The backlash against detaining a terror suspect in Manchester under the Mental Health Act is naive and wrong

News that the suspected perpetrator of a terror attack in Manchester has been detained under the Mental Health Act has unsurprisingly caused a Twitter storm.

Three people were injured in the knife attack which took place at Victoria Station in the city on New Year’s Eve. A 25-year-old man was arrested for attempted murder at the scene, and police confirmed on Tuesday that they were treating it as a terror incident.

Understandably, any suspected terror attack creates heightened fears and tensions in the community, and this was no different. But the backlash after the suspect was detained has been particularly strong.

This backlash can be roughly divided into two schools of thought. There’s the group who view the use of the Mental Health Act as some sort of attempt to “disguise” the attack, a sign that the justice system in the UK is not taking a strong enough stance on terrorism. At the more extreme end of this cohort, the news comes as further confirmation that the UK is being destroyed due to “PC gone mad” policies.

Then there’s the view that citing mental health in these cases adds to the stigmatisation of people living with mental illnesses.

There has been a major move in recent years towards having more open conversations about mental health, and people are being encouraged to speak out about their issues with the aim of removing the shame and embarrassment previously attached to such a disclosure.

Celebrities such as Zayn Malik, Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga have revealed their own struggles in a bid to help get rid of the stigma, and even the Royal Family has dropped its stiff-upper-lip image, with Prince Harry in particular opening up to the public in an unprecedented way.

Making it easier for people to discuss their mental health is undeniably a good thing – nobody should feel like their problems are being compounded by the cloak of silence that previously surrounded illnesses like depression.

However, those who see the detention of a suspected criminal under the Mental Health Act as something that adds to that stigma are guilty of the very injustice they are railing against.

Part of the process of ending stigmatisation of mental illness means acknowledging that mentally ill people are, at the end of the day, just people – and everyone is different.

Stating that a violent criminal suffers from mental health issues does not mean that everyone with a mental illness is a violent criminal. Tarring everyone who has a mental illness with the same brush is not going to help people open up about their problems.

In the same vein, it’s an unfortunate fact that violence is sometimes a symptom of a mental illness. The Mental Health Act exists to protect the public, but also perpetrators who may not have been in control of their actions when they committed a crime.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that some people simply don’t take into account the reality of detaining a suspect on mental health grounds. Someone detained under the legislation is deemed to “need urgent treatment for a mental health disorder”. Crucially, and a point that many people miss, this conclusion will be reached by medical professionals – not police officers.

Propagating the idea that the police will arbitrarily detain someone under the Mental Health Act in order to make a terror attack look like something else shows a profound lack of understanding of the situation, and also hammers home how far we have left to go in terms of improving public discourse around mental health. The rights and protections afforded by mental health laws don’t just apply to people we approve of.