From today, patients will no longer be permitted to smoke in the buildings or grounds of mental hospitals. The Department of Health says the ban goes “towards ending an unacceptable health inequality”.
MIND’s policy director, Sophie Corlett, says that mental inpatients are the only people not allowed to smoke inside – or indeed outside – their living quarters. The charity has called for more help and support for those who want to quit smoking. It has, however, been strangely silent about those who might not.
The government was keen to point out that inpatients had restricted rights, and besides the general perception among the public was that they were a bunch of raving lunatics who spent every waking minute devising new ways in which to slaughter the first person they caught sight of.
“OK, it’s possible that there might be one or two patients who have been sectioned because they are so utterly depressed that they keep trying to kill themselves,” admitted a junior health minister. “These people might, perhaps, not be in altogether the best frame of mind to cope with the withdrawal symptoms associated with suddenly giving up smoking. But it’s for their own good, and they’ll thank us for it one day. What these people really need is a damned good slap, anyway. Why don’t they just pull themselves together?”
The department also took the opportunity to unveil its exciting new techniques in the treatment of mental patients - such as inviting the paying public in on Sundays to laugh at the loonies, spinning them in a giant box for hours until they lose consciousness, blasting them twice daily with high-pressure water hoses, forcing them into a chemically-induced coma for a month, and banging a metal spike into their heads to release the evil spirits.
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