After Nottingham Is It Time for a MH Database

[WillimNot]

After seeing one of the victims family suggest that huge errors had been made in the Nottingham case that, if they hadn't of occurred the victims would still be alive.

So it makes me wonder whether we need a national database of people with Mental health issues.

Not for minor depression. But for potentially dangerous conditions like schizophrenia.

The guy who killed those people had been flagged before. He had other violent incidents. Yet as soon as he would leave custody or hospital, no checks were done to ensure he took his medication or engaged with his GP or MH team.

Over the years there were 3 other times he behaved in a way to get sectioned.

We know the NHS is struggling. So if we had a national database, it could flag someone who hasn't attended a review, or who hasn't had their medication prescribed. It could also flag someone for a random check, where they'd be expected to attend so a professional can make sure they have been taking their medication and they're feeling well.

There have been so many incidents now of people with severe mental illness who have harmed or killed people. I'm also thinking of the Reading stabbings in 2020. If they'd been flagged before they stopped engaging with medication or doctors, these incidents could've been avoided.

I have bi-polar and would have no issue with being on this database, because I engage with my GP and do what I should. But sadly not everyone does and this would go some way to try and ensure we don't have to see anymore families torn a part.

I was under SIM/HIN. I was made to feel like a criminal.
I even met the man that started it, and he fobbed off my concerns.

It's to ensure that people with MH issues get support that is seriously lacking...

Clearly current methods do not work.

The answer is proper funding of existing services rather than requiring mentally ill people to carry on proving their place in society

I'm sorry to hear you were under SIM… I hope I didn't cause you any difficulty, by mentioning it on a thread where you might not have expected to come across it.

I wasn't affected by it myself, but I've read enough people's testimony to despise those who advocated for SIM even after being told what harm it caused.

We know the NHS is struggling. So if we had a national database, it could flag someone who hasn't attended a review, or who hasn't had their medication prescribed. It could also flag someone for a random check, where they'd be expected to attend so a professional can make sure they have been taking their medication and they're feeling well.

A database wouldn't magically produce enough MH professionals to carry out "random checks", so it would just be another pointless bit of bureaucracy that would take time better spent actually working with their clients.

I don't know if it's general, but the Community MH teams here already have such a system. I work with MH clients, and when I was in a frontline role, I would oftens get calls from a CPN or PSW asking if I'd seen X or Y client lately, as they hadn't been able to contact them and they were due for review, also if a client had missed an appointment.

This has to be a joke. Random checks?

Having a mental illness isn't a crime.

I knew several people with MH diagnosis that would put them on their GP's SMI register, but this is because SMI generally means a shorter life expectancy, so they can be offered more frequent physical health checks. Some are not even under a MH team as they are stable and doing very well.
The stereotype of someone with schizophrenia being some unkempt looking person with crazy eyes who goes round stabbing people can fuck off. Many people with it hold down jobs and have families. Unless they tell you about their medical history, you would not know about their diagnosis. Same for bipolar.

Unless someone is on a CTO (in which case they are being monitored, and can be recalled to hospital if they don't take their medication), then it is their choice to take what they are prescribed and attend appointments.

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.

No, the Police and other services just need to do their jobs properly. This man should have been off the streets months before if everyone had done what they were supposed to have done.

Realistically are people who are manic, hypomanic, in the middle of psychosis or have anosognosia going to engage with an automated reminder?

I feel for all three of these families, truly I do but their satisfaction is not a requirement of the justice system, nor should it be.

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?

And that's why family's don't get to decide punishments

I deal with a lot of mentally unwell people in my job, whose MH issues are causing them to behave in very upsetting and antisocial ways.

It's a bloody job of work to even find out if they have a MH support worker in place, then to actually get hold of the MH support worker, who then struggles to get the patient to engage, so we all sit around in a big professionals meeting discussing the case and what needs to be done, but can't be done until the patient engages..

Meanwhile ASB behaviours continue, until we end up in court for possession of their home. At which point everyone panics as a MH patient is about to be homeless and then as if by magic services start to get more involved and the patient gets help.

This happens because there is not enough MH workers to be able to do the kind of proactive engagement you are talking about. It doesn't really happen until shit hits the fan. In my job it's usually they're about to lose their home, in others it's because they just murdered someone.

MH provision needs tripling across the board, but it won't happen. It costs a huge amount of money for care in the community provisions.

@scorpiogirly There doesn’t need to be an alternative to satisfy families. What a bereaved family may want may not be fair, appropriate or possible. Nothing will bring back their loved ones.

The reason that criminal cases are R Vs Defendant is that the crown (i.e., in practice, the whole of society) is the party taking on the responsibility of prosecuting the defendant. Crimes are dealt with as though the injured party is society as a whole. It wouldn't be fair or reasonable to put the responsibility of prosecuting a crime on to the direct victims, anyway.

And then someone like a member of the judiciary selected to act on behalf of society, and sometimes also a group of individuals acting as a sample of society, are involved in the process of weighing the evidence, deciding on a sentence and all that kind of thing. So it's all about how society was offended against and how society wants to deal with that.

But it means that the sentence isn't "for" the victims, really. It's for society, and whatever society believes the sentence should be for that kind of crime, what the aim of the sentence should be (punishment, rehabilitation, public protection, treatment), what it should be, how severe, etc.

Things have been done round the edges to make victims feel involved, but actually, no, the criminal courts' purpose is not to achieve justice specifically for victims or the families of victims. That might be how the newspapers talk about it, but it's not what "justice" is intended to mean in this context.

There are good reasons why victims or their families aren't and shouldn't be involved in judging and sentencing, such as the fact that many of us (including me, probably) would tend to want far harsher punishments when we've been the victims of something, compared to what society in general might decide makes sense for that crime given the huge range of possible crimes, the available resources for punishment, how to be evenhanded and fair to those who have committed crimes, evidence about how to get the best outcomes, and suchlike.

But a really big reason why you don't want victims to be involved in prosecuting, judging, sentencing, or anything like that, is that having that power would put them in an incredibly vulnerable position. People know they can't easily threaten or intimidate the CPS or a judge or jury, but a victim would have to deal with the possibility of those, or of revenge — as things stand, people know that whatever happened to them in court, the victim(s) weren't to "blame" for it.

I know it sounds callous to say that the justice system isn't and shouldn't be about justice for the families or the victims, but there are good reasons it's the way it is.

When he committed the first act of violence he should have been deported.

His family are also in the UK and have been from several years. Removing people from their mental health team and support eg family to randomly put on a plane to another country is reckless and increases the likelihood of something awful happening. He hasn't lived in guinea since he was 3

He had no criminal record, he wasn't previously charged with anything. Until the 22 incident where he assaulted a police officer whilst be transported to hospital under mha. Which is very common when a frightened person is moved by police against their will. It hadn't gone through court at this point but I doubt he would have recoeved more than a fine

We can't go about deporting people who have never even gone through the judicial system to prove if they are guilty

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.

But he should have gone through that system. He had lived in 2 other countries since he left his home country at 3. Does he have British citizenship?

I'm not sure, and to be honest won't look it up because I don't think it matters. Hes lived in the UK for twice as long as anywhere else

He had never been convicted of anything. Sadly assaults on mental health staff are frighteningly common but there are rarely many judicial outcomes because its very difficult to prove that people have capacity especially if they were deemed so mentally unwell they are held under mha at the time or immediately after as this person was

If we want people to engage with mental health service then we need to make sure contacts with the mh system don't threaten their citizenship.

There's lots of suggestions across threads that people who admit to hearing voices should be deported, forced to take meds, kept on a register, immediately hospitalised. People are often scared of what will happen so Dont disclose and we don't want to make it even worse

We also know that people wait much longer to engage with services and often are much more unwell at first presentation if they come from cultures where forced hospitalisation, brutal treatments, social stigma etc are common

We need to encourage people to engage (and have the resources to engage them) at earlier opportunities rather than terrifying them into hiding from services

Can you imagine if France deported someone back to us who had no family, accommodation, had never lived here as an adult or mental health support who was known to have severe mental health problems? We'd be outraged and say it was an accident waiting to happen

I didn't mean to suggest that you said that, I just wanted to expand on how/why the justice system is intended to produce "justice" only in relation to society as the relevant injured party. It shouldn't be trying to produce "appropriate justice for the families" (and couldn't ever possibly do so — what justice can there ever really be for the killing of three people, for those three families?) if working as intended.

First a register.
Then exclusion
Then persecution
Then execution.

Sound familiar?

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.

Only someone who could be on the verge of crisis would want to keep the teams at arms length.

I'm glad you have only had good experiences of your team. Many people have very good reason to keep teams at arms length due to a variety of factors including box ticking culture, lack of trauma informed approach, lack of staff continuity. But the biggest for me is that there are a not low percentage of people who work in mental health who quite frankly shouldn't have access to vulnerable people. None of this encourages engagement as it is.

What's that, Dave? You believe the government has colluded with your doctors and put you on a watch list so that your movements are being monitored? Ah, actually, that might not be your paranoid schizophrenia talking.....

Dead right there. We had a local place In our town.
I remember ir was closed down and houses built on it?
Time for a review. What would the powers that be say, if it was one of theirs murdered?

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