Psychiatric patients on the news / news papers

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Anuwolf

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I thought of making a whole new thread towards news coverage on psychiatric patients who had done out of this earth things after they were discharged or escaped from a state hospital. Some of theses potential articles might be offensive or graphical so please click back if you don’t have a stomach.

If you work or had worked inside of a psychatric hospital and want to share your stories please visit

Psychiatric hospital bizarre stories and feel free to share your stories.

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Click on This is LONDON for the link
19/02/04 - News section

'Cannibal' horror find in flat
By Paul Sims and Rebecca Smith, Evening Standard

The NHS launched an inquiry today after a psychiatric patient released from hospital was found in a flat in which a man had been hacked to death.

East London and the City mental health trust is looking into how the patient came to be discharged.

The victim was a man in his forties also believed to be a former psychiatric patient. Police said he had suffered "multiple injuries, including some dismemberment". One leg had been hacked from his body and his head cracked open with a blunt instrument.

It was also feared some of the body had been cooked. Police found parts of what was believed to be a human brain frying in a pan. Items including potential weapons were taken away by police.

The discovery was made after a 999 call to a groundfloor flat in Walthamstow on Tuesday evening. Officers were said to have been confronted with a "horrendous" scene, discovering possible weapons strewn around and blood over the walls. One said: "It's horrible. It's terrible in there."

It is understood the patient left a mental ward in Newham on Tuesday morning, to which he had been voluntarily admitted. The victim will not be identified until his relatives have been traced but he is thought to have lived alone in the flat, which he occupied for up to eight years.

One neighbour said of the victim: "He told me his mother died two weeks ago and because his dad died some time ago he was alone now. He had been here a few years. He was very quiet."

The case will reignite concerns of mental health campaigners about the adequacy of hospital discharge procedures. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, said around 50 killings a year were committed by people in contact with mental health services.

Under NHS guidelines, patients with a severe mental illness should have a care plan agreed on discharge from hospital. It should identify the NHS or social services worker co-ordinating care, and specify what action should be taken in a crisis. NHS guidelines are less rigorous for voluntary patients than those sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Ms Wallace said the charity was aware of many cases where patients were allowed to walk off wards after threatening suicide or harm to others without an after-care plan being put in place.

In a study of 65 killings involving psychiatric patients over two years, the charity found 90 per cent involved a breakdown of communication between agencies responsible for the patient's care.

Ms Wallace said: "In our experience very little effort is made to detain them or make sure they are going back to a home where they will not be alone and unsupervised.

"Too many leave without common-sense safeguards. The most dangerous time for suicide and homicide is the first 10 days." East London and the City mental health trust said: "We can confirm a patient known to our services has been arrested but we are unable to provide any further information at the moment."

# A 34-year-old man appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates' court today charged with murder. He was remanded in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey next week.

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OldPsychDoc said:
Here is a quote from that article:
"I can't imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated time bombs."

Is becoming a "time bomb" a common AR with antidepressants??
Sounds a little extreme. Of course I understand the increased risk of suicide with the increase in energy and all that, but irresponsible is not attempting to treat the depression. Maybe they could invest in some competent psychiatric care.
 
Do these studies show the amount of people (suffering from MDD) who commited suicide while never being on an antidepressant?

I think the blackbox warnings are very overblown. You are dealing with a segment of the population suffering from DEPRESSION. Some of these unfortunate souls are going to commit suicide. Even on the medicines. Why are people blaming the meds, instead of realizing there would be more cases of suicide without them?
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=386300&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Wife 'didn't realise husband was a woman'

A transsexual whose 17-year marriage to an heiress was nullified when the wife discovered her husband was a woman is not legally a "parent" of her 14-year-old daughter born from donor sperm, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

The female-to-male transsexual, referred to in court as Mr J, is now in law a man under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act and can lawfully marry a woman if he wishes.

But three appeal judges held that, because at the time of his "marriage" to Mrs C in 1977 he was still a woman, he had no parental rights.

The law required that when a woman conceived and gave birth through artificial insemination by donor (AID), the other party to the marriage must be a man in order to qualify as a parent, the judges said.

Mr J was still a woman when the child was conceived by AID in 1991 and, since there was no legal marriage, he could not be "a party" to it.

Mr J, born with gender dysmorphia, underwent hormone treatment and had breasts removed before, at the age of 30, he met and married Mrs C, then aged 20 and from a wealthy background.

He concealed his true gender from her for 17 years, using a home-made part of the anatomy for sex. At a Court of Appeal hearing in 1996, Mr J failed in a bid for a share of the marriage wealth, including a £400,000 home.

At that hearing, Lord Justice Ward described the marriage as a "travesty" and said that many people would find it quite astonishing that in 17 years of life together Mrs C did not realise she was living with a woman.

In today's case, Mr J, now 59, failed in his bid for a declaration of parenthood, despite the fact that he now has a gender recognition certificate and a fresh birth certificate recording his birth as a male.

Lords Justices Thorpe, Wall and Richards said the highly unusual facts of the case were unlikely to recur because of changes in the law.

They ordered that neither party should be identified to protect the daughter and an elder child, also born through AID and now 18.

The judges explained that the issue of when, how and from whom the two children were to learn the truth about their origins remained highly sensitive. The mother, now remarried, has agreed to take advice from a consultant psychiatrist before explaining their background to them.
 
this is a light hearted comment....but isn't this exactly what people blame for the stigma of mental illness (scary news reports about violence perpetuated by people with mental illness)?
 
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