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Mental Health Bill [HL]

This is the one amendment on which I want to make a short contribution. In principle I welcome the Government’s intention to introduce community treatment orders. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that there are without doubt situations in which a community treatment order will be the least restrictive alternative open to a patient and thus in the patient’s best interests. There are other situations when a CTO would be justified on ethical grounds—the benefits of such an order having been weighed up for carers in particular, but also for the community, on the one hand; and the loss of quality of life, at least in the short run and maybe in the very long run, for the service user on the other. In 1982 the debates on the Mental Health Bill as was gave much less thought to the needs and interests of carers than should have been the case. I was heavily involved at that time and I am now very conscious of the gap. I welcome this opportunity to redress the balance. I therefore wish to explain my support for this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has spoken eloquently about the homicide issue so I will not touch on that directly. My starting point is that the Mental Health Act 1983 makes provision in Section 17 for the responsible medical officer to grant a detained patient leave of absence from hospital subject to conditions seen necessary by the clinician. This section is already useful in providing a graduated return to home life and as a trial release in which a patient’s readiness for discharge can be tested.Section 25, as we all know, is virtually not used. The problem with Section 17 of course is the lack of enforcement powers. If CTOs were eliminated from the Bill, the psychiatrists’ cupboard would not be completely bare. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether it is more ethically sound for the psychiatrist and team to have too few powers at the time a detained patient is discharged from hospital, as at present, thus depending upon good community care to deal with risks, or whether it is preferable for those powers to be excessively wide-ranging—and that, I am afraid, is how I still see the powers as described in the Bill, despite the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. Which of these two alternatives would be preferred? There are many angles to this argument. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred very effectively to the international evidence so I will not go into all of that. The key point is that CTOs apparently have not achieved the hoped-for results but rather the contrary, so it is perhaps not surprising that I and others involved in the mental health services have concerns that community treatment orders as envisaged in the amendment may adversely affect the development of community care. This is really at the root of the problem. Will these CTOs improve things for patients or will they actually make things worse? I want to refer again to the Government’s national service framework and the valuable contribution being made by early intervention teams, crisis resolution teams and assertive outreach teams. The purpose of all these, as noble Lords will be aware—and I think they have been introduced in every trust across the country—is to enable service users to be assessed and treated in the community wherever possible, rather than being admitted to an in-patient hospital unit. More and more services are becoming available, such as crisis houses, where very intensive care can be provided for people day and night rather than having them in hospital. For these crisis houses you do not need a CTO or assertive outreach teams or anything else. I believe all this excellent work could be undermined by CTOs and for me this is the nub of the problem. I was challenged by one of the advisers to the Government recently asking what I would do if we were not to have CTOs. The answer is really good community treatment and services. An important aspect of all this is the stigma associated with mental health problems and with the secondary mental health services. The Government have shown considerable determination to tackle stigma, largely through the work of their social inclusion unit and through these community teams. The last thing service users need is the new Sections 17A to 17G, which would inevitably put pressure on professionals to impose community treatment orders more than they would necessarily wish, and certainly more rather than less. It will take only one tragic case to drive up the use of CTOs. If one service user is not placed on a CTO and subsequently commits suicide, this will result in the inevitable inquiry and public criticism of the professionals involved for not taking advantage of the legislation. Is it fair to ask professionals to risk this public criticism when the imposition of a CTO will protect their back? That is the crucial point about limiting the application of CTOs—to protect the professionals from the pressure they will be under to impose these CTOs when really it is not justified. The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, are crucial here. It is relevant to consider the very different approach to life-threatening physical illness. The Royal College of Psychiatrists pointed out that only8 per cent of patients with potentially fatal heart disease take the statins that they have been prescribed, but no one criticises the doctors when those patients die. For mental health patients the decision not to take medication may be a very understandable one. The side effects of these drugs that people are required to take can be extremely unpleasant. If there is no risk to others, should we be critical of mental health professionals? Why should we criticise the medical professionals when somebody at home decides that they have really had enough? Of course professionals have a duty to prescribe and to encourage service users to take medication, but is coercion the right way to deal with this? The answer lies in high-quality community services that are being developed thanks to this Government. This is what the Government and trusts are working together to achieve. The Government are setting the strategy; the trusts are really working at it. Surely this is the way to prevent suicide. I understand that where there are risks to others it is a somewhat different matter. In summary, my view would be to err on the sideof limiting the professionals’ powers to those in the 1983 Act. My preferred option is a form of words which will find the right balance between the needs and interests of service users, carers and communities. I was very encouraged by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who was indicating that we have to find the right form of words to achieve the balance. I would therefore support a rewording of the CTO clause to include a requirement that a community treatment order be approved only if there is evidence that the service user has in the past persistently failed to comply with medication. It should not be just one admission—that may be the only one—but persistent failure to comply with medication. It should also be stated that the consequences of the failure to comply with medication have been so serious for the service user, their carers or their community that there really is a reason for imposing the CTO. I want quickly to raise two further issues with new Sections 17A to 17G, and I am sorry that I have taken too much of the Committee’s time. The first is the assumption that a patient could be discharged from hospital and placed under a community treatment order by a responsible clinician and approved mental health professional, neither of whom needs to be trained as a psychiatrist. A patient would surely not be placed under a CTO unless assessed as needing to continue to take anti-psychotic medication. We are not talking about behavioural treatments or pills, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said. The CTO decision requires a full understanding of the long-term consequences of the medication prescribed, the likely side effects over time and possible alternative medication regimes, as well as the consequences of non-compliance. Those are all decisions for which psychiatrists—and, in my view, only psychiatrists—are trained. Other members of the multi-disciplinary team will of course have important views and knowledge of the service user to contribute to the decision to impose a CTO and the conditions that it would be appropriate to impose under new Section 17B. What we need in the Bill is clarity: that if someone is suffering from a mental illness—we are not talking about learning difficulties or personality disorder—a CTO should not be imposed other than by the people who understand what they are doing; that is, psychiatrists. Finally, I cannot agree with new Section 17B(3)(e) under which one of the conditions that may be specified by a community treatment order is that, "““the patient abstain from particular conduct””." This language appears to be drawn from the ASBO legislation and does not belong in mental health law. I ask the Minister to consider these matters andthe cogent points made by other Members of the Committee. I hope he will agree to discuss amendments that will achieve the desired balance between the needs of the service user, carer and community; a balance that would reinforce the progress made under the Government’s forward-looking national service framework policies and other radical new developments.