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The public has been endangered because the NHS has stopped funding the automatic investigation into all murders of mentally ill patients, warns psychiatrists and families of the victims.
The experts who had examined every homicide of this type for 20 years had to stop doing so last year, after NHS England stopped paying £ 100,000 a year, the Guardian said.
Around 120 people a year in the UK are killed by someone with mental illness. These killings account for 11% of all homicides. About a quarter of the victims are children, many others are relatives or friends of the badailant and some are strangers killed in random attacks.
For 26 years and until last year, researchers at the University of Manchester had examined the mental health history and NHS care provided by the perpetrators of each of these homicides in order to identify the characteristics and weaknesses that could be corrected to reduce the risk of similar attacks in the country. l & # 39; future. Their discoveries have helped improve care for potentially dangerous patients with mental illness.
"It's a risky and reckless decision. Many families will feel that their suffering does not matter because of this decision, because no one is now learning of these failures. It's outrageous, "said Julian Hendy, founder of Hundredfamilies, a charity that helps bereaved families. His own father, Philip, was stabbed in Bristol in 2007 by a mentally ill man.
"It means that lives are endangered because they are not [any longer] learn from these deaths. This could clearly result in an increased threat to the public, "he added.
The revelation that the Manchester team led by Professor Louis Appleby had to stop examining each murder comes a few days after Darren Pencille, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, was jailed for life for the murder of Lee Pomeroy on the Guildford-London train on January 4th. Pencille killed Pomeroy by stabbing him 18 times in 25 seconds in front of his 14-year-old son. A psychiatrist had considered him a threat to himself and to others the day before the attack.
Professor Sir Simon Wessely, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, who reviewed the Mental Health Act last year at the request of Theresa May, said the decision was wrong.
"I think it's a mistake to end the centralized collection of homicide data. These events are fortunately rare, but of course, a frightful tragedy for all those involved. But as they are rare, it is essential that evidence be collected centrally, independently and with the ability to learn lessons, "he said.
"These appalling events have terrible costs, against which to maintain the current data collection and badysis system is insignificant," said Wessely, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
A mandatory survey on the murders of mentally ill people who received psychiatric care by the NHS was opened in 1992. But the NHS England stopped funding its activities after deciding that it was not the case. more than a top priority. At the same time, they asked the Appleby team to expand their suicide review, to re-identify ways to reduce the numbers. As a result, the project ceased to be called the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicides and Homicides in the Area of Mental Health and was renamed the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Mental Health Security (NCISH).
In its latest annual report, NCISH stated: "We are reducing our homicide program and in June 2018, we stopped sending questionnaires to clinicians to obtain data on the characteristics of homicide offenders convicted of homicide. had been in contact with mental health services. " the number of these murders, but do not investigate them anymore.
Sarah Markham, a member of the HQIP Advisory Committee, recently criticized this decision. In the BMJ, she wrote, "I understand that the decision to reduce funding is due to greater budget pressures. However, given the extremely high costs badociated with treating a patient in a highly secure psychiatric hospital – around £ 250,000 to £ 300,000 a year – it seems that, for economic reasons only, it would be rather short-sighted not to finance a job likely to inform the prevention of homicide. "
The Royal College of Psychiatrists shared Hendy's concerns that ending routine investigations would leave the public more threatened. "The decision was very imprudent. It is extremely important to be able to understand what happened when people came to pick up [mental health] the treatments continue to kill, "said Professor Pamela Taylor, president of the College's College of Forensic Psychiatry.
"In the longer term, this is likely to affect public safety because almost all homicide and other acts of violence perpetrated by people with mental disorders are likely to be preventable, provided we know enough about them. the way the problems are related. "
NHS England has ended its funding despite the fact that it spends a record amount on mental health and even though such homicides often generate widespread anxiety. Professor Tim Kendall, consultant psychiatrist and clinical director of mental health at NHS England, refused to respond to Hendy's request that stopping work could increase risks to the public.
"Every death or homicide by a person in contact with NHS services is the subject of an independent investigation. Findings and lessons learned from this experience are posted online to help improve services as part of our Long Term Plan. [for the NHS], which will increase mental health care by 2.3 billion pounds.
"These individual reports are alongside the 60 to 70 independent NHS services audits, published openly each year, which examine the NHS services as a whole and give a detailed and clinically-focused understanding of NHS care and how which they can be improved.
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