Before the introduction of Community Treatment Orders in the 2007 Mental Health Act, the way that mental health professionals often allowed patients to leave hospital if they felt that full discharge in the earliest stages of recovery was too big a step, was to grant ever-longer periods of section 17 leave.  We know that when […]

A few months ago, my first incident in fifteen years involving “Guardianship” prompted a blog for those who may also never have heard of it.  As is the case with these things, I’ve now had several incidents in the intervening months.  Amidst representations I’m hearing that the police are probably going to get more and […]

An incidental introduction to this month’s newsletter – this is my 300th post on this blog and not long ago, we surpassed the milestone of 300,000 hits.  Averaging over 1,000 hits per blog is not bad going for the fact that I’m banging on about the potentially very dry subject of mental health and criminal […]