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Discrepancies and inaccuracies in statistics for detained patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Teresa Nemitz
Affiliation:
Midlands Centre for Criminology, Department of Social Sciences, University of Loughborough
Philip Bean
Affiliation:
Midlands Centre for Criminology, Department of Social Sciences, University of Loughborough, Leicester LE11 3TU
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Abstract

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While conducting a study on the nature and extent of compulsory admissions to mental hospitals within the four London regional health authorities, discrepancies and inaccuracies were revealed in many of those mental hospital in-patient statistics. The nature and extent of some of these are examined. It is suggested that the value of such statistics for government planning must be questioned as is their value for research. It is recommended that a centralised system of collecting and collating such data be introduced as a matter of priority and that such a system be operated by the Mental Health Act Commission.

Type
Audit
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1994

References

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