BMJ 1995;311:689 (9 September)

Letters

Anti-therapeutic community mental health law

EDITOR,--The defence by K C Calman, the chief medical officer, of the government's Mental Health (Patients in the Community) Bill seems to be based more on hope than on clinical argument.1 It is also contradicted by the Department of Health's internal review of legal powers on the care of mentally ill people in the community, which preceded the drafting of the bill.2 This stated that, although the department believed that wider use of guardianship might help some patients, "we cannot see guardianship offering a ready answer to the problems of the patients with whom we have been concerned." Aftercare under supervision, however, amounts merely to "guardianship, fortified with the power to convey."3

Neither I nor Calman can support our expectations of the clinical impact of the bill by reference to clinical trials. This contrasts with the introduction of supervision registers, for which piloting would have been possible and should have . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Anti-therapeutic community mental health law
K C Calman
BMJ 1995 310: 1530. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Leung, W.-C. (2002). Why the professional-Client Ethic is Inadequate in Mental Health Care. Nurs Ethics 9: 51-60 [Abstract]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ