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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Yes, but nobody would get sectioned because they did not wash themselves well or something like that. People normally get sectioned only when they face a serious emergency and the physician feels that action must be taken. I have come to the conclusion that for the case for the new clause to be maintained, we must believe that there are some severely mentally ill people who are a risk to themselves or others, but who have completely unimpaired judgment, or, at any rate, do not have significantly impaired judgment. It might be asked: who are they, how many of them are there, and how easy are they to single out given the lack of a universal or legal understanding of the impaired judgment criterion? Nothing I have heard today has satisfied me that we are using a particularly clear criterion or that we have a general agreement about it. It also might be reasonably argued that letting people who are suicidal commit suicide if we think that they have unimpaired judgment is a fair price to pay for allowing them to retain the civil rights that we allow to all people who have unimpaired judgment. I call that the heroic civil liberties argument. That argument has been put and I respect and understand it, although I do not share it. Further reflection has led me in a different direction. While I was trying to figure out who was in the category of mentally disordered, potentially suicidal people with unimpaired judgment, it was suggested to me by one of the measure’s proponents outside the Chamber that a mentally ill person might be suicidal because of unconnected things such as bankruptcy or terminal illness—the kind of things that would make a rational person consider suicide. However, we are talking about people who have a severe mental illness—an illness that haunts the mind, infects every mood, for most people permeates every waking moment, and spreads its dark shadow over all their actions. We are talking about people who are, in general, being ripped apart by their emotions. That is why they get themselves sectioned in the first place. I simply asked myself whether such a person could dispassionately and rationally evaluate the state of their finances or their health prognosis—or anything of that major nature—uncoloured and unimpaired by, and immune from, the emotional storms within them. To believe in such people seems almost to ignore the depths of suffering and confusion found among people who get themselves sectioned. It fails to recognise what those people are dealing with. Catholics such as me are supposed to believe six impossible things before breakfast, according to Chesterton, but I cannot summon up sufficient credulity to believe in this state of affairs. It defies my imagination and exceeds my current grasp. Even if we accept that a seriously mentally ill person who is a danger to themselves and has unimpaired judgment is a logical possibility, their existence is highly improbable and we are very unlikely to meet any such person. I thus conclude—this may be a charitable conclusion that pleases everybody—the same thing that Baroness Murphy concluded in the Lords: whether the new clause is passed or rejected will make no real difference to the practice of psychiatry. We can relax.