ABSTRACT
As indicated in Chapter 6, patients in secure mental health care represent a small but signi®cant group of people who suffer with severe and enduring mental health problems (the American National Institute of Mental Health / NIMH 2006a). There is increasing recognition that their dif®culties may be exacerbated by ongoing mistreatment and abuse (World Health Organization/WHO 2005a); and that women patients in secure services across the world may be especially vulnerable to ongoing violence and sexual exploitation (Aitkin and Heenan 2004; WHO 2005a). Women patients in secure services are some of the most maligned and marginalized women in the world, whose plight is too often ignored by a general public who prefers its victims to be more unambiguously innocent (see Chapter 3). In Chapter 6, I argued that women's mistreatment in secure mental health care may also be predicated on normative misunderstandings about gender that are drawn on to justify incarceration.
