiliation they underwent, the extent of their suffering., the coercion and the subsequent damage they suffered. As their children have been brought up on myths of their mother’s inadequacy, immorality, and rejection of their babies, they need a firm clear statement to undo some of these attitudes.

Acknowledgements Dr.G.A. Rickarby.

Research Consultant Di Welfare comments:
‘If there was a product on the market that caused this much physical and mental illness it would be banned and the manufactures sued out of business. Not so with adoption. The reason why – there are two groups involved – the first group, which comes from a far more powerful socio-economic position benefits and is very satisfied with the outcome. They are being provided with a service. The second group who are suffering are providing that service and come from as far less powerful situation.’

Acknowledgements; Origins Inc.

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2008