Nearly half of mental health units are out of date or unsafe
THOUSANDS of mental health patients are being treated in unsafe hospital units, warn inspectors.
Two in five mental health services inspected in the last three years have not met safety requirements, the Care Quality Commission said.
Some 40 per cent of NHS services and 39 per cent of private units were classed either as ‘ inadequate’ or ‘ requires improvement’ when it came to safety, the inspectors said in their scathing report.
They warned patients are often treated in out- of- date wards, with insufficient
‘Feeling helpless and powerless’ ‘Disturbing information’
staff and many blind spots where they can harm themselves or others. And they said thousands are locked up for years in asylum-like units that ‘ have no place’ in modern healthcare. Some institutions are still putting men and women in mixed-sex wards – a practice experts said should have been eliminated decades ago.
Mental health care has been identified as a major priority by Theresa May, who called shortfalls in services a ‘burning injustice’.
But the new report, for which every single mental health provider in England was inspected between 2014 and 2017, reveals scale of the task the Prime Minister faces. Overall, 26 per cent of NHS services were rated as either inadequate or requiring improvement, 68 per cent were classed as ‘good’ and 6 per cent ‘outstanding’. Private providers had similar results.
Services performed very strongly on how ‘caring’ they were, with 96 per cent of NHS and 98 per cent of private institutions classed as good or outstanding. But they fell woefully short on safety. Dr Paul Lelliott, deputy chief inspector of hospitals, said more people than ever are receiving mental health care, partly because of a reduction in the stigma associated with such conditions.
‘But this must be supported by services that give people the help they need. Some remain rooted in the past – providing care that is over-restrictive and that is not tailored to each person’s individual needs. This can leave people feeling helpless and powerless.’ His report is particularly damning about ‘ locked rehabilitation wards’ and the numbers of patients in them.
The CQC found there were more than 3,500 beds across 248 locked mental health rehabilitation wards in England. About twothirds of these beds were managed by independent providers.
In 2015/16 the average length of stay for patients was 341 days, but for some it was up to five years. The report said: ‘More than 50 years after the movement to close asylums and large institutions, we were concerned to find examples of outdated and sometimes institutionalised care.’
The report said locked rehabilitation wards were often a long way from patients’ homes, meaning they were isolated.
The report added: ‘ Too often, these locked rehabilitation hospitals are in fact long- stay wards that institutionalise patients, rather than a step on the road back to a more independent life.’
Sophie Corlett of mental health charity Mind, said: ‘There are pockets of really quite disturbing information here. Although much of what we are seeing is good, a third of services required improvement or are inadequate.
Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s mental health chief, said: ‘We have already made huge steps forward – overall mental health funding is up by £1.4billion in real terms and 120,000 more people are getting specialist treatment than three years ago. We know there is more work to do – this is why we have a five year plan in place to ensure that transformation is underway.’