Letter

Abuses inside and out

Dear healthmatters — With reference to your article on Ashworth Hospital (Part of the problem, not the solution, issue 12), may I firstly commend you for printing this. The abuses that take place within the confines of special hospital walls, although recently the subject of official inquiries, still need further exposure. Without this there is nothing to say that the oppressive regimes, the continued unacceptable role of the Prison Officers’ Association and the abuses of patients’ rights will not continue.

David Pilgrim calls for the closure of the ‘specials’ and the removal of those patients with psychopathic disorders to prison (with a fixed sentence), the removal of those with learning difficulties to less secure settings, and for the treatment of those remaining patients suffering mental illness to be taken up by expanded regional secure units.

All this is feasible, laudable even, but what of the equally abhorrent and tragic abuses that take place in all these settings? And of course, the community itself is not exempt: the media recently highlighted the case of 27-year-old Jerome Scott, an African Caribbean man who died shortly after being held down in the street by a group of territorial policemen, following a call by a social worker, and injected with 20mg of the anti-psychotic drug haloperidol and 20mg of the tranquilizer diazepam.

I would suggest that the campaigns against the abuses patients suffer at the hands of the ‘specials’ should not ignore those who suffer at the lower end of the tariff.