Forensic unit for Chch supported

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 9

Forensic unit for Chch supported

By

JENNY LONG

The medical superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital, Dr Les Ding, has welcomed the Mason report recommendation that a 15-bed forensic (criminally insane) psychiatric unit be established in Christchurch. A forensic team had been working in Canterbury for the last 18 months, Dr Ding said. “We are the only hospital board that has a team already established, so we have been working away along the lines of the Mason report.” Dr Ding also said it was important to remember that the number of forensic patients was small compared with general psychiatric patients. The Mason report into New Zealand’s psychiatric services was an important lesson for hospital boards

and health administrators, he said.

Boards must foster good relationships with health professionals, and learn to recognise good and bad advice.

Psychiatric services were not to be treated as a soft option, as hard decisions had to be taken, Dr Ding said.

“We have to be as committed to psychiatric services as to orthopaedic or cardiac surgery.”

The head of forensic psychiatric services in Canterbury, Dr Philip Brinded, welcomed the report as far-sighted and presenting a national approach to forensic psychiatry.

"Planning for forensic psychiatry is normally crisis intervention, but the Mason report goes much further than that, saying ‘This is how it should be’.” The forensic psychiatric

team in Canterbury had forged close links with the prisons, the courts and the probation system, working with people the authorities were concerned about. While these links would continue to be the cornerstone of the service, the extra resources and the 15-bed unit would be an essential part of delivering a good service, Dr Brinded said.

“You can’t operate without in-patient facilities.

“At the moment we have Lake Alice maxi-mum-security hospital and nothing between that and general psychiatric hospitals.”

The 15-bed unit would provide the sort of medium security that would enable patients to be cared for over an 18month to two-year period. Dr Brinded said.