Some people seem to live in a perpetual state of Mental Crisis and we have lived a little too long for some of them, but at any rate we are still there, and we are not ashamed of what we have done.

If one of them suffers from a mental breakdown, or any kind of Mental Crisis when he is here, it may well be, in part, the result of the strain which he has undergone and which has led to his leaving his own country and seeking hospitality here as an alien.

The Medical Foundation and others have pointed out to me that, after six months, refugees go to the intermediate phase of Mental Crisis, when self-denial is no longer possible and the true force of the effects of the terror that they have experienced will come out.

The noble Baroness was right: we do need to remind ourselves that, for an individual even to put himself in the running for compulsory detention, something very major must have happened that brings him to a state of Mental Crisis.

Everyone agrees that a police cell is not a therapeutic environment for someone who may have reached a Mental Crisis point and may even be suicidal.

When - and only when - she cannot cope, because she is in Mental Crisis and her brain is so dysfunctional that she cannot cope with life, she uses alcohol.

I make no general criticism of the police force as a whole, but I do think that when the police are called to an incident in a shopping centre, or in the street or elsewhere, they need to be well aware that some of the people there may be suffering from a Mental Crisis, may be mental health patients, and need to be treated with some degree of care and understanding.