Mental health
The Daily Star has published some good articles on mental health over the last few months. You have shown your readers how important it is to overcome ignorance and prejudice, fear and denial concerning mental health problems and have highlighted the need for suitable institutions, with properly trained specialists and carers - for voluntary patients.
However, I have not read anything yet concerning one of the most challenging aspects of this issue the need for secure psychiatric units for those whose mental illness is so severe and their refusal to accept treatment is so persistent that they are a danger to themselves, their families, friends and, indeed, the public. They need to be put into units from which they are not free to walk out and not free to reject help. However, they need the care of those with the professional and personal skills that can sometimes discover the right therapy, often involving drugs. The result of this is that some mental health sufferers can re-join normal society. Needless to say, the cost is great but, if the misery of serious mental illness can be alleviated, then it is surely a sign of a civilized society that it decides the cost is worthwhile.
Those who know what it is like to try and help someone with, for example, paranoid schizophrenia, know how desperate is the need for such places. I am not surprised that some families have taken to tying up such sufferers - or even worse to get away from the intolerable stress of seeing a loved one 'out of their mind', not knowing what to do about it but compelled to watch over them every hour of every day, unable to lead a normal life that responds to their own needs and the needs of other members of their family.
Of course there is the danger of abuse in secure psychiatric units hence the need for careful legislation and supervision. It is possible nowadays, by the misuse of drug therapy, to turn all such patients into 'zombies'.
In many countries it is usually the middle and upper class families of sufferers who have pioneered the treatment of mental illness and thus provided a stimulus for the government health sector.
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