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Editorial

Editorial Helen Smith Editorial EDITOR his issue addresses the complexity of how the Metropolitan Police are seeking to deal meeting needs associated with a mental with offenders or people detained by the police in Tillness and offending behaviour: a challenge need of treatment. He highlights the potential scale to even the best services. Part of the difficulty is the of the problem and draws attention to the need for breadth of tertiary care, spanning special hospitals, Appropriate Adults for people who, in London medium and low secure-units in both the statutory alone, number about 10,000 per year with a recog- and private sectors. Linking these services with nisable mental illness. secondary-care mainstream and specialist forensic Jennifer McCabe, later in the Review, describes services can cause a mesh of holes through which the situation for women in special hospitals and people can — and do — fall. medium-secure units. The difficulties faced by Mike Lindsay reminds us that service responses women having to cope in these overwhelmingly male and labels may have changed over the years, but the conditions and the evidence that few actually require needs of highly-vulnerable people at risk of, or in the level of security of these services, presents a clear contact with, the criminal justice system, remain the imperative for local services to treat and contain same. All groups of service-users have had to fight women where they live, and for courts to recognise against their invisibility within services, but mentally the necessity of choosing local, low-security options. disordered offenders even more so. Part of the difficulty in providing multi-agency Despite this, care, rather than containment, does services to this sometimes challenging group of work. Peter Oates, a patient in Broadmoor, describes clients, is the lack of inter/multi-agency training. how he needed help which would not be forthcoming Dorothy Tonak describes some existing initiatives in prison, although he clearly expresses his concerns but they are still too few in number to bring about about the burgeoning bureaucracy that prevents staff/ a radical change in the care offered to people. patient contact. Simon Keyes, writing from a However, there are now Patient Councils in all voluntary-sector perspective, presents a powerful three special hospitals and the work of WISH has reminder that people in this client group often bought women’s voices to the fore. Many services have multiple social problems. Concentrating only are starting to get to grips with the complexity of on health problems will rarely be of much use to an adequate local service for mentally disordered individuals who may face enormous difficulties in offenders. I hope the articles in this issue assist in getting ordinary needs for adequate housing, welfare this task. benefits, access to a GP, friends and so on, met. There will, perhaps, be a justifiable criticism that It is now more widely recognised that people with many of the articles are London-based. This is partly mental health problems increasingly come into due to the prominence of this issue in the capital; contact with the criminal justice system for minor however, this is not to downplay the size of the offences associated with obtaining food or shelter. problem, or decry the excellent initiatives that exist David Etherington describes how he diverts in other areas. The articles have been chosen for people from police stations into mental health their applicability elsewhere and it is hoped that, services: an attempt to offer people a more rapidly- despite a London bias in some of them, readers can responsive service than diversion from court. This draw lessons and information for their own services. case study clearly demonstrates the value of projects A reminder that the next issue, in September which seek to identify people in need of care at the 1996, is on the links between primary care and earliest possible stage. Martin Cherrett describes secondary mental health services. 4 The Mental Health Review 1:2 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1996 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Mental Health Review Journal Emerald Publishing

Editorial

Smith, Helen
Mental Health Review Journal , Volume 1 (2): 1 – Jun 1, 1996
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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
1361-9322
DOI
10.1108/13619322199600011
Publisher site
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Abstract

Helen Smith Editorial EDITOR his issue addresses the complexity of how the Metropolitan Police are seeking to deal meeting needs associated with a mental with offenders or people detained by the police in Tillness and offending behaviour: a challenge need of treatment. He highlights the potential scale to even the best services. Part of the difficulty is the of the problem and draws attention to the need for breadth of tertiary care, spanning special hospitals, Appropriate Adults for people who, in London medium and low secure-units in both the statutory alone, number about 10,000 per year with a recog- and private sectors. Linking these services with nisable mental illness. secondary-care mainstream and specialist forensic Jennifer McCabe, later in the Review, describes services can cause a mesh of holes through which the situation for women in special hospitals and people can — and do — fall. medium-secure units. The difficulties faced by Mike Lindsay reminds us that service responses women having to cope in these overwhelmingly male and labels may have changed over the years, but the conditions and the evidence that few actually require needs of highly-vulnerable people at risk of, or in the level of security of these services, presents a clear contact with, the criminal justice system, remain the imperative for local services to treat and contain same. All groups of service-users have had to fight women where they live, and for courts to recognise against their invisibility within services, but mentally the necessity of choosing local, low-security options. disordered offenders even more so. Part of the difficulty in providing multi-agency Despite this, care, rather than containment, does services to this sometimes challenging group of work. Peter Oates, a patient in Broadmoor, describes clients, is the lack of inter/multi-agency training. how he needed help which would not be forthcoming Dorothy Tonak describes some existing initiatives in prison, although he clearly expresses his concerns but they are still too few in number to bring about about the burgeoning bureaucracy that prevents staff/ a radical change in the care offered to people. patient contact. Simon Keyes, writing from a However, there are now Patient Councils in all voluntary-sector perspective, presents a powerful three special hospitals and the work of WISH has reminder that people in this client group often bought women’s voices to the fore. Many services have multiple social problems. Concentrating only are starting to get to grips with the complexity of on health problems will rarely be of much use to an adequate local service for mentally disordered individuals who may face enormous difficulties in offenders. I hope the articles in this issue assist in getting ordinary needs for adequate housing, welfare this task. benefits, access to a GP, friends and so on, met. There will, perhaps, be a justifiable criticism that It is now more widely recognised that people with many of the articles are London-based. This is partly mental health problems increasingly come into due to the prominence of this issue in the capital; contact with the criminal justice system for minor however, this is not to downplay the size of the offences associated with obtaining food or shelter. problem, or decry the excellent initiatives that exist David Etherington describes how he diverts in other areas. The articles have been chosen for people from police stations into mental health their applicability elsewhere and it is hoped that, services: an attempt to offer people a more rapidly- despite a London bias in some of them, readers can responsive service than diversion from court. This draw lessons and information for their own services. case study clearly demonstrates the value of projects A reminder that the next issue, in September which seek to identify people in need of care at the 1996, is on the links between primary care and earliest possible stage. Martin Cherrett describes secondary mental health services. 4 The Mental Health Review 1:2 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1996

Journal

Mental Health Review Journal – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jun 1, 1996

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