new mental health proposals

[bethr]

Hi,

I heard on the radio today that the new government mental health proposals included 'locking up' (terrible term) people with personality disorder, even if they had not committed an offence. Further radio information included the fact that in all likelihood, these proposals weren't going to go ahead. I just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the first part of this (or the second!!)??? I would have thought that it was quite an emotive statement?? Thoughts please?

Beth

[forumAdmin]

I had not heard about this and am quite shocked

I am glad that there has been a decision not to go ahead
but as for the first part - the fact that ideas like this are entertained to me shows a misunderstanding of the field.

the human rights record in the UK was audited with the results out Feb last year (I believe) - they showed the UK as having a shockingly bad himan rights record.

I will stop now before someone says I am becoming political and ranting........:confused: :cool: ;)

[janeth]

I am very much against the locking up of people on the basis of what a diagnosis (often spurious) means that someone may do but I do believe that there are serious concerns about the current legislation in particular the "treatability clause". Under this people with personality disorders are deemed to be untreatable and therefore cannot be admitted under the Mental Health Act. I have been in the situation when working with a few people that they have been in crisis, and we have been unable to get them admittted to a place of safety because of this clause. The net result of this for one family was that they lived in perpetual fear, locked into their rooms at night, having to cope with tthe individuals frequent serious suicide attempts and a high level of aggreesion involving freqent threats with knives and a snooker cue. No local service would take the individual without compulsory admission and the person was unwilling to go. He wa of course deemed untreatable. Net result family totally disintegrstes and the criminal justice system eventually becomes involved.My own service got told to pull out for exactly the same reason great huh!

Persoanlly ithink that the treatability clause gives a complete opt out for a lot of services. I have great ethical problems wiht regarding anyone as untreatable. So after my rant i am in favour of reform i think that the category of personality disorder needs to be looked at but as with all these things there neeeds to be a balance between the needs of the person and the general public and individual assessemnt would be the way to go, but thats difficult to legislate for.

What does stun me is that its taken them 8 years and millions of pounds to decide that the new proposal was also unworkable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)

[anon_e-mouse]

BBC article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4835484.stm

DOH
http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/PressReleases/PressReleasesNotices/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4132068&chk=SbH%2BGa

Finally! they now see some problems with locking people up and compatabillity with HR act.

[bethr]

Thanks for the links anon e-mouse - very interesting. From what i read it appears that there are still some ideas around 'locking people up 'for a period of time (42 days seems to be the latest figure).

I don't know an awful lot about the management of people with personality disorder, so if anyone has any basic knowledge/ideas etc regarding this, i would be interested to hear about them??