Health and Criminal Justice Tsar Professor Louis Appleby
People with mental health problems are committing fewer homicides while the number of suicides by mental health patients has also fallen, latest figures reveal; a previous rise in homicides by mentally ill people may have been the result of drug misuse, says the report. The study, by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness at The University of Manchester, also found that in-patient suicides have fallen to their lowest recorded figure and that patient suicides have fallen most sharply in people in their early 20s. The researchers, led by Professor Louis Appleby, the government's Health and Criminal Justice Tsar, reported that the number of homicides committed by people who were suffering from schizophrenia or who were psychotic at the time of offence had fallen in 2005 and 2006 - the most recent years for which figures are available. Although the report's authors, based in the University's Centre for Suicide Prevention, say it is too early to conclude whether this fall was the start of a new downward trend, they concluded that a previously reported rise in homicides by mentally ill people had not continued. "In our previous annual report, we reported that the number of people convicted of homicide who were psychotic at the time of the offence had shown an unexplained rise between 1997 and 2005,” said Professor Appleby. "In our latest report we have examined additional data for this period in an attempt to explain this rise in homicide, although we have also presented evidence that the increase has not continued.
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