Public health psychiatry and crime prevention

BMJ 1999;318:1354 ( 15 May )

Letters

Public health psychiatry and crime prevention

Preventive detention of mentally ill people is already widespread

Psychiatry cannot protect public from people with personality disorder

Preventive detention of mentally ill people is already widespread

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

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 thosewith untreatable mental disorders is already widely practisedin England. Under the Mental Health Act (1983) people with mentalillness or severe mental impairment can be detained indefinitelyin hospital regardless of response to treatment and on groundsof risk to self as well as others. Secure and open psychiatrichospitals are full of suchpatients.

If Eastman was concerned that possible new legislation might challenge both the "civil liberties of the unconvicted and thosedesignated untreatable" then surely this concern should extendto the current legislation affecting people with a mental illnessor mental impairment. Many psychiatrists find it convenient tomake a strong distinction between personality disorder (a largelysocial condition) and mental illness or impairment (a wholly medicalone) . . . [Full text of this article]