Mental Disorder and Community Safety [Paperback]

This book explores how we can preserve the integrity of mental health provision in an age when community safety is dominant. Emphasising throughout the mentally disordered in the community, the book examines existing controls and services - compulsory detention, hospitals, supervised discharge, supervision registers, and so on - as well as new developments such as dual diagnosis and questions surrounding treatability.

Preface.- Introduction: Community Safety and Mental Disorder.- Justification for Compulsory Detention.- Doctors, Social Workers and Relatives.- Control in the Community.- Policing the Mentally Disordered.- Appropriate Adults and Mentally Disordered Suspects in Police Stations.- Diversion: Its Place in the Scheme of Things.- Dual Diagnosis and Control.- Psychiatric Services and Treatability.- References.- Bibliography.- Index.

PHILIP BEAN is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Midlands Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, Loughborough University. He is well published in the area of mental disorder and crime and drugs and he was President of the British Society of Criminology 1996-1999.The mentally disordered are a common sight in every large city. Some may be homeless, some may be substance users, a minority may be violent, with an even smaller number involved in high profile fatalities. Calls for greater commitment to public safety are mounting now that mental hospitals are no longer the centre of mental health services. This timely text examines the impact of demands for community safety on the integrity of mental health systems.

Mental Disorder and Community Safety confronts the vital question of how we can care for the mentally disordered when the tendency is to control, punish and regard them with increasing suspicion. Demands for higher levels of control are an understandable public response and this text seeks to explore the adequacy of existing controls and the limitatiols#