‘NO-ONE CARES ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH’
Suicide-threat woman told ‘team had clocked off’
A YOUNG woman says she turned up at a North Wales hospital saying she wanted to kill herself, only to be told the mental health team had “clocked off”.
Rhian Mai Williams, who has a history of mental health problems, said she went to Ysbyty Alltwen in Tremadog after feeling she was “losing control”.
But the 25-year-old said when she arrived at the minor injuries unit at 5.10pm she was spoken to by a female member of staff through a speaker in the wall and was told nothing could be done to help her because the mental health team had “clocked off at 5pm”.
Ms Williams was diagnosed with depression at 16 and has since been diagnosed with an anxiety and panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She has borderline personality disorder (BPD) whichmakes her “very impulsive”.
The qualified chef said: “I couldn’t believe how she was speaking to me. I had been struggling all day to keep control. I was so upset and I explained to her that I wanted to kill myself but she just kept saying there was nothing she could do.
“I just find it disgusting that she didn’t even come out to talk to me. I understand she wasn’t from the mental health team, but surely she should have some sort of basic training?
“If I’d have seriously injured myself it would have been different, but I feel like when it comes to mental health no one cares or understands.”
Miss Williams says she called the hospital after the incident, in early August, and explained her state of mind but she was told it was going to take a minimum of four weeks for her to be assessed.
A supervisor for the cleaning team at Nant Gwrtheyrn, she began self-harming at the age of 12 due during a “troubled” childhood. She has tried to kill herself five times – four times overdosing on various tablets and one time even trying to hang herself.
After her third overdose she admitted herself to the Hergest mental health unit in Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor, in July last year, but she was discharged after just one month. Just two months after being discharged she took another overdose.
“I want to get better,” she said, “but I don’t know how. I’ve had counselling but, as brilliant as they were, it didn’t really work. I had been seeing a psychologist but I missed one appointment because I was having a bad day with my depression and they took me off the list.
“I’m on anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. I just want it to stop – it’s never ending and I’m just exhausted from feeling like this every day. Even on good days I know it can flip so easily and on my bad days I can’t even get out of bed. I still wish it had worked the first time I tried to kill myself. I can’t ever say that I won’t try again because my BPD makes me so impulsive.
“I just want someone to be able to take my pain away – I want to be able to take something to stop my thoughts in the same way as taking a paracetamol stops a head- ache. I just need someone to try to help me but I constantly feel like I’m being dismissed. Mental illness isn’t taken as seriously as physical illness.”
Samantha Watson, BCUHB’s Head of Operations and Service Delivery for Mental Health Services in North West Wales, said: “While we cannot discuss individual patient cases in any detail, we would like to apologise to Ms Williams for the difficulties she has experienced in accessing support.
“We encourage Ms Williams and anyone else who is unhappy about the care they’ve received to please contact us directly, so we can thoroughly investigate and act upon their concerns.
“We have made improving the support available to people in an acute mental health crisis our number one priority as we begin implementing our mental health strategy Together for Mental Health in North Wales.
“To support this we are working with partner organisations to develop community resources such as crisis cafes, sanctuaries and step-down services to assist people at times of acute need.”