AS STURGEON BACKS MENTAL HEALTH CAMPAIGN
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A spate of suicides could have been prevented if calls for an investigation had been heeded eight years ago, a former lord provost has claimed.
An NHS investigation into a series of tragedies was finally ordered earlier this month.
The incidents include David Ramsay, 50, who took his own life in 2016 after twice being sent home from the Carseview psychiatric unit at Ninewells Hospital.
John Letford, who was lord provost of Dundee from 2001 to 2012, said his calls for action in 2010 “fell on deaf ears”.
He stepped in after five young men died in one month – including ice hockey star Iain Bell, who committed suicide despite his father also asking for help from Carseview. Letford, 83, who is
now retired, said: “It was clear that we were seeing an unacceptable level of incidents in 2010 and I thought we had a duty to get to the bottom of what was going wrong.
“I wanted to get some outside people who were respected to carry out an inquiry because these young people deserved better than they were getting.
“At the time, I said, ‘Let’s get all the agencies involved in this together. Let’s get all the medical facts and let’s really be honest and stop looking around for a way to slide out of it’.
“People would listen on some things but they didn’t listen on that one. Everything I said fell on deaf ears.
“Nobody was willing to grasp the nettle and I think, undoubtedly, that lives could have been saved between then and now if they had.”
Health Secretary Shona Robison had to face victims’ families who went to the Scottish Parliament last Wednesday.
They claim Carseview has been linked to at least 10 preventable suicides.
David’s niece Gillian Murray said: “It is shocking to think that a lord provost of Dundee realised there was a serious problem with suicide
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services in Tayside eight years ago, but still nothing was done.
“Lives could have been saved if something had been done then rather than waiting until now to accept there is a big problem here.”
On May 4, NHS Tayside chairman John Brown ordered an independent inquiry into the Carseview Centre.
It came after Ramsay’s case was raised at First Minister’s Questions the day before.