THERE are many in this country who are extremely unhappy at the way the mentally ill are treated

And the shortcomings of the system were brutally exposed recently when a man from Barnoldswick was handed a bag of blood-stained clothes, the remnants of an attempt to slash his own wrists, after serving a month's sentence in a Scottish prison.

Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, is to press for a review of the way mentally ill people are dealt with by the justice system.

The Barnoldswick man has a long history of mental problems. He has harmed himself scores of times and made several attempts to commit suicide.

When he arrived in Edinburgh on a train from Burnley his wrists were bandaged from an earlier attempt. He told station staff he was going to throw himself under a train and was arrested for a breach of the peace.

When he was taken to police cells he tried to hang himself.

He was clearly in urgent need of psychiatric treatment.

But what happened to him? He was sent to prison for a month.

That is a disgraceful state of affairs. Mr Prentice is right to call for an urgent review. Thousands of mentally ill people in this country are repeatedly let down by the system.

There is something fundamentally wrong with it.

The mad scramble some years ago to empty and close mental hospitals and return patients to the community has had disastrous results.

We have people who clearly cannot cope with life outside an institution trying to eke out an existence in bed sitters and flats and at the other end of the scale we have seriously disturbed people. Some are a danger to themselves and others are a threat to the public at large.

Vulnerable people like the Barnoldswick man need the help of professional health workers.

For years this country has let down people like him.

Hopefully some good will come of his awful experience. Apart from Gordon Prentice's call for a review, mental health workers in Scotland have highlighted the case as an example of how the justice system in this country is failing mentally ill people.

The time for action is long overdue. There have been countless cases in recent years where the neglect of the mentally ill has led to tragic events.

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