Mental patients in the UK are at risk of suicide because so many of the units they are treated in are dangerously decrepit. The Guardian reports that this is according to National Health Service (NHS) mental health trusts who says crumbling old buildings are unsafe as they offer opportunities for mentally vulnerable people with conditions such as depression and schizophrenia to try to hang themselves or fall from a height.
New figures show that patient safety incidents in mental health units caused by problems with staffing, facilities or the environment in which people are treated have risen by 8%. In all, 19,088 such incidents occurred in 2018-19 compared with 17,693 the year before. Seven “never events” – incidents which are supposed to never happen – occurred in mental health trusts in 2018 involving a shower or curtain rail that failed to collapse. In another, someone fell from a window.
The report says in a stark warning, NHS Providers, which represents health trusts, categorises the risk to patient safety from “infrastructure failures in mental health trusts” as severe. “Continued under-prioritisation of the mental health estate is having a real impact on patients,” it says. “Mental health trusts continue to be neglected despite clear evidence that critical improvements are required. Mental health trust leaders are increasingly concerned that the lack of investment places their patients at increased risk.”
The trusts have been prevented for years from replacing out-of-date buildings because ministers have repeatedly raided the NHS’s capital budget to help pay for the service’s day-to-day running costs, said Saffron Cordery, NHS Providers’ deputy CEO.
Last year the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the NHS regulator, voiced its concern that too many mental health wards were “unsafe and provide poor quality care” in “old and unsuitable buildings”. The report says several trusts have been prosecuted for safety lapses linked to the poor quality of their buildings, in cases that have sometimes involved a patient dying. Ageing facilities, some of which date back to Victorian times, are also hampering patients’ chances of recovering from serious mental illness because they are so cramped and noisy, trusts say.
[link url="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/06/decrepit-nhs-mental-health-wards-put-lives-at-risk"]The Guardian report[/link]