Patient died after leaving therapy unit
Mother was suicidal previous night
A troubled mother was let out of a Maidstone mental health unit by a member of staff unaware she had been suicidal the previous evening, an inquest has heard.
Natalie Gray discharged herself from Priority House, where she was receiving care as a voluntary patient, and made her way to Barming railway station, a mile away, on April 21 last year.
After spending almost two hours on the platform, the 24-year-old was hit and killed by a train.
An inquest into her death, which started at The Archbishop’s Palace last week, was told the Hermitage Lane facility had a policy that nursing staff should be consulted before an informal patient left the building.
But giving evidence, Emma Farrell, from the occupational therapy support team, said she had not been made aware of the protocol.
She said Miss Gray had asked to go out for a cigarette, so she had used her key fob to open the door of the ward, as she had seen others do with voluntary patients.
She said it was only later she was made aware a doctor had raised con- cerns about Miss Gray’s state of mind the previous evening, recommending she should be assessed by a medical practitioner if she became agitated and tried to leave the unit.
The support worker said it was something she would have expected to have been briefed on.
The inquest heard Miss Gray, from Folkestone, had been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and had tried to commit suicide several times since she was 14.
She told mental heath staff she thought she had been recruited by the devil.
The inquest is expected to last until next Friday.
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