Health & Social Services
Many years ago we had mental hospitals all over the country, some did a very good job others were nothing more than glorified prisons, with one major exception; prisoners had rights of appeal, parole etc. Many of the inmates in mental holes were unjustly put in these homes in the first place and the patients had no right of appeal or, more importantly, very little chance of getting out. Many were drugged to keep them in order or quiet or both.
Many of these mental hospitals were situated in prime locations with substantial grounds. In the mid 70’s the then government decided that things had to change. A policy called “Care in the Community” was introduced. The idea was that as many of the people detained in these homes were considered to be “low risk”, it was thought that by placing most of the inmates in the local community they would survive and improve mentally.
This programme did not include the very secure mental hospitals like Broadmoor, which housed and still houses to this day, the seriously criminally insane.
The old mental hospitals were closed with indecent haste and the buildings and land sold for development. Unfortunately not all of the inmates were able to cope with the world outside of the environment they had spent much of their lives depending on. Mentally ill people were placed in council homes with very little support and told to get on with it without much support from the authorities.
Many of the former inmates did adapt to their new surroundings, which confirmed that many of the former inmates should not have been in mental homes in the first place. Unfortunately many former inmates did not adapt to having to look after themselves. The problem for this group of people was that when the new system failed to work for them there was no back-up and nowhere for them to go.
The policy was flawed because no consideration was taken in account of how say a schizophrenic would adapt to the outside world. Unfortunately many did not adapt and started, because of their split personality, committing crimes, without really realising what they were doing. When the law caught up with them, which inevitably happened, because there was no institute available to help, jail was the only option.
So now we had situations where crimes were being committed by people who had very little idea of what they were doing and our society punishing them, not by putting them into an institute that was purpose built for dealing with this type of problem, but by putting them in prison, which because of their perceived mental deficiency they were liable to become more and more withdrawn, with very little hope of them ever recovering enough to take their place in society.
We can’t carry treating our mental ill people with such distain. Mental illness covers a massive range and we know very little about the causes and the cures, but what is obvious is that more needs to be done to help these very vulnerable members of our society.
We need help here; is there any one out there reading this has experience of dealing with the mentally ill, either in a personal or professional capacity?
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