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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

After Nottingham Is It Time for a MH Database

119 replies

WillimNot · 26/01/2024 07:24

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.

OP posts:
WillimNot · 26/01/2024 15:47

Wow @baileybrosbuildingandloan that's the biggest reach ever. That's not even close to what I've said.
Get over yourself.

OP posts:
raffegiraffe · 26/01/2024 16:17

girlfriend44 · 26/01/2024 15:46

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

Yes, the same as many many other people with schizophrenia who will never kill anyone. There isn't the space to do this for everyone with a history of violence and schizophrenia. Really, it's very unpredictable. Also many people sadly don't respond to treatment. What I'd like is more funding into research, it's criminal we still don't know what causes schizophrenia, better and safer treatments, longer lasting depots. These things could really make a difference. Just look at the developments in cancer treatments. It could happen if there was a will. I'm biased though, this is my job and I make decisions about who to detain and who not to everyday.

Cornettoninja · 26/01/2024 16:36

@WillimNot it’s not that much of a reach actually, and is a valid argument against what you have suggested. Maybe you’re not best placed to table sweeping ideas like you have if you’re not prepared to even entertain people’s reservations and discuss why they’re not relevant in your opinion.

Unless you think that your ideas and thoughts should be accepted without question because everyone should just think that you have good intentions? I wouldn’t recommend anyone go through life so uncritically personally.

Howmanysleepsnow · 26/01/2024 18:26

As a PP pointed out, if indicators of risk and disengagement are present there are powers under the MHA to allow recall to hospital of specific individuals.
Statistically people with mental illness are LESS likely to commit violent crime than the general population (but MORE likely to be victim to it), so a general database would serve little purpose other than to fuel prejudice.
it’s unfortunate that this stigma continues to be propagated.

Weegieunicorn · 26/01/2024 18:28

The percentage of significant physical assaults by people who have a diagnosed mental disorder is less than people who don't!

Zanatdy · 26/01/2024 18:29

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

cansu · 26/01/2024 18:33

He was known to services. How would his name being on a data base have changed what happened?

Northernsouloldies · 26/01/2024 18:37

Hermittrismegistus · 26/01/2024 07:39

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

That's one helluva leap from depression /anxiety which millions have and don't kill the family to a guy that visited Mi5 in London and told them to stop controlling him plus all the things afore hand that he'd done. Care in the community simply doesn't work it fails the patient and wider society. A data base with all Mh conditions would be impossible to enforce and keep track of people. The sex offender register has real problems and that's with a fraction of the numbers a Mh register would have.

Serencwtch · 26/01/2024 18:44

Why? Having a severe mental illness is not a crime. It doesn't make you more likely to commit a crime. Most murders aren't committed by people with schizophrenia. It does make someone significantly more likely to be a victim of serious crime however.
There's already a thing called criminal record for criminals.

I have schizo-affective disorder btw.

Northernsouloldies · 26/01/2024 18:50

Just for the record, I'm not comparing people with Mh issues to sex offenders.

Yazo · 26/01/2024 18:51

No way, what a terrible idea. My dad had schizophrenia but aside from his worst spell of it where he was potentially going to hurt himself, he kept it in check with medication, counselling and held down a job, friends and you'd never have known he had it. When his symptoms got bad he'd just both me with annoying emails. People need to educate themselves. It also affects people from minority backgrounds more, probably as a reflection of trauma. Nearly all of these people will have asked for help or be known to authorities. They have the information they need, including databases, they don't need what you suggest.

Saschka · 26/01/2024 19:02

scorpiogirly · 26/01/2024 13:51

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?

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.

Serencwtch · 26/01/2024 20:39

XenoBitch · 26/01/2024 12:48

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.

The trust in my area have decided to continue with it regardless of NHS England guidelines. Called by a different name & not officially SIM/HIN as they no longer exist but still police mentoring, threats of withdrawal of services, court for non compliance.
The people running these things are the ones that should be prosecuted.

scorpiogirly · 26/01/2024 20:54

Saschka · 26/01/2024 19:02

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.

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.

MCOut · 26/01/2024 21:00

Zanatdy · 26/01/2024 18:29

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

She’s understandably angry, she misses her son, the authorities massively fucked up and she cannot be reasonably expected to empathise with this man. However, it serves no purpose trying a paranoid schizophrenic who was unmediated and in crisis for murder. The doctors had no incentive to lie. He’s going to hospital where he belongs and he’s probably never getting out.

bluewanda · 26/01/2024 21:22

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.

Throckmorton · 26/01/2024 22:23

scorpiogirly · 26/01/2024 20:54

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.

Citation for that "fact" you throw out in the last paragraph [about the majority of murderers being mentally ill]? I bloody hope you have one given that's one hell of a stigmatization of a group of vulnerable people [the mentally ill - for clarity] if you don't.

[edited to clarify the "fact" I am refering to, and the vulnerable group]

x2boys · 26/01/2024 22:31

bluewanda · 26/01/2024 21:22

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.

Edited

This has been going on for decades I used to be a mental health nurse and mental health services have always been seen as the Cinderella services of the NHS
I was redeployed twice in 12 months due to cuts between 2005 and 2006 .

StringTheory1 · 26/01/2024 22:59

TipulophobiaIsReal · 26/01/2024 11:35

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?

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