Preventive detention of mentally ill people is already widespread

EDITOR—Eastman's editorial brought the debate about dangerousness and mental disorder to a wider audience.1 Unfortunately, he failed to point out that the preventive detention of those with untreatable mental disorders is already widely practised in England. Under the Mental Health Act (1983) people with mental illness or severe mental impairment can be detained indefinitely in hospital regardless of response to treatment and on grounds of risk to self as well as others. Secure and open psychiatric hospitals are full of such patients.

If Eastman was concerned that possible new legislation might challenge both the “civil liberties of the unconvicted and those designated untreatable” then surely this concern should extend to the current legislation affecting people with a mental illness or mental impairment. Many psychiatrists find it convenient to …