After Nottingham Is It Time for a MH Database

Good luck. In 2022, there were fewer than 25,000 psychiatric care beds in the UK, for a population of 67 million, or one bed for every 2680 people.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/473278/number-of-psychiatric-care-beds-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

Just prior to the big "care in the community" push in the early 1980s, there were about 85,000 beds, for a population of 56 million, or one bed for every 659 people.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1997-11-27/debates/62d0a01a-2264-482f-a042-1b9f72bdb210/PsychiatricBeds

In other words, we've got a quarter of the psychiatric hospital places, per person, that we had in 1980.

Doctors and other mental health workers want people who are desperately ill to be able to stay in hospital until they're truly well enough to go home, or, say, to be able to have a gradual return with nights at home but keeping their hospital place. But they have to kick desperately unwell people out of hospital because someone even worse off needs their place. And running at less than full capacity is unthinkable, when so many people need a bed but can't get one — even though you need spare spaces for emergency admissions.

When someone is so seriously unwell that they need to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital right now, their doctors and their families would usually like to be able to admit them straight away to the local psychiatric ward. Instead, patients wait, often with only their family to try and keep them safe if they're lucky, while staff call around the country to see if there's a bed anywhere. If they're lucky enough to find one, the patient is locked up potentially hundreds of miles from home — no family support, no visits. If not — well, the person might still be sectioned, but with nowhere to go.

Doctors would like to be able to do planned admissions like they used to, to prevent deterioration or to monitor trying a new medication. No go.

People used to be voluntarily admitted sometimes, and the wards they were admitted to were places with patients with various levels of severity. Now, wards are temporary holding pens crammed full of only the most severely and dangerously unwell people, a place for chemical stabilisation at best, not a place to start getting well.

Psychiatric patients are crying out for more beds, mental health services are crying out for more beds, for people who are so severely, acutely mentally unwell that the average person would be agog that they weren't in hospital weeks ago, long before they reached this point. Just being psychotic or suicidal isn't high enough severity.

Families live on suicide watch, retrieve psychotic family members from abroad, watch loved ones sink into squalor or homelessness or chaos, and none of these things are necessarily severe enough to qualify for one of the very few beds left. Psychiatric patients kill themselves, ones who might've been kept alive and recovered, if inpatient treatment had been available.

None of these things is enough to convince our government to fund adequate inpatient care for mental illness. God only knows how many avoidable deaths and how many ruined lives that adds up to.

I suppose it's entirely possible that our governments will change their minds and decide it is worth spending the money on, when it's the deaths and ruined lives of a tiny number of people who don't have a mental illness, or a mentally ill family member, themselves (rather than the much larger number of deaths and ruined lives they're happy to accept for the mentally ill and their families). But they'll have to find at least four times as many staff, at least four times as many adequate physical facilities, and spending all that money on mentals when there's Hardworking Families out there will be a hard sell.

By the way, how are you intending to distinguish the hundreds of thousands of people with schizophrenia who will never harm anyone in their lives from the ones who are so dangerous they should be secured away from society? I'm sure you're not advocating for life sentences for people who've committed no crime beyond having a mental illness that's beyond their control, who have never harmed anyone and never will?

I live in a rough area and there are regularly people who are clearly mentally ill behaving in a very antisocial way, day and night, shouting and swearing at passers-by. It’s awful that these people don’t get the help they need and are seemingly just left to live on the streets. Their behaviour can be very unpredictable, drink (and possibly drugs) plays a part too and they clearly need serious intervention from professionals, yet appear to be left to fend for themselves. I blame the Tories.

Well what a load of bollocks.

Firstly I al very sorry for what you went through, I truly am and I can understand why you would want to inflict that pai on your attacker. And I'd bloody cheer you on.

But we are not talking slow death by nailgun here!

Also, I am not saying at all that mentally ill people should be placed under surveillance.

The bottom line is, the major of murderers are mentally ill, but the majority of mentally ill people are not murderers.

Sadly these tragedies are never going to be fully stopped. After ready Barnaby’s mums story in the mail earlier I shed a few years learning about how they found out and how cheated they feel that he wasn’t tried for murder due to the mental illness. And of course my heart goes out to the other victims of this senseless murder, Grace and Ian and all their loved ones

Fifteen years after the fact, if you locked me in a room with my rapist and a nail gun, I would gleefully torture him to death.

I don’t think satisfying my desire for vengeance is a requirement of the justice system though. What kind of barbaric country would we live in if “slow death by nailgun” was a state-sanctioned punishment?

And just because these families aren’t happy with the sentence here does not mean all other mentally ill people should be placed under surveillance and have their human rights curtailed.

It is fine. I think it is good to see it mentioned as the vast majority of people have no idea what it was or what harm it did.

What??? Given that the justice system is really the only system ( the joke that it is) that is able to deliver any justice in cases like this, I think it is. What is the alternative?

Why not for minor depression? So many men have used depression and anxiety card an excuse for killing their partner and/or children.

There was lots in his background and he'd already been sectioned many times.

Unfortunately risk assessment in mental health is not very predictive and hundreds of thousands of people would need detaining to prevent just one homicide. There was nothing in his history to predict level of violence would happen.
He really will never leave hospital now he is on a forensic section with this index offence.

No. Schizophrenia is a horrible illness. I'm not a mental health professional but I think I recall hearing that people with schizophrenia are at far greater risk of being hurt by someone else or self-harming than being violent to others. What we need in this country is properly funded high quality mental health services. Back in the 1980s when the old asylums were closed down and mostly sold for extremely profitable redevelopment as housing estates, the Tory government made empty promises about providing good quality community-based mental health care to replace them. It didn't happen and we are all suffering as a result. Such a false economy not to look after people with mental health problems properly, as early in life as possible. If it's not done, their lives and their families' lives are blighted, and we lose out on what they could be contributing to society as workers, taxpayers and good parents and neighbours. And from time to time, a paranoid schizophrenic in the grip of psychosis does something horrific like this. Surely we can do better.

Who said anything about punishments?

Never let it be said there isn't a contingent of MN that read a thread and immediately add and embellish to suit their narrative.

I would argue that this man should have been on indefinite psychiatric hold before he commited mass murder.

What was the point of allowing him to join a uni flat, where the residents had quite the nickname for him? Why were they at risk? He was sectioned and then, on leaving, could go off and commit more violent crime. No checks.

So please, what is the answer? Because frankly I agree with the parent who said the agencies have blood on their hands, and in the US there would've been repercussions for those who failed to intervene and prevent this incident.

I strongly believe, as a MH sufferer myself, that those who genuinely engage and do what we need to to stay well would not have any issues. We all get busy and a timely reminder would be handy. As I said, just like smear test reminders- do you have an issue with those? Or when the dentist reminds you you're due a check up? Or the opticians?

Those who didn't engage would receive a visit from the MH team. If they're not engaging it is a huge red flag. Because I know I want to be well. Only someone who could be on the verge of crisis would want to keep the teams at arms length.

As for funding, we are currently wasting money on a system which doesn't work. So why not use modern tech systems to automate it.

Let's be honest, every few days there's a post about GPs not working daily, they seem to be universally on part time now. This would mean they were responsible for that patient- not ring and hope you get any GP so there's no continuity of care- and would be required to contact within a set time scale. It makes GPs responsible and helps take pressure off the patient, the community and the police.

As I say, keen to hear what others reckon is the alternative?

I'm not saying the families should choose the punishment. I'm saying that the punishment should be appropriate foe the crimes committed. The system in this country is ridiculous and far too lenient. Time after time there are cases of rape, child sex abuse etc where the perpetrators are either spared a prison sentence entirely, or serve a sentence so small that it is an insult.