Clause 2
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
Angela Browning (Deputy Chairman (Organising and Campaigning), Conservative Party; Tiverton and Honiton, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is right. A diagnosis of an ASD does not mean that someone has a mental disorder, but we all recognise that there can be a multiple diagnosis. For example, a person with ASD can have a learning disability and can—frequently,they do—have a recognised mental illness. Sometimes people have a combination of all three things: a triple diagnosis is not unknown. Cases can be complicated and often difficult for the professional psychiatric services to understand properly.
I should like to put on record the concern of the National Autistic Society, which understands the need for a clearer definition of a mental disorder. I do not think that there is any disagreement about that. However, it is concerned that, because of the changes and the lack of recognition of how ASD presents itself—and our greater knowledge of it now, compared to when we legislated on mental health in 1983—more people with an ASD could be inappropriately detained.
I remain to be convinced by the Governmentthat there is a case for people with an ASD being compulsorily detained for treatment if they are not mentally ill or, in the context of the clause, they do not exhibit
“abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible”
behaviour. That is why the recommendation of the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, of which I was a member, identified ASDs, in addition to the exclusion for learning disability, as the one condition to which we felt that the Government should pay due regard. We took evidence from a lot of people, representing those with a range of quite legitimate conditions, who made that case. However, autism, which is a complex condition, is different and I should like to explain why that is so.
Autism is a lifelong disability. It is a developmental disorder and is not something that people catch. We do not know yet what causes it, although there is a lot of research being undertaken in this area, but we know that, although it is different in every individual, it presents with three core deficiencies that have a huge impact on people’s lives and behaviour.
Autism leads to a lack of understanding of social behaviour and problems making social relationships. I am putting this in layman’s language, rather than talking about what we sometimes call the triad of impairment, which is language that just floats over people’s heads. For children, that can mean failing to make friends in the playground. Going to a school for children with autism and seeing them at play time is quite a shocking thing. One does not see, as normal, children running around, interacting and playing with each other, or creating any imaginative play. Lack of imagination, of an ability to put oneself in somebody else’s mindset, is part of the triad of impairment. Children in such a school at play time will either stare into the middle distance or be preoccupied with repetitive behaviours.