The healthcare researcher, scriptwriter and jazz singer Edana Minghella, who has died aged 63 of endometrial cancer, played a key role in restoring faith in community care of people with mental illness after public confidence was shaken by a series of scandals in the 1990s.
Governments had for 30 years been pursuing a policy of closing the UK’s long-stay mental hospitals and instead supporting people in the community through therapies, practical support and slow-release medication. But a chain of serious incidents, including the 1992 killing of Jonathan Zito by Christopher Clunis, prompted growing calls for the policy to be reversed.
