Inquiries

Abstract

This chapter will explore a number of mental health inquiries that took place in the early and mid-1990s. It will argue that the media reporting – particularly that which appeared in tabloid newspapers – had a key role in undermining support for the progressive elements of community care. This is not to diminish the nature of some of the cases that led to the Inquiries. It is, rather, to consider the way that this media reporting helped to construct a particular discourse around, risk and mental health. This reporting played on a series of long standing, often racialised tropes about the nature of mental illness. One of the most important of these was the notion that there is a clear, identifiable and causal link between mental illness and violence. These are complex issues. However, complexity was drown out by the dominant narrative was that the community faced new dangers in the form of “psychokillers”. Alongside this, a theme in the reporting of such cases was that liberal mental health professionals were refusing to use their powers to intervene