Psychiatric Interim Regional Secure Unit: Seven Years' Experience

Abstract

The 140 patients admitted during the seven-year period 1977–84 accounted for 225 discharges. Schizophrenia and personality disorder were the two commonest diagnoses and violence and arson the commonest cause for their admission. Patients were accepted from prisons, Special Hospitals and other hospitals, and were discharged to the community principally and into the care of their orginal catchment-area hospitals.

Problems which remain unresolved include responding quickly enough to requests from catchment-area hospitals to accept difficult patients, finding appropriate treatment facilities for behaviourally-disturbed subnormal individuals and providing a service for psychopathic patients. The security within the secure unit has not proved a problem. Maintaining staffing levels has proved difficult both locally and nationally. Staff morale can be sustained by good personnel arrangements.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Faulk

(1979) Mentally disordered offenders in an interim regional secure unit. Crim. L. R. 686–95.

Faulk

(in press) ‘Secure facilities in Local Psychiatric Hospitals’. In: A Review of Secure Provision for Mentally Ill and Mentally Handicapped People in England and Wales. Ed. Gostin

London, Tavistock Press.

Folkard

(1960) Aggressive behaviour in relation to open wards in a mental hospital. Mental Hygiene 44, 155–61.

Gudjonsson

G. H.

MacKeith

(1983) A regional interim secure unit—Bethlem Royal Hospital—the first 14 months. Med. Sci. Law. 23, 209–16.

Higgins

(1981) Four years' experience of an interim secure unit. Br. Med. J. 282, 889–93.

Scott

P. D.

(1974) Solutions to the problem of the dangerous offender. Br. Med. J. 4, 640–1.

Treasaden

(in press) ‘Current practice in interim secure units’. In: A Review of Secure Provision for Mentally Ill and Mentally Handicapped People in England and Wales. Ed. Gostin

London, Tavistock Press.