Mentally abnormal offenders: manner of death.
- 12 September 1987
- Vol. 295 (6599), 632-634
- https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.295.6599.632
Abstract
A 23 year follow up of deaths in a population of mentally disordered patients was carried out, and a typical case history is reported. A quarter (71) of the deaths reported were unnatural, verdicts of suicide or accidental death or open verdicts having been recorded. For men in most age groups the proportion of deaths by suicide was two to three times greater than in the general population in 1982; the rate among those aged 25-29 was five times that in the general population. Differences in the rate of unnatural death among diagnostic categories of mental illness were not significant, but the proportion of unnatural deaths among the mentally handicapped will probably eventually be lower than that among psychotic offenders or those with personality disorders. Violent death occurs at an older age in those with affective disorders. Social isolation and alienation add to the handicap of mental disorder in this group of people, and these sometimes difficult but always vulnerable patients must continue to be offered asylum other than prison.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Violence and psychosis. I. Risk of violence among psychotic men.BMJ, 1984
- A Survey of the Criminal Careers of Restriction Order PatientsThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1983
- A Survey of the Criminal Careers of Hospital Order PatientsThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1983
- Transfers from prisons to local psychiatric hospitals under section 72 of the 1959 Mental Health Act.BMJ, 1980
- Undetermined Deaths—Suicide or Accident?The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1978
- Psychiatric Morbidity in a Sample of AccidentsThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1977