Of late we have been reading more and more about violent crime linked to alleged failings of the mental health system, but little about the actual diagnoses and clinical history of perpetrators.

Privacy laws prohibit medical practitioners and mental health workers from talking about our patients, but not the media from telling all about the death and destruction that some of these patients cause.

I do not know if the incidence of violent crime is on the increase, or whether mental health problems, as a factor in such crimes, are more common than in the past.

It could be that defence lawyers are proposing such diagnoses in an attempt to mitigate the charges against their clients.