I NOTE with interest your interview with the outgoing chief executive of Scotland's Mental Welfare Commission ("World looks to Scotland after mental health care improved", The Herald, February 7).
Those of us who are campaigning for reform of the Mental Health Act take issue with much of what he says.
When the Westminster Government is reviewing the use of face-down restraint in English mental hospitals, because 40,000 of these were recorded in one year, but the Scottish Mental Welfare Commission (MWC) fails even to collate data about "adverse events", including assaults, assertions of world leadership status are hardly judicious. The MWC recorded 78 deaths over the course of the last year in the mental health system, although this information, as with that on adverse events, was only elicited by me through a Freedom of Information request.
The Scottish system lacks the basic oversight that would draw attention to deficiencies in the system and the legislation. In spite of this, and the extensive evidence supplied to the Scottish Parliament's Petitions Committee for Petition PE01494, which is seeking to ensure compatibility of the Mental Health Act with the European Convention on Human Rights, none of these deficiencies has entered the public or political consciousness in Scotland.
Fiona Sinclair,
Autism Rights, Arran View, Dunure.
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