Natalia
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 Posted: 12/05/06 - 03:26 Post subject: Mentally ill kill one person a week |
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The Government's national clinical director for mental health, Professor Louis Appleby, has produced a report in which he stated that an average of one person a week dies at the hands of a mentally ill patient.
His biggest concern is that the health staff is failing to recognize the dangerous patients as one third of the killers had been judged not to be a risk to the public.
The fact is that at least one in three of these unfortunate events could be prevented.
Health minister Rosie Winterton, on the other hand, denies the inability of identifying the potential killers. He says that the problem is in the patients themselves and the doctors’ inability to make them take their drugs regularly and see their doctors.
When patients leave the hospitals, many of them don’t continue to take their medications and don’t stay in touch with their mental health services.
Unfortunately, for the time being, there is no way or power to make the patients stick to their treatments.
Chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, Marjorie Wallace, agrees with both statements and says that it is both an inability to identify the dangerous as well as them not holding by their treatments. |
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