Major UK mental health laws shake-up

Britain published plans yesterday allowing severely mentally ill people to be locked up indefinitely, even if they have not committed a crime.

Billed as the biggest shake-up of mental health services in 40 years, the draft Mental Health Bill will also make treatment for the seriously ill compulsory, closing a legal loophole which allows people with personality disorders to refuse care on the grounds that they are untreatable.

The Department of Health said there were a small number of patients who need to be detained for their own safety and that of the public.

"Most people with mental health problems are not a risk to themselves or others and most will never need compulsory treatment," health minister Jacqui Smith said in a statement.

"Some, however... can be a danger to themselves, whilst very few can pose a risk to others. In these cases government has a responsibility to ensure that treatment can be provided to these patients in the most appropriate way, to protect them, their families and the wider public."

There have been a number of notable high profile cases in recent years of people with acute mental problems attacking, even killing members of the public.

Most famously, the late Beatle George Harrison was nearly stabbed to death in 1999 by a man who thought he was "an alien from hell".

Michael Abram, a former drug addict and paranoid schizophrenic attacked Harrison and his wife at their mansion outside London.