1,200.
In ten years.
The amount of people killed by the Police (in case you wondered) over the same period was 569. (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/19/deaths-police-custody-data)
Oh and five people A DAY die on Britain's Roads.
But I guess those headlines wouldn't sell papers.
As Rethink pointed out, the number of homicides by people with mental health problems has actually gone down.
The thing that's the most annoying is that apparently, the story inside was quite relevant detailing how those who had committed the murders were "high risk patients" and had been failed by services. That, didn't make the headline though. Funnily enough!
Criticism was raised as the Sun didn't make room for the statistics that those with mental health difficulties were ten times more likely to be hurt than to do the hurting. Alastair Campbell tweeted the point that the constant media linkage by the media of violence and mental illness actually leads to violence against the mentally ill and not by them.
The Sun's Managing Editor defended the paper by stating that called for better communication between agencies. The Director of Time for Change argued that it would the front cover that caused the fuel of the stigma.
It was explained those with a mental health illness are more dangerous to their self than another person and that 95% of homicides aren't committed by those with a mental health disorder.
I think the point is, how can we campaign for stigma to be erased when those with the most influence (the media) are doing things like this? If we all want to achieve this then we need to work together, work alongside on another and act as a team. You never know, we patients might have a bit of knowledge a journalist doesn't. After all, we're the ones living it.
