Britain is returning to the era of asylums, a top doctor has warned, after figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday show the number of mental health patients locked up in psychiatric hospitals against their will has spiralled over the past four decades.Why is this considered a 'warning'..? We should be celebrating!
Experts say the situation is at least in part a symptom of a wider problem in the NHS: the practice of defensive medicine. This is when doctors offer treatment or an intervention that may not be warranted, simply in order to avoid the possibility of a complaint or legal action should something go wrong.
I'm not sure why they should be so worried, since they are hardly ever face any consequences...
Retired consultant psychiatrist and Care Quality Commission reviewer Dr Duncan Double said: ‘When I started working on an acute psychiatric ward in 1984, we used to pride ourselves on having an open-door policy.
‘In the 1960s and 1970s there was a drive to close old psychiatric institutions in favour of supporting mental health patients in the community, but, if anything, things have become more bureaucratic and more restrictive.
‘Doctors have become more fearful of public safety or being blamed, so may be more likely to section patients inappropriately. We’ve returned to the worst aspects of the asylums era.’
No, we've returned to the best aspects of them - they kept people safe from the mentally ill and the mentally ill safe from themselves.
Of particular concern to doctors are people with personality disorders, who make up almost half of mental health patients detained in out-of-area placements. These include borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, in which patients are unable to control their emotions and behave impulsively and irrationally. They can also harm themselves or others, meaning doctors might feel sectioning them is the safest option.
But Dr Jorge Zimbron, consultant psychiatrist at Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge, says this can have disastrous consequences.
‘The majority of patients with a personality disorder have a history of abuse, so restraining them is traumatic and won’t be beneficial.’
It'll be very beneficial to those members of the public who'd otherwise be assaulted or murdered by them, though, wouldn't it?
Why we shouldn't be celebrating is because they will use these powers on you and I.
ReplyDeleteIn one.
DeleteAny one with opposing opinions or critical of government policy will be classed as mentally impaired then carted off. It is the thin end of the wedge.
That's a risk, yes. But it's yet to happen. Murders by the mentally ill happen, it seems, every week...
DeleteWhen I was eighteen, I played cricket for my works team. One Saturday, we played the staff of one of those old Asylums. After tea, I just picked up a small pile of plates to help with the clear-up. I was lifted off my feet by this massive bloke, who kept muttering "Its My job" I didn't argue!
ReplyDelete😂
DeleteThere was a time when the mentally-challenged would be segregated to protect the innocent public. Now they move amongst us, reducing public safety. Why does anyone think this is a good plan?
ReplyDeleteThe "spiralling" numbers couldn't have anything to do with the deliberate export here, by every other country, of their mentally ill (as well as criminals, drug-addicts, and alcoholics) could it?
ReplyDeleteAs a student nurse, in London in the early 90's, I was 'rotated' through a mental-health placement (hospital and community both) and, in both settings, the overwhelming majority of 'patients' were ... foreigners (a majority Irish, some Scots and lots and lots and lots of middle-eastern and Africans) even then.
As witnessed from the lofty heights (the trenches?) of A&E ... it's just gotten (exponentially) worse since.
So? The reality, rather than some spurious/implied increase in the rates of incarceration due to "fear of being blamed", is there is in fact much 'less' incarceration due to the very real "fear of being labelled an ist or ic".
If they were actually doing their jobs (an unrealistic pipe-dream I know) there'd be a massive increase, demands to rebuild all the old institutions (and extensive new ones), and (hopefully) full planes returning all those budding doctors/lawyers/engineers and rap stars/footballers to their home countries (possibly a la "the Pinochet airlines" - along with the politicians who organised and allowed this. I know, I know but ... a man can dream can't he?).
Yes, it can't have gone unnoticed how many of the floridly mentally ill are a little darker than the average...
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