Ding Dong the wicked witch is dead...

Quote: Homer "it was and is for the specific wholesale pillage of this countries flawed but operational mental health system. Some of the most prime building land in Surrey was ripped from places such as Virginia Water, Epsom, Botleys, and Brookwood, where care and understanding of a massively wide variety of illness was beginning to be treatable with compassion and care, the days of total medicinal blackouts were behind us, and these thousands of people had a place to be safe and to be cared for, until she decided they would be better off on the streets and all of that land made available at pure pennies in the pound for the vultures who supported her to speculate on and build their fortunes with, scum each and every one of them.'"

If you think those suffering with mental health problems were better looked after in the old asylum system then I would ask whether you have ever worked in one? I did. In Carlisle. While care in the community was a disaster in some ways, the asylum system was already a disaster in many more ways. My boss, the unit manager at Garlands Hospital, had to regularly rotate his nursing and auxiliary staff in order to avoid abuse because getting people who actually CARED about those they were paid to look after was very, very difficult. There were indeed some very devoted nurses in that unit who worked very hard to make life comfortable for those who were often extremely challenging as a result of their illnesses, but they were not the majority of staff. And the conditions in which clients lived were far from comfortable even though, in the case of Carlisle, they were surrounded by lovely countryside and still pretty much outside the city walls (which is where many asylums were built - out of sight; out of mind). There was much wrong with the asylum system. Some wasn't fixed by care in the community and indeed new problems were added, but retaining the asylum system for all mental health sufferers was most definitely not the way to go.