Letter: Pioneers and victims of care in the community
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: With reference to the article on the Clunis case, one of the problems of care in the community for the mentally ill is that due to pressure on beds, hospitals operate a strict catchment area policy which applies not only to in-patients but also to those discharged back to the community.
When patients relapse, they often become itinerant and may end up with several admissions to or assessments at different hospitals (and possibly detentions by the police) and several different sets of records in different hospitals, social service departments and police stations.
One solution may be to have a centralised computer database containing information about forensic psychiatric patients and arguably other categories of mental illness. Incidents involving reported aggressive behaviour could be logged and dated along with hospital admissions, casualty, police or social service interviews.
If this information were confidential and only made available to the professionals, a more complete picture of recent behaviour would be available and intervention could be planned at an earlier stage to avert the kind of tragedy described in your article.
Yours faithfully,
SARAH WORSFOLD
Hove, Sussex
19 July
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments