Mental health services in crisis
‘The mental health service in England is in crisis and unsafe, says one of the country’s leading psychiatrists.
Dr Martin Baggaley, medical director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, spoke out as an investigation by BBC News and Community Care magazine reveals more than
1,500 mental health beds have closed in recent years.
Many trusts have all their beds filled.
While many support the aim to treat people in the community, the facilities within the community are simply not there to do so. These services have in fact been savagely cut in recent years and vulnerable people have simply been abandoned by this government.
Average occupancy levels in acute adult and psychiatric beds are running at 100% according to the FOI figures from 28 trusts.
Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the charity SANE, said recently: “It is all too easy to find the cuts demanded by NHS efficiency savings in mental health.
“If a patient has heart failure or is in a coma, a bed has to be found. But for a person in mental distress, this is not seen to be as necessary.
“Being turned away when seeking help only reinforces patients’ feelings of rejection and hopelessness and can in our experience drive them to suicide.”
Mental health sufferers who are a danger to themselves are not seen as a priority to the NHS and clients are left feeling expendable and burdensome at a time when their self-worth is at its lowest.
I myself am currently under a mental health team and seen fortnightly by a community psychiatric nurse. However, this is a huge difference from the situation I was in only up until 2 years ago where I was seen by a community nurse at least once a week, attended a day centre 5 days a week, saw my GP weekly and a consultant psychiatrist monthly or as often as needed. I had one CPN for 7 years who I became immensely attached to. She left, unable to take the ever-increasing pressure of the job and in the last year, I have had 5 different CPN’s none of whom stay for long as the job is now simply too stressful. I have attended the funeral of 2 fiends who have committed suicide in the last few years as a result of being abandoned by the system. One gentleman was discharged still suffering the most severe disabling depression with the comment..’We have tried everything, there is simply nothing more we can do for you!’ If a doctor said this to a Cancer patient he would probably lose his job! My friend killed himself one week later.
The really sad thing is that those people who do not have experience of mental illness really seem to care very little about this situation. There is no public outcry, no display of outrage in the media. It simply continues to happen quietly behind the scenes.
People suffer, people die and no-one cares!
borderline personality disorder 