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Mental health services continue to have stigma attached to them, and, despite government statements to the contrary, mental health does not appear to be high on the priority list for funding.

In June last year, the draft mental health bill was unveiled, with a focus on the detention of those individuals judged to be at risk of committing a crime, and the proposals for compulsory community treatment orders. I know from my own charity that these worry people to the extent that they may not seek help for problems such as depression, because of the fear of compulsion. The bill has caused widespread anxiety and links mental illness with dangerousness. As one in four people will be affected by a mental health problem at some point during their life it seems absurd to think that our society could be full of dangerous people.


With regard to special hospitals, I spent nine years as chief executive and general manager of Broadmoor Hospital. During that time we tried to move away from custodial care to developing therapeutic programmes - public safety is more likely to be enhanced if you prepare patients properly for discharge rather than contain them. But since 1997, £52m has been spent on security for special hospitals, with the result that clinicians are finding it difficult to deliver care programmes because of restrictive security practices. Why is this?

Looking at the security record of the special hospitals, the justification for spending £52m is simply not there - it is more about the government's drive to contain.

A psychiatrist who left Broadmoor in 2002 recently told me that it was not possible for care programmes for seriously ill patients to be delivered in the way that clinicians wanted. The treatment that is available is marred by unnecessary restrictions.


Although special hospitals are part of NHS trusts, there seems to be considerable influence from the Home Office, which we also see in the plans for mental health legislation. In my view, we are taking retrograde steps in the treatment of mental illness, which is not only sad and worrying for the health professionals concerned, but damaging for the patients in need of help.

So will this government ever listen to those who constantly tell them that poorly thought out policies and central control will simply take us back 50 years?

Alan Franey is director of Buckinghamshire Association for Mental Health and a reviewer for the Commission for Health Improvement.