NOT before time, the government reads the last rites for Care in the Community for people with mental illness.

For, however well-intentioned was the philosophy of shutting the old asylums and placing patients in society, the upshot in far too many cases was the precise opposite of care in the community.

Too often, the reality was of patients being virtually dumped in the community with inadequate supervision and without the ability to care properly for themselves.

The effect can be seen on the streets of every town and city - in the form of the confused, derelict and abandoned individuals who are lost in society and even shunned by it.

And if this is a betrayal of them and this policy's original humane ideals, worse are the dangers that come with it.

Deranged patients in the community have been killing people at the rate of one every fortnight while suicides among them were running at 1,000 a year.

At last, with the review ordered today by Health Secretary Frank Dobson, an end is promised to this tragedy.

In its place there are promised special teams to keep round-the-clock track of patients and new special units staffed 24 hours a day for those causing most problems.

Authorities will be given greater powers to order the supervision of patients outside hospital and to recall those who refuse medication or whose condition deteriorates.

Yet, lacking, at the moment, from this reassuring framework is the vital detail of how much the government intends to invest in community mental health services and the time-scale in which they will be brought in.

It must neither scrimp nor stall.

For, no matter how long previous administrations ignored and worsened this huge social problem, its remedying is a matter of real urgency.

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