More than 400 people have been killed by psychiatric patients released into the community over the last eight years, it has been reported.

An official report to be published on Monday will show that, on average, one person a week dies at the hands of a mentally ill patient, it is claimed.

Almost a third of the killings were carried out by people who had been judged not to be a risk to the public, it is reported, while one in six deaths have been blamed on the failure to ensure patients took their medication properly.

The report has been produced by Professor Louis Appleby, the Government's national clinical director for mental health, for the National Patient Safety Agency.

He is said to have concluded that health staff are failing to identify those patients most at risk of killing someone.

"This is really to do with how mental health staff rate a person as low or high risk. Sometimes they just become desensitised to the risks they are dealing with," he is quoted as saying.

His findings come after an inquiry into the killing of retired banker Denis Finnegan by paranoid schizophrenic John Barrett in London's Richmond Park found significant failings in the risk-management process.

The Department of Health has confirmed that Prof Appleby's report will be released on Monday.

 

Should we be releasing psychiatric patients into the community?

No, not if they're killing people.

It's all very well to go on about statistics that go back only 8 years, but the facts are it was the Tories who came up with the "Care in the Community" idea in the first place which saw the release of thousands of mentally ill people who were a danger mostly to themselves rather than the public at large... Many mentally ill people ended up homeless on the streets because of this ill-conceived policy where their conditions worsened because they were being untreated.. The Tories thought that it would be a 'cheap' option, but in reality, "Care in the Community" properly resourced and done correctly would actually involve spending more than incarceration in an institution... Not that Nu Labour have done any better to deal with this problem really, the mentally ill are still treated absolutely diabolically by the system. These murders and violent assaults that are being committed by mentally ill patients are occurring as a direct result of the failure of the system and the Govt to adequately deal with the problem.. No blame can really be apportioned to someone who is of diminished responsibility...

It's all very well to go on about statistics that go back only 8 years, but the facts are it was the Tories who came up with the "Care in the Community" idea in the first place which saw the release of thousands of mentally ill people who were a danger mostly to themselves rather than the public at large... Many mentally ill people ended up homeless on the streets because of this ill-conceived policy where their conditions worsened because they were being untreated.. The Tories thought that it would be a 'cheap' option, but in reality, "Care in the Community" properly resourced and done correctly would actually involve spending more than incarceration in an institution... Not that Nu Labour have done any better to deal with this problem really, the mentally ill are still treated absolutely diabolically by the system. These murders and violent assaults that are being committed by mentally ill patients are occurring as a direct result of the failure of the system and the Govt to adequately deal with the problem.. No blame can really be apportioned to someone who is of diminished responsibility...

 

 

100% correct scott.