The Truth About Mental Health: Four Walls (14:32 GMT 14 June 2013) would more aptly have been entitled ‘Misleading Half-Truths About Mental Health’.

The program described the devastating effects of imprisoning and isolating people. However the only groups of victims it mentioned were those imprisoned by the state, and those kidnapped by terrorist groups. The biggest group of people suffering isolation and torture are the ordinary people in developed countries who are besieged by yobs. Mrs Pilkington, who burned herself & her disabled daughter to death after being tortured for 10 years, wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. One Victims’ Champion told me there had been many other cases where people have been driven to commit suicide. They just don’t get reported by the media. Even larger are the numbers of people who’ve been driven into severe and refractive mental illness. They are generally ignored too.

This program ignored the biggest group of torture victims. It was therefore a gross distortion of the truth.

This fits the pattern of BBC broadcasting, in which subjecting people to years of severe mental torture is “not crime but just anti-social behaviour”, and in which “Young men shouldn’t have their lives ruined by sending them to prison for minor offences”, even if they have tortured some one to death.