Editorial
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14668203200500019 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Pages | 2-5 |
| Author | Nicky Stanley,Margaret Flynn |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Sociology |
2©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited The Journal of Adult Protection Volume 7 Issue 4 • December 2005
Editorial
Special Issue on Mental Health
Guest edited by Nicky Stanley and
Margaret Flynn
This special issue of The Journal of Adult
Protection focuses on mental health services.
This is the setting where the impact of adult
protection procedures and approaches
appears to have been slow (Brown & Keating,
1998) and where service users who raise
complaints may have their credibility
undermined by the label of ‘mental illness’. A
number of events have emphasised that
mental health services remain unsafe places
for both service users and staff. In May 2005,
Azrar Ayub died after being restrained on a
secure mental health unit near Manchester.
This death comes six years after that of David
‘Rocky’ Bennett, who was also subject to
restraint and whose death has prompted a
government action plan on race equality in
mental health care (Department of Health,
2005a). The inquiry (Department of Health,
2005b) into the sexual abuse of female
mental health service users by two
psychiatrists in Yorkshire was reported earlier
this year,whilst the inquiry into Rowan Ward
(Commission for Health Improvement, 2003)
highlighted the vulnerability of older people
to abuse and an institutionalised regime
within mental health services. Recently
published government figures identify a high
level of assaults on staff in mental health
settings (O’Hara, 2005) and such statistics
reveal the extent to which mental health
services are underpinned by the dynamics of
control and coercion.
Williams and Keating (2000) have argued
that the philosophy of ‘adult protection’ is
inappropriate for users of mental health
services, suggesting that it conveys passivity
rather than reflecting users’ rights. However,
plans for new mental health legislation in
England and Wales do little to reassure users
of mental health services that their rights will
be protected by law.The emphasis continues
to be on protecting the public with little
consideration of service users’ needs for
protection. Unless the bottom-up movement
for users’ rights, which is well developed in
mental health, meets a policy response which
recognises the potential for abuse and
implements structures that both monitor and
respond to its manifestations, abuse in mental
health settings may continue to be
characterised by either silence or scandal.
Anumber of the current features of mental
health services highlight the need for the
ethos of adult protection to be moreactively
embraced. Firstly, the development of
community-based services with the
concomitant shift in resources has consigned
in-patient mental health units to a residual
status. Beds and staff are in short supply,
patients are frequently admitted in crisis and
levels of substance misuse are reported to be
high on wards; staff morale has been
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