Mentally ill killer failed by system

You don’t need me to tell you mental health illness figures have been exponentially rising over the past few decades.

Local authority mental health services are underfunded and almost at breaking point, so much so I reckon if you asked all the people on waiting lists to form an orderly queue, it would stretch the length of our not-so-fair British Isles.

The UK’s mental health service is at worst almost non-existent and at best hardly fit for purpose.

That is nothing to do with the quality of the brilliant, dedicated staff. It’s the system. It’s broken. It’s broken because a broken hip receives priority over a broken mind, despite the glaring fact that someone with a fractured bone is unlikely to be driven to take their own lives. Or someone else’s.

Jeffrey Barry, a paranoid schizophrenic, who’d been released from a secure psychiatric unit hours before he stabbed Kamil Ahmad to death, was given a life sentence for murder on Tuesday – despite the fact he called his mental health team to say he wanted to kill someone and needed help.

They ignored him. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. He was convicted of murder. In truth he’s seriously ill.

A tragic illustration of how misunderstood mental breakdown is.