Sir
The mental health bill's approach to severe personality disorders shows this Government's 'look tough at all costs' fixation at its worst. The Bill makes it possible for anyone to be detained indefinitely on the say-so of a psychiatrist, on the basis that they may possibly be 'dangerous'.

While the incidence of mental illness has reportedly increased, homicides by mentally ill people have not. We are still, put bluntly, far more at risk of being attacked by the sane. Yet the Government chooses to headline a long-awaited reform of mental health law with 'tough measures to tackle DSPDs'.

It does so by making the definition of mental disorder broader and vaguer; and by diluting the definition of treatment. Treatment, it seems, no longer has to be "likely to alleviate or prevent a deterioration" a mental illness. It need mean only 'care', which is something else altogether.

The Bill risks turning our psychiatrists and mental health nurses into prison warders; and filling much-needed psychiatric beds with people detained on dubious grounds and with no prospect of actual treatment.

People should not be locked up on the basis of what some expert thinks they might do in the future. They should be detained only because they have committed an offence, or because it is necessary for treatment of a mental illness.

Despite the promised safeguards, the scope for injustice here remains alarming. Especially while medical opinion on the nature of SPD remains so divided, and assessing dangerousness remains an inexact science, this power creates too high a risk of serious injustice.

Yours
John Wadham
Director - Liberty
21 Tabard Street
London SE1 4LA