Pure madness : how fear drives the mental health system.

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This, the second annual King's Fund Lecture at the Faculty of Public Health Medicine annual conference, warns that mental health policy has become obsessed with protecting the public from 'mad axemen' to the detriment of patient care. Jeremy Laurance, health editor at The Independent, states that since the death of Jonathan Zito in 1992, the rate of forcible admissions to psychiatric hospitals has risen almost by half and the number of beds in secure units has more than doubled. This increase, he argues, has resulted from a growing climate of fear about a small group of potentially dangerous people, causing many thousands of others to be detained and treated against their will, with the public and political focus on the tiny numbers who pose a risk distracting attention from the plight of the huge majority of frightened, disturbed people whose suffering remains largely hidden from an uninterested world. He warns that the proposed introduction of compulsory care in the community will increase the stigma that isolates people with mental illnesses and could deter many of them from seeking the help they need. [Press release abbreviated]

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