Mental Health

MP rebellion looms over new mental health curbs

Mental health professionals and opposition parties have joined forces to resist wider powers to detain people with a mental disorder deemed to pose a danger to others.

The Mental Health Alliance, which represents 80 professional bodies and support groups, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, will press for safeguards to the legislation.

They will work together to retain amendments added to the Mental Health Bill in a string of defeats inflicted on the Government in the Lords. It means that Labour faces a struggle to avert a Commons rebellion on the issue in Tony Blair’s final weeks in office.

Rather frightening, this law could be used by an unscrupulous government to lock up 'undesirables' or those who dissent.

The reason why there is this problem is due to the shutting down of the mental health hospitals and the 'care in the community' policy that was put in its place, this was then underfunded, which leads to our current impasse, the mentally ill end up in prison because there is no where to look after them, thats a reason why the prisons are overcrowded here.

Yes I know the old mental hospitals were not very nice and led to institutionalism. What I am saying is you could build state of the art facilities to care for those with mental health issues and still have care in the community but have someplace where they can be protected from hurting themseleves and others.

Instead they are abandoned in the community due to a lack of funding, then end up committing a crime and then go to jail.

The system is fucked up at the moment.

NuLab has a history of tearing down things in the rush for 'modernization' and then underfunding its replacement, doing things on the cheap, which then causes more problems.