Whether any brains have been removed from people with mental illness following their deaths in the last 10 years.

This information is not available. Where a post-mortem examination is carried out to establish the cause of death the removal of the brain may be necessary for diagnostic purposes. This would happen whether or not someone was suffering from a mental illness. The whole issue of retention of organs following post-mortem examination has been examined in detail by the Independent Review Group on Retention of Organs at Post-Mortem. The group has looked at both types of post-mortem examination: hospital post-mortem examinations undertaken for the purposes of diagnosis, and post-mortem examinations instructed by the procurator fiscal, who has a duty to investigate all sudden, suspicious, accidental and unexplained deaths. I expect to receive a report in the autumn.