Mental Health Bill - Psychotic White Supremacist Racists

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Peers lacked vital information needed to make an informed decision

There is another agenda to present ignorance about the reasons there are such high numbers of African Caribbean people within the system.

Matilda MacAttram, Director of Black Mental Health UK
The debate in the House of Lords earlier this week on the highly contested Mental Hill Bill lacked vital information from the CRE, but ended with a call for a legal challenge to be mounted, on account of the Bill’s failure to meet the legal requirements of Race Relations laws.

A controversial aspect of the Bill is the proposed introduction of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) which would allow forced treatment within the community. Department of Health officials confirmed that the criteria for getting on or off a CTO would be similar to being sectioned and forecasted that three thousand people could end up on CTOs within the first five years.

But the rates of sectioning for the African Caribbean community are 44 per cent higher than white British people despite similar rates of mental health. Another crucial point of contestation is the demand by mental health campaigners for the right to independent advocacy by a culturally competent practitioner. Commenting on the debate, Matilda MacAttram, Director of Black Mental BMHUK told Black Britain: “The debate was welcomed, but from the viewpoint of BMHUK, we do not believe that the peers in the House of Lords were privy to all the information they needed in order to make a decision.”

She said that crucial information from the CRE was missing – that the Race Equality Impact Assessment for the Mental Health Bill is flawed and falls short of legal requirements. “If peers and MPs had been given access to this information from the outset, their decision would be very clear. “There is widespread acknowledgement that mental health services are institutionally racist,” Mac Attram said.

The BMHUK Director said that it is important to assert the extent of racism within the mental health system, because “there is another agenda to present ignorance about the reasons there are such high numbers of African Caribbean people within the system.” She added that it must not be forgotten that Sir John Bloefeld, a retired High Court judge concluded after the Rocky Bennett enquiry that the mental health system in the UK is “institutionally racist.”

“We cannot afford to keep quiet about this, especially when, as Lord Patel argued, there are mischievous elements at work trying to undermine this argument.” Lord Patel called for a legal challenge to the Mental Health Bill because it will discriminate, a fact argued by the CRE. “We have 30 years of work to show that mental health services are discriminatory and this Bill will make things a lot worse,” Mac Attram said.

http://www.blackbritain.co.uk/news/d...al+Health+Bill

Psychotic White Supremacist Racists try to enforce Mental Health law.

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Democracy trashed as govt forces through mental law amid avalanche of criticism
by Matilda MacAttram
12/7/2007

CAMPAIGNERS PLAN TO take the government to court as ministers cut short democratic debate on a controversial mental health proposed law.

Professor Kamlesh Patel: head of govt BME mental health taskforce is now rebelling against proposed law.

Experts and peers reacted with astonishment the government railroaded the Mental Health Bill to Royal Assent this week despite an avalanche of criticism.

Mental health groups are drawing up plans for a judicial review to stop the proposed law being given the Queen’s final stamp of approval.

Lord Kamlesh Patel, who headed a government mental health taskforce, delivered a withering criticism of ministers for riding roughshod over fears the bill would dramatically increase sectioning and medication of black people.

The last ditch judicial review comes as newly-appointed health secretary Alan Johnson guillotined parliamentary readings, fast-tracking the proposed legislation.

warned

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) recently wrote to health minister Rosie Winterton raising “grave reservations” about the botched process of consulting black experts over the bill’s impact on BME communities and raising fears that proposed Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) would discriminate against black patients.

Alan Johnson, the health secretary, is driving through the bill in the face of mounting criticism.

Lord Patel, chair of the governments’ mental health advisory group, accused ministers of covering up the CRE’s concerns.

Speaking in the Lords on 2nd July, he said: “It has only recently come to light that the Commission for Racial Equality had also expressed serious concerns.

“I have to wonder whether, had we known of the CRE letter earlier, this would have affected our deliberations or, indeed, those in the other place.”

He said there was a “very understandable fear in some black and minority ethnic communities that any increase in coercive powers will impact disproportionately on them.”

rights

Last December Lord Patel agreed to chair a hastily set up special advisory group on the bill after communications between the government and black mental health organisations broke down.

Black experts had accused the Department of Health of conducting a sham consultation by failing to reflect their concerns in an official Race Equality Impact Assessment (REIA).

African Caribbean men are already 18 times more likely to be sectioned than white men.

Lord Patel warned the government that if it rushed through the legislation that would not be the end of the matter.

He said: “Action is needed and service users, communities and eminent mental health professionals, will be actively campaigning for a judicial review on these very issues.”

The action is expected to be supported by the National BME Mental Health Network, a coalition of top mental health professionals, carers and service users.

history

Blink has learned that the Law Society has already “lined up” cases under Human Rights legislation to challenge what will become the Mental Health Act when it goes back to the House of Commons for a seal of approval this week.

The body representing solicitors believes several aspects of the new legislation are likely to be ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

Welcoming calls for a judicial review, Tim Spencer-Lane of the Law Society said: ‘I very much fell that there will be more cases brought against this bill and it is likely that it will have to reviewed in the near future.

‘Community Treatment Orders are an area were there are likely to be many challenges and this is something that we have been warning the Government about but they but they just wont listen.’

Alicia Spence, manager of the African Caribbean Community Initiative in Wolverhampton, welcomed the prospect of legal action.

‘We know who the main the victims are going to be - people in our communities. And in light of the evidence showing this bill will discriminate, a judicial is a welcomed next step.’

overblown

The mental health bill has had a troubled history, and the last attempt to push a law through was abandoned last year after being mauled by politicians of all parties.

Critics fears the legislation would increase the already massive race disproportionality. The Count Me In study last year also found that 88% of Black respondents had been forcibly restrained as opposed to 43% of white respondents.

African and Caribbean groups were also up to 70% less likely to be referred for counseling by their GP, and 14% more likely to be turned away than white people when they ask for help from Mental Health services.

There are also human rights concerns about compulsorily and indefinitely detaining people who have not committed any crime.

The government claims they have a right to protect the public from violent attacks by the mentally ill. Defenders of the bill point to cases like Christopher Clunis, a black schizophrenic who killed Jonathan Zito, a white man, in 1992.

Britain’s top mental health experts argue such fears are overblown and the real priority is supporting sufferers rather than heralding a return to old-style compulsion.

Professor Kwame McKenzie said: ‘I am incredibly disheartened with the fact that the Bill can have a Race Equality Impact Assessment which the Commission for Racial Equality has made it clear was done poorly and yet still have this Bill pushed through.’

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White Supremacist Racist activity.