It would appear that the French courts are taking a very hard-line when it comes to the dodgy therapeutic outcomes of the psychological services.  Perhaps here in America we should also begin to ponder a better approach to the accountability factor for the psychiatric Brahmins of the mental health profession, especially considering that some of their scary ‘clients’ are out and about murdering children.

A French psychiatrist whose patient hacked an elderly man to death was found guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday in a groundbreaking case that could affect the way patients are treated.

A court in Marseilles said Daniele Canarelli, 58, had committed a “grave error” by failing to recognize the public danger posed by Joel Gaillard, her patient of four years.

Gaillard hacked to death 80-year-old Germain Trabuc with an axe in March 2004 in Gap, in the Alps region of southeastern France, 20 days after fleeing a consultation with Canarelli at Marseilles’s Edouard Toulouse hospital.

Canarelli was handed a one-year prison sentence and ordered to pay 8,500 euros to the victim’s children, in the first case of its kind in France. Defense lawyers said the ruling would have serious repercussions for treatment of the mentally ill.

But the kicker to this news story is that the murderer was found not responsible for his actions and has been released under medical supervision.

So a nut case can hack to death an elderly man but continue merrily along with his demented existence absolutely free as a bird flitting here and there among the general public while legally stoned out of his axe-wielding mind.  Ah, those Frenchies—they’ve turned judicial schizophrenia into a mind-bending art form.

Well, let’s hope that Monsieur Gaillard continues to take his daily medications, for somehow I don’t think the reassuring blurb about ‘medical supervision’ extends to 24-hour man-to-man coverage.