MENTAL HEALTH DETENTIONS SIR,-1 was glad to read Pharos's reference
to the illegal detention of Miss Edith Haithwaite. I wonder if your readers realise that some 2,700 persons arc still detained in mental deficiency institutions under orders which are illegal under the High Court judgment in the Kathleen Rutty case? Clause 146 (2) of the new Mental Health Bill proposes that all these orders should be deemed valid provided that the Board of Control has considered the case since the date of the Rutty judgment and has decided that the patient is not fit to be discharged. But, as the Minister of Health admitted during the discussion in committee on patients detained in this category, 'Some of them would be discharged but for the fact that they have nowhere to go.' Therefore these people are illegally held on grounds other than mental disorder, and this illegality is to be made legal under an Act designed to deal with mentally disordered persons.
There is still time for the Bill to be amended and it is to be hoped that this will be done and that the public 'will insist that proper arrangements be made for their future.—Yours faithfully, ELIZABETH A. ALLEN Honorary Secretary The National Council for Civil Liberties, 293 New King's Road, SW6
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