THE Mental Health Act 1983 must take responsibility for the tragic events following the discharge of a psychiatric patient from Queens Park Hospital, Blackburn, and many similar cases elsewhere.
What started out to be beneficial to the mentally sick has turned out to be nonsensical liberalism.
If one puts together the combination of medics whose professional detachment tends to become indifference, hospital managers who justify their existence by attending endless meetings and social workers hell-bent on being politically correct, one has a recipe for disaster.
In the midst of this, there are ward staff struggling against the odds, patients psychiatrically very ill and relatives desperately trying to do their best by offering love and support.
For families caught up in the application of the 1983 Act there is simply no answer. The whole thing desperately needs revision.
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