Shock therapy...

"Eleven thousand people have this treatment [electroconvulsive therapy] every year in the UK, a fifth of them under a section of the Mental Health Act."

MANAGING DANGEROUS PEOPLE WITH SEVERE PERSONALITY DISORDER

I'm finishing off work on K272 - Challenging Ideas in Mental Health and I came across this:

Managing Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder
At first glace, this seems a perfectly sensible and positive policy, but having read some of the commentary in the course documentation, and the documents below, I am less comfortable. I don't like preventative detention. I understand why it is perceived as a 'good thing' by those in authority, but I feel it is too risky. I am glad Scotland has decided against implementing such a policy. What do other poepl think about this? I am certainly intrigued as to how it never seems to have made significant news headlines, unlike the preventative detention of terrorist suspects. Is the fear of mental illness that much more severe that we would allow such methods against the mentally ill, but not other potential killers?

Opinion documentation:
Evaluative report - from Justice, an 'independent legal human rights organisation', which works for law reform and tries to improve the legal and justice systems in Britain.
Liberty response to Home Office consultation - from Liberty, a human rights and civil liberties organisation.
DSPD website - a joint Home Office, HM Prison Service and Department of Health programme.