Mental health problems only happen to other people
In fact, every year approximately 1 in 4 of the population will have some sort of mental health problem. Around 1 in 10 children aged 5 to 15 will need professional help for their mental health. Over 4,000 people take their own lives each year.

People with mental health problems are dangerous
The vast majority of violent crime is committed by people who do not have mental health problems. (1997 figures for England and Wales: 348,943 offences against the person recorded of which only 321 people were assessed as having mental health problems). Alcohol and drug abuse is a far bigger contributory factor in cases of homicide than any diagnosis of mental health problems (60% of cases committed by people with no mental health problems). People with mental health problems are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general population.

People with mental health problems carry out unprovoked attacks on strangers
Only 10% of homicide victims of people with mental health problems were strangers, compared with 26% of those killed by people with no diagnosable mental health problem.

Care in the community has led to an increase in attacks by people with mental health problems
Home Office figures show that the number of attacks is actually decreasing.

Since care in the community was started, people with mental health problems have been left to roam the streets.
Even before the closure of the old large scale psychiatric hospitals, the vast majority (around 95%) of people received care and treatment outside of these institutions (i.e. in the community). What has changed is the type and scale of accommodation/treatment. For example, people requiring long term care in a hospital type setting are no longer in the same building as those requiring short term admissions (in Solihull this latter is provided in part of the main hospital, and the former in smaller, more domestic scale, buildings elsewhere in the borough). There is also a greater variety of differing levels of support/accommodation available to people.

People with schizophrenia have a split personality
This idea, like the Jekyll and Hyde story which reinforces it, is fiction. The majority of people with schizophrenia lead ordinary lives.

People with mental health problems never recover
A survey of people with mental health problems by Mind in 2001 found that nearly two thirds regarded themselves as recovered or coping with some kind of support.