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There is a significant omission in Rhona MacDonald's article, if the
report in "The Guardian" was correct. There the victim was reported as
the one who persuaded the patient to stop medication (&, I think, to
rely on prayer). There as been a least one previous similar case, &
after-care should not be assigned to untrained, ill-qualified volunteers
whose understanding of the psychoses is, "Not of this world."
I do not assign any more guilt to the victim than the perpetrator,
but rather to the Health Care Providers, who again according to "The
Guardian" spoke of the benefits of hind-sight. No hind-sight was
necessary: those of us who supported the concept of Community Care from
professional experience warned long ago that it was not a cheap option;
that in patient facilities should be run down at a speed dictated by
clinical possiblities, not by financial or political ones; & that some
inpatient facilities were as much a natural part of community resources as
they are in any other branch of Medicine
The role of the victim
There is a significant omission in Rhona MacDonald's article, if the
report in "The Guardian" was correct. There the victim was reported as
the one who persuaded the patient to stop medication (&, I think, to
rely on prayer). There as been a least one previous similar case, &
after-care should not be assigned to untrained, ill-qualified volunteers
whose understanding of the psychoses is, "Not of this world."
I do not assign any more guilt to the victim than the perpetrator,
but rather to the Health Care Providers, who again according to "The
Guardian" spoke of the benefits of hind-sight. No hind-sight was
necessary: those of us who supported the concept of Community Care from
professional experience warned long ago that it was not a cheap option;
that in patient facilities should be run down at a speed dictated by
clinical possiblities, not by financial or political ones; & that some
inpatient facilities were as much a natural part of community resources as
they are in any other branch of Medicine
Competing interests: No competing interests