Mentally ill victims of assaults and harassment are being let down by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and other legal professionals, according to research by mental health charity Mind.


A survey of 304 people with mental health problems found that the CPS frequently dropped assault and harassment cases before they got to court because the victims, who were neither consulted nor offered support, were considered unreliable due to their mental condition.



Even where cases did get to court, defence lawyers often used a victim's mental health history to discredit their testimony - even where it was irrelevant to the case.



Anna Bird, a policy adviser at Mind, said: 'The problem isn't discrimination, but a lack of training. Frontline personnel need to learn how to identify vulnerable witnesses and how to help them.'



A CPS spokesman pointed to the range of special measures and procedures that had been implemented to help vulnerable witnesses. He added that prosecutors should object to cross-examination on irrelevant evidence in psychiatric reports, as well as 'hectoring or aggressive' questioning.



Jonathan Rayner