DOCTORS are failing to identify dangerously violent patients in the UK. A government report published on 22 September says that many murders committed by people with severe mental illness could have been prevented by better assessment combined with laws to allow doctors to forcibly medicate those at high risk or return them to a secure ward.
Tony Maden at Imperial College London examined the records of 25 people with schizophrenia who murdered while under National 91色情片 Service care. He used a violence checklist that is widely used in Canada, but not in the UK, to assess their mental states before the killings and found that three-quarters of them scored at the top end of the risk scale.
鈥淭his checklist would have identified three-quarters of the killers as high-risk鈥�
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Only about half of these people had been identified as high-risk cases at the time. And even when the risk was correctly identified, doctors were often prevented from providing treatment.
鈥淯nder current laws, doctors can鈥檛 compel even dangerous patients to take medication until they relapse,鈥� says Maden.
