Author: Paul Crawford, Professor of Health Humanities, University of Nottingham

According to an investigation by Hundred Families, a charity that supports and advocates for families affected by mental health homicides, each year an average of 65 mentally ill people carry out killings. Between 2018-2023, 390 mental health patients in England committed, or were suspected of, murder or manslaughter. The findings come after an independent report exposed a series of NHS failures in the treatment of Valdo Calocane, a man with schizophrenia who killed three people in Nottingham in 2023. The cases of killers Calocane and Axel Rudakubana – who stabbed three small girls to death and attempted to kill several…