‘Seni’s law’.
Reforms coming into force today. I think applies only to mental health setting.
Statutory guidance
Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018
Includes this:
The use of force includes:
physical, mechanical or chemical restraint of a patient
the isolation of a patient, including seclusion and segregation
Does that mean that segregation and isolation in order to induce a behaviour (like vaccination) is the same as forcing that behaviour?
(Heavyweight intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, please note.)
Police saying it’s a good thing
Mental health patients better protected over inappropriate use of force
Only applies in mental health setting, which seems confusing as police are called to deal with other settings.
Seems like what is needed is a ‘Joe Bloggs’ law, preferably enacted while keeping Joe alive - and preferably not " restrained face down on the floor by a total of eleven police officers over a sustained period of approximately 30-40 minutes, across two periods of restraint."
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Broadly this is positive legislation but the scope is narrow, and riddled with exceptions. The circumstances where police body cams can be eschewed for example.
Most critically though, yes, it only applies in mental health wards/facilities and you have to be very unwell indeed (or loaded, to buy access to a private facility and a doctor prepared to refer you) to be in such a place to begin with.
The pressure on waiting lists, and the expectation that “health” problems sooner or later go away, leads to a carousel approach where the less visibly disturbed patients are discharged…until the next time. Unfortunately there is an incentive to act out, to remain labeled “mad” and keep your place of (relative) safety. In that sort of situation even a mild discussion of discharge plans can feel threatening.
All of this is a very long established pattern. Regimes become gradually more austere, staff costs are cut, tensions escalate, only the desperate will work there (jabbed and desperate now, I assume), and you can guess the rest. A solution is found, and/or some cash, things improve a little, a well-meaning law is passed, but the psychosis machine - to steal the phrase used by Fat Emperor Interesting summary of what’s happening, from Ivor Cummins - keeps humming away.
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