Does anyone know of any Commissioner's decisions relating to chronic paranoid psychosis?

Thanks.

Sorry, can't help with the specific condition, but presumably you've got an appeal on your hands. Are you looking at supervision rather than attention? I'd suggest the Moran case (R(A)1/88)- risk of deterioration if unsupervised, R(A)2/75 - supervision to avoid substantial danger, which may or may not arise and R(A)1/83 - risk should not be too remote. If you have a client who is being dealt with by a Community Mental Health Team, they should have a risk assessment and care plan available. These can be very helpful in appeals, though not if they are poorly worded. You could look at any recent hospitalisation/sectioning as proof of risk. Of course, if their condition is well controlled by medication you're shafted.

If you can provide more background I (and maybe 100's of others) may be able to help some more.

CDLA/3986/2003 - stable only due to support network in place - has always come up trumps for me, but more background would be helpful

CDLA/3986/2003 is available @

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/CDLA_3986_2003.pdf

R(A)1/91 dealt with someone with schizophrenia and may be useful

I know it's going off at a bit of a tangent but it may be of interest to you to know that symptoms associated with schizophrenia are divided into two groups - the 'positive' symptoms e.g.
• hearing voices (often unfriendly or critical, but not always)
• feeling that your thoughts are controlled by others and/ or being inserted into your head
• believing your own thoughts are known to others
• feeling people want to harm you – even want to kill you
• delusional ‘explanations’ for what you are experiencing

- i.e. the ones people are most familiar with, but there are also recognised ‘negative’ symptoms which include:

• apathy
• blunted or inappropriate emotional responses
• social withdrawal
• poor motivation

These are often present even when the 'voices' etc are controlled.

You've also got, potentially, all the very nasty side-effects associated with long term use of 'old' anti-psychotic medication
which sometimes don't go away even when the drug is discontinued/ changed...

Depending then on your client's particular 'chronic' difficulties, I hope the above may be useful.

R(A)2/91 also deals with scizophrenia and the need for continual spervision - whether the fact that the person has not been hospitalised means that they do not require continually supervised.