Doctors threaten to quit over Bill
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Your support makes all the difference.Psychiatrists are threatening to take early retirement rather than carry out the Government's "draconian" mental health reforms, which opponents claim are an unjustified attack on civil rights.
The draft Mental Health Bill is opposed by 98 per cent of members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists who responded to a poll.
The Department of Health has set a deadline of 16 September for responses to its proposals for mental health reform, which include the detention of mentally ill people before they have committed a crime.
A march against the Bill will go ahead in London on Saturday, despite fears of vigilante attacks in the wake of the Soham murders.
Last week the Mental Health Alliance – the main organiser of the march – pulled out, saying that it feared for the safety of campaigners. Ian Huntley, who is charged with the murders of 10-year-olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, is currently being held under the Mental Health Act, and angry mobs outside court besieged his fiancee Maxine Carr, who is charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.
However, some members of the alliance plan to carry on with the march, to counteract opposition from the public and the media based on "misleading stereotypes" about mental illness.
The Public Health minister, Jacqui Smith, will meet senior officials of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Medical Association later this month to discuss possible changes to the most controversial clauses.
More than 10 per cent of members polled by the Royal College of Psychiatrists said they are now considering resigning early if ministers press ahead with the Bill.
Dr Anthony Zigmond, the consultant who is collating RCP submissions, said: "The response has been overwhelmingly in favour of the college's opposition to the Bill.
"Several doctors who are of an age where they could now retire but do not wish to will take early retirement if this Bill becomes law."
In a formal submission this week, the BMA is expected to condemn the proposed reforms as an unjustified attack on the civil rights of the mentally ill and others who could find themselves unnecessarily detained under the Bill.
Dr Robin Arnold, chairman of the BMA's psychiatry committee, said the broad definition of mental illness, which could cover personality disorders and drug addiction, and the proposals to give psychiatrists wide powers of discretion, would put psychiatrists under great pressure to detain people to avoid being accused of breaching their new legal duties.
"It leaves the civil liberties of the general population wildly exposed and it leaves psychiatrists wildly exposed," he said.
He said the Bill also put unrealistic financial and recruitment pressures on the health service, which already has a 12 per cent shortfall in consultant psychiatrists.
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