FOR Pamela Lowery it couldn't be more straightforward. Her son David, who had a history of mental illness which started when he was in his twenties, needed someone to look after him.

"He couldn't manage on his own, people just took advantage of him all the time," says Mrs Lowery, gazing at one of the few photographs she has of her son.

Even though he looked and behaved like someone much younger, David was 40 when his body was found in a Darlington bedsit.

For the umpteenth time, after a series of mental hospital admissions and a succession of flats and shared houses, he was trying to live on his own again after being discharged from the Pierremont psychiatric hospital in his home town of Darlington.

When she was told he had been found dead in bed in Greenbank Road in Darlington this August, Mrs Lowery said it was something she had been dreading - but expecting for years.

"It is a disgrace how they treated that lad. He should have been in hospital where they could have cared for him. If they had kept him in he would never have died."

Mrs Lowery says she often had to pick up the pieces after David was discharged from hospital. Sometimes he was dumped on her doorstep by the police.

She claims that the most recent discharge was the third time her son had been sent out of the Pierremont unit in the grounds of Darlington Memorial Hospital with nowhere to live.

Last December, David was arrested trying to get back into the Pierremont unit after he was discharged on Christmas Day with nowhere to live.

Hospital bosses agree that David was not the easiest of people to deal with.

Dabbling with drink and drugs from an early age and prone to bursts of violence, he was a handful for the most experienced mental health professional.

But Mrs Lowery is convinced the real reason why she is now left with only memories and photographs of her son is the failure of society to deal with people diagnosed as having a personality disorder.

Most psychiatrists regard people with personality disorders as untreatable. Even if they are violent and present a threat to others they can only be detained under the Mental Health Act for anything other than assessment if they have a recognised mental illness and will respond to treatment. The Catch 22 situation in which many patients with personality disorder find themselves means they end up in a mental hospital after a crisis but then find themselves out on the street with little support because the specialists say they have no way of treating them.

For the mental health charity Mind, describing someone as having personality disorder is "a cop-out."

A Mind spokesman says: "It seems to be a dustbin diagnosis. It is almost an admission that we are washing our hands of you. They say that personality disorder can't be treated but we know that a lot of people with this problem actually do respond to counselling and therapy."

Mind would like the Government to concentrate on improving mental health services across the board so patients with personality disorders can be adequately supported in the community and monitored so their crises can be better predicted.

For Mind, the great care in the community dream is untarnished. Their objection is that what we have seen so far has been done on the cheap.

While the great majority of people classified as having personality disorders are relatively harmless, disorganised individuals who probably present a greater threat to themselves than anyone else, the term has become demonised in many people's minds in recent years.

In the North-East there has been a string of highly-publicised cases involving murders carried out by people with severe forms of personality disorder.

Although they represent a tiny fraction of those classified as having this difficult to diagnose condition, people like Darlington's "cannibal killer" David Harker and Hartlepool's Sean Armstrong - who murdered three-year-old Rosie Palmer - have struck fear into people's hearts.

After one of the most recent cases, when "borderline personality disorder" patient Jonathan Crisp murdered father-of-two Peter McNamee in Stockton, an independent panel appointed by Tees Health Authority called for a region-wide service to be set up to help identify and treat people diagnosed with personality disorders.

That panel reported back almost exactly a year ago but no such service has been set up.

A spokeswoman for Tees Health Authority said that as well as awaiting national guidance on the treatment of people with personality disorders, a multi-disciplinary group has been looking at a range of issues.

These include how specialists diagnose personality disorders and providing more information on what is available for those with such disorders.

A year ago Home Secretary Jack Straw announced he was considering a new form of detention order for those identified with severe personality disorder. After consultation with health professionals and user groups, a White Paper setting out what are bound to be controversial proposals is expected before Christmas.

More recently, Health Secretary Alan Milburn announced ambitious new National Service Frameworks for mental health which carry with them the promise of substantial extra funding

Health authorities will be expected to strengthen outreach teams and provide 24-hour crisis care teams.

Mind says the Government must not put the cart before the horse. It must improve services to patients with lower order forms of personality disorder as well as dealing with the tiny numbers of patients who go berserk and kill.

Dr Peter Kennedy, co-director of the recently founded Northern Centre for Mental Health in Durham, says there will be no rushed solution.

"An enormous amount has happened in the last year but you don't rush into spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money unless it is going to actually improve the situation."

Dr Kennedy maintains that most people with personality disorders are quite capable of living independently if they have adequate support and access to 24-hour crisis teams.

He says: "The question is can they be kept under safe surveillance to ensure their lives do not get into such chaos that they become a risk to themselves and to others."

But perhaps the spokesman for Mind sums up the dilemma. "We are never going to have a society where nobody ever kills. The question is how do we pick up the people who constitute a risk?

"We believe a preventative approach is needed at a very early age as these problems often start in adolescence.

"Detaining people to prevent them doing something they might or might not do makes no sense."