This is a text about the gap between the existence of a system and the lived experience of the families who have to live inside it. About how easily benefits are mistaken for support, formal care for safety, and institutional presence for a real relationship.
I am writing it after the Poznań tragedy, but not as commentary on a single drama. More as an attempt to name a mechanism that, for many people outside this experience, still remains invisible.
November 8, 2025
I am speaking in response to the statement issued by the Żurawinka Association about the Poznań tragedy. I do so not out of emotion, but out of a sense of responsibility — to try to describe the gulf that still divides two worlds: the world of people with disabilities and the world of those untouched by this reality.
As a parent of children with disabilities, I hear in such events an echo of my own future. And at the same time — as an analytical person grounded in the literature — I know that this does not have to be anyone’s future. That double perspective, emotional and rational at once, shows how much we still lack a shared language in Poland. For that reason, the reality of caregivers remains abstract to most of society, and tragedies like this will always come as a shock.
And they should not.
From both a scientific and practical point of view, we already know what should be done and what should be avoided in order to prevent such situations. The problem is that on the side of decision-makers — both political and expert — there is a double disconnection: human and substantive. A lack of understanding of families’ lived experience goes hand in hand with a lack of familiarity with the literature on care, autonomy, and crisis.
This is not a moral comment, but an analysis of what, systemically, led to the tragedy. It is an attempt to show that the chain of events that led to it was logical and foreseeable if one looks at it from the perspective of psychology and systems rather than from the perspective of emotion — because then what appears irrational turns out to be predictable.
The psychological dimension of the situation
Research on the burden borne by people caring for adult loved ones with disabilities shows that the greatest threat is not the sheer number of duties, but the lack of choice and influence over one’s own situation [1]. A sense of helplessness and compulsory care increases the risk of collapse, burnout, and depressive states [1]. Psychologically, this is the moment when a person loses a sense of meaning and agency while still carrying immense responsibility. Autonomy — the possibility of choice and shared decision-making — is a basic psychological need. When it is taken away, both motivation and well-being decline [2].
This can be simplified into a formula:
- lack of choice → loss of autonomy
- loss of autonomy → drop in motivation and well-being
Research on the regulation of affective states (colloquially called emotions) confirms that constant pressure and a lack of support lead to overload and loss of agency [3]. It is a state in which a person still feels responsible, but can no longer change anything.
As the statement suggests, the father from Poznań knew that the social care home would not provide his son with the kind of care he himself had been giving him. This was a situation in which the system deprived him of influence while leaving responsibility in place. From the point of view of psychology, such a configuration is a critical moment — a predictable breaking point when support grounded in autonomy is absent.
Research on caregiver tragedies shows that such acts do not arise from a lack of love, but from love deformed under conditions of extreme overload. Authors writing about caregiver homicide-suicide describe it as the moment when care turns into an act of despair — an attempt to end suffering where the system has failed [4]. An “act of love” becomes a desperate attempt to regain influence in a situation in which no other exit remains.
Systemic context and false social perception
In the statement by the Żurawinka Association there was a sentence saying that the “family was cared for by the Municipal Family Support Centre, had contact with a caregiver who was more than an assistant — a friend.” In bureaucratic language this means that the system was formally functioning. In psychological language, it means that real support appeared only where a human being exceeded the institutional frame.
Research on institutional assistance shows that real support is not about the number of services provided, but about preserving autonomy and control over one’s own life [5]. Service systems are built on procedures, not on relationships — so even when “everything works,” a person can still remain in a state of abandonment.
To most of society, tragedies like this seem irrational. We give in to a cognitive distortion: if the system offers help, then evil must result from individual weakness. Psychology calls this the “just-world effect” — the tendency to believe that suffering must always have a personal cause [6]. Our need to keep the world orderly makes society accept a narrative in which administrative care becomes synonymous with help — even when, in practice, it means loss of influence.
What remains invisible is the source of the problem itself. In this scheme, “care” becomes equal to “help,” and a “benefit” becomes equal to “support,” whereas in reality both often simply maintain the status quo: the system does not improve the situation, it conserves it. Research shows that the more formalized help becomes, the less it increases the dependent person’s and the family’s sense of agency [5]. In other words, what is most dangerous here is not the absence of help, but its form: help that deprives a person of a voice.
What the statement reveals — from outside the caregivers’ “bubble”
This is a text written out of pain, but sustained in the language of institutions: “cared for,” “support program,” “telecare,” “secured in a social care home.” And yet between the lines one can see something else: the support system was not able to sustain a meaningful relationship, only a service relationship.
The sentence that the MOPR caregiver was “more than an assistant, a friend” shows that the effectiveness of support depended not on procedures, but on the quality of human contact — on exactly the thing the system is unable to guarantee. It shows that even where humanity appears, the system is unable to sustain it. It is built in such a way that the good intentions of individuals soften the consequences of its defects, but never repair them.
In the model recommended by the WHO [7] and the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [8], such a bond should be the norm, not the exception. If in Poland a “friendly caregiver” is still treated as an extraordinary occurrence, then humanity within the system has become a form of institutional disobedience.
The lack of subjecthood, described repeatedly in studies of parents of adults with profound disabilities [9], leads to existential burnout, loss of the sense that one’s role still matters, and loss of influence over the fate of one’s closest family member. It leads to the feeling that “the state is taking away the meaning of my life” and imposing another role instead: the parent-as-institution. Parenthood, which was meant to be a relationship, becomes an obligation without boundaries. This forced “total parenthood” works like a greedy institution [9a]: it consumes the whole person because no one else is willing to share in the burden. Until social and institutional structures begin to genuinely share care and decision-making, such situations will keep repeating themselves with the same predictable consequence.
Why most of society does not understand this
In everyday thinking, “care” is associated with safety, although in systemic practice it often means dependency and loss of influence. People do not see that for many families the system means having to surrender a loved one to a place where a human being becomes a procedure.
The lack of contact with the lived reality of people with disabilities produces what is known as an empathy gap — the difference between the cognitive state of the person judging and the state of a person in an emotionally intense situation. Research shows that people in a so-called “cold” emotional state systematically underestimate the impact of strong emotions and affective states on the behavior of others [10]. As a result, their interpretations are necessarily distorted: they appear “rational,” but they ignore the role of fear, pain, and desperation in human decision-making. This is why tragedies affecting families of people with disabilities are seen as irrational, even though from a psychological perspective they are predictable.
As Głąb and Kocejko show [11], disability policy in Poland is shaped by a mechanism of cruel optimism: the conviction that through individual effort and systemic support full independence is attainable. In practice, however, that promise of self-sufficiency becomes a source of tension: anyone who fails to meet its conditions is classified as “not independent” and loses the right to influence.
In my experience, this is exactly how help in Poland works: like a cage padded with care. The system promises care (“we will take care of you”), while at the same time setting the limits within which one is allowed to receive it, keeping the person in a role from which there is no exit without losing support.
The structural source of the crisis: confusing concepts
This tragedy should become the starting point for a conversation about the fact that in Poland we still confuse “benefits” with “support,” and “caregiving” with “institutional control.” A benefit is a transfer — support is a relationship and a process. Care is about concern; institutional control is about maintaining power over the person being helped.
As Barclay shows [12], institutional paternalism — even when it comes from concern — violates the principle of expressive respect toward people with disabilities. Support then turns into control, and care into an instrument of power. A system that declares protection ends up limiting subjecthood.
As a result, the system functions like a machine for ticking off obligations rather than like a safety net. That is why, even when “everything formally worked,” the family in Poznań remained effectively alone, trapped between loyalty to their son and loyalty to the institution that was supposed to help but instead took away meaning.
Ending
The Poznań tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It was not a random accident or an isolated personal drama, but a foreseeable effect of a system that still mistakes benefits for real support and care for control. From the point of view of psychology and empirical data, the critical moment could have been recognized earlier. What was missing was not help, but autonomy — the very thing that allows a person to preserve influence and a sense of meaning even under extreme conditions.
A system that takes away decision-making while leaving responsibility creates conditions for despair, not for help. What for a parent becomes the last act of love is, from the point of view of research, an act of desperation under conditions of structural hopelessness: the system removes influence but leaves responsibility. That does not justify it, but it does explain it — and in that explanation lies the responsibility of the state and of experts.
Because every further silence and every cosmetic reform brings us closer to a repetition of the same scenario — only with different names. If we truly want to prevent such tragedies, we have to stop reforming the “care” system from above. We need to build it from the person outward, not from the institution inward: with space for decision, shared responsibility, and subjecthood. Only then will we stop reacting to consequences and begin to understand causes.
Sources
[1] Adelman, R. D., Tmanova, L. L., Delgado, D., Dion, S., & Lachs, M. S. (2014). Caregiver burden: a clinical review. JAMA.
[2] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry.
[3] Roth, G., Vansteenkiste, M., & Ryan, R. M. (2019). Integrative emotion regulation: Process and development from a self-determination theory perspective. Development and Psychopathology.
[4] Bourget, D., Gagné, P., & Whitehurst, L. (2010). From Caring to Killing: A Typology of Homicides and Homicide-Suicides Perpetrated by Caregivers. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
[5] European Expert Group on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care (EEG). (2012, reprint 2020). Common European Guidelines on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care. Brussels: European Commission.
[6] Lerner, M. J. (1980). The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. New York: Springer.
[7] World Health Organization. (2021). World Report on Disability and Rehabilitation: Community-Based Inclusive Development. Geneva: World Health Organization.
[8] United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. (2017). General Comment No. 5 on living independently and being included in the community (Article 19, CRPD). Geneva: United Nations.
[9] Todd, S., & Shearn, J. (1996). Struggles with time: The careers of parents with adult sons and daughters with learning disabilities. Disability & Society.
[9a] Coser, L. A. (1974). Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment.
[10] Loewenstein, G. (2005). Hot-cold empathy gaps and medical decision making. Health Psychology, 24(4 Suppl.).
[11] Głąb, A., & Kocejko, M. (2021). Disability policy in Poland from the perspective of cruel optimism. [author’s own elaboration based on the authors’ interpretation].
[12] Barclay, L. (2024). Paternalism, Supported Decision-Making, and Expressive Respect. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 27(1).