A poster by the Tories is doing the rounds, which reads:

"How would you feel if one of your family was murdered by a mental patient thrown onto the streets by the care in the community initiative?"

Indeed it is a scandal that mentally ill people are being thrown onto the streets and that mentally ill people, inappropriately discharged from hospital constitute a proponderance of the "rough sleeepers", whom politicians of both major parties so love to vilify, and the police so target for "zero tollerance" and harrassement campaigns.

The Tories and much of the media like to demonise the mentally ill and portray them as engageing in indiscriminate acts of violence and murder.

This despite the fact that statistically, mentally ill people are les likely than average to commit acts of violence and more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime.

Indeed it is wrong that mentally ill people are being inappropriately discharged from hospitals and onto the streets, but the tone of the Tory poster stoops to a new low.

The Tories are like play ground bullies who pick on people, they know cannot fight back.

Wasn't it part of Thatcher's social policy to evict ill people from hospital - putting people who couldn't cope with life through suffering from mental differences out onto the street ...

That's what I was thinking Alberr. I'm sure the whole 'care in the community' was a Tory way of cutting spending on mental healthcare.

It doesn't surprise me that this has made on to their agenda to use in this ever increasingly scrappy election campaign. Next it'll be them blind, deaf and disabled . They're trouble y'know.

F*cking Tory wan*ers.

Care in the community was a Tory idea and on the face of it a move away from the old lock 'em up and throw away the key asylums could have been progressive however it was just another £'s saving measure.

Mental healthcare in this country isn't just a postcode lottery the care of a patient also depends very much on who is batting against the system for them.

My brothers-in-law are both paranoid schizophrenics and the last ten years has been an almost constant battle with the health authority to ensure they get appropriate accommodation, drugs and treatment and not the cheaper options they have attempted to fob them off with. Only a few weeks ago they tried to move one of them to a secure unit in Norwich when they had a viable and better but more expensive secure facility locally.

There are a very high number of mental patience that don't have family or friends guarding their interests and I suspect many of these are not receiving the best treatment available.

We have to try and rid ourselves of the stigma that surrounds mental illness. After all you don't get people reacting to astmer (sp?) in the same way they do to someone who's suffering from a condition of the mind.

Some individuals with mental illnesses are exceptionally dangerous, but the majority are not. Having said that the majority of people who drink at the weekend don't become violent fuckwits, fuckwits, but not so violent, eh.

Again it is a matter of proportion. Those unfortunate souls who have a condition that drives or compels them to injure, maim or even kill other people are often branded as psycotic by the media because this is the simplistic and digestable view. Perish the thought they should bother to explain the conditions of the sufferers.

There was discussion about placing some sufferers of certain conditions into 'preventative custody' a few years back. Sadly it just seems like another weapon against the people, ill or not.

I hope your BiL's get the treatment that benefits them.