Some fervently held views that I have tried to integrate into an answer to the question ‘Why are mental health professionals and doctors held in some way responsible for a person’s suicide soon after contact?’
'I thought the idea of medical involvement was to help people with serious mental disorder manage their lives as well as possible. They can’t control the person in all respects.
The comments seem to focus on people who don’t do their job very well as being held responsible in some way, and to me that means they have to be held to account for not doing their jobs very well, but for being responsible for another person’s decision to end their life is an extrapolation that may not be fair.
I think the hidden question I was asking is if the doctors and AMHPs and others think that they are going to be blamed for a suicide soon after contact they may be motivated to take actions such as the sledge hammer of detention to forcibly cause a pause which may result in the person reconsidering the situation, missing the point that the sledge hammer also has bad effects so may not be the most skillful way of acting. As this is a law forum, if the detention is not valid due to there being no clear evidence of a mental disorder i.e the first requirement for recommending, executing and maintaining detention, but maybe/ perhaps/ there could be, a risk of suicide feeds the fear of being criticised/ blamed/ responsible and the person finishes up, sorry for the colloquialism, in the modern asylum contrary to the law. There was a discussion headed ‘Legal responsibility of professionals— capacity and suicide’ where this was posted
The other posts describe the presence of non compliance with regulations happens with an assumption of not being found out or not being held to account which I can attest is correct, but from a law forum perspective should not happen.
So if the underlying motivation is fear of being held to account for suicide soon after contact which, to my mind at least is not justified as the mental health people’s job is to help people with genuine mental health problems manage as well as possible, what can be done about it? Perhaps the medical people side needs to refute the responsibility for prevention of suicide and return to their real duties, and the law people, well can’t you help people that have been subjected to non compliant detention to hold the perps to account? Both together may succeed.