Leading article: Drawing the wrong conclusions

A report today by Professor Louis Appleby, of the National Patient Safety Agency, is expected to show that, on average, one person a week dies at the hands of a mentally ill patient. We should always bear in mind that only a tiny minority of the mentally ill are violent, let alone killers. But this is still a shocking statistic. And it undoubtedly represents a failure by the mental health services, especially considering that almost a third of these killings are committed by patients who have been judged not to pose a risk to the public by health professionals.

But what conclusions should we draw from this? The Government believes these figures support the case for new legislation that will force patients to take their medicine, combined with sweeping powers for doctors to force the mentally ill to be taken into secure custody. We disagree. The outstanding problem with the mental health services in this country is not a lack of powers on the part of doctors, but a shortage of resources and an absence of quality management.

Last month's report on the death of Denis Finnegan at the hands of the paranoid schizophrenic John Barrett, uncovered a scandalous succession of errors by medical professionals dealing with Barrett. But it specifically pointed out that legislation was not the answer. And many who work with the mentally ill argue that compulsive powers risk doing more harm than good because those with problems could become afraid of coming forward for treatment.

There can be no doubt that we have a significant problem with mental illness in this country. But these tragic killings outlined in today's report are only one detail of a larger picture. A vast number of people with mental illnesses get sucked into the prison system when what they need is treatment. There also remains a social stigma surrounding mental illness in Britain, which means those who need help often fail to seek it out until it is too late.

Care in the community - introduced when the large institutions were closed down in the 1980s - was never backed up by sufficient resources. We are dealing with the legacy of that necessary, but abysmally handled, policy shift. But this is not a problem that can be solved by recourse to the statute book. The solution lies in making the existing system work better. No doubt this is a message the Government would find difficult to sell to a public which instinctively seems to favour hardline policies on mental illness. But if it was serious about both helping the mentally ill and protecting the public, this is what it would do.