The Metropolitan police owned up yesterday to stigmatising people with mental illness and "perpetuating a myth" that they are especially prone to violence. It promised a programme of reform to stop the inappropriate use of police cells to detain vulnerable people who are going through a mental health crisis.

Officers said damage was often done by unauthorised leaking of mental health records, giving a misleading impression of suspects' danger to the public. There were also problems if uniformed officers accompanied social workers in detaining a patient under the Mental Health Act.

A review by police and NHS chiefs in London said: "We recognise that people who experience mental illness are far more likely to be a victim of crime than a perpetrator."

Brian Paddick, deputy assistant commissioner, said holding violent patients in police cells protected other people but did nothing to protect them against themselves, or to care for their clinical needs. He promised training to educate officers about the need for patient confidentiality.

The police and NHS organisations agreed to set up a network of "places of safety" across London where people in a mental health crisis could be treated.

I think these changes are all for the better. People with mental illnesses don't know what they're doing a lot of the time and putting them in a cell is not always the best place both in terms of their personal safety and in the interests of them making a recovery from their mental illness.

Paddick has tactfully shifted the responsibility for looking after the ill on to the NHS where it should be anyway. They are, (should be), better trained to do this.


Where as we deal with a "beserk person" for want of a better term by slinging him/her into an 8' by 6' concrete cell where they can run headfirst into the wall and injure themselves to their hearts content.

I work where there are 2 mental health units and most of the patients get out and go wandering. Some end up as "one under" on the Northen Line or some go a beat people to death with scaffold pole.

Either way the system is lacking, and we have to, sorry, had to pick up the slack.

I currently work in a high security psychiatric unit for adolescents which has opened my eyes to both the vulnerability of the mentally ill, but also the level of danger they can pose to other members of society. Granted, the majority of individuals with mental health issues either don't really understand what they are doing, but others do and they just have difficulty in restraining themselves from lashing out at other people. In my unit, the use of seclusion is prohibited, but in my experience having been attacked, and witnessed othr attacks on staff by patients, I would actually say that secluding violent individuals in a locked cell would benefit them fully, especially as in a lot of cases the root of the voilent action is purely behavioural and not due to illness.