‘If you don’t get right care, you end up at risk’

There is growing recognition of the urgent need for timelier follow-up as a key suicide prevention measure, with both the Inquiry and the House of Commons health select committee recently calling for earlier follow-up after discharge.

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) guidelines recommend follow-up within 48 hours for some patients only.

Mental health charity Mind is calling for this to extend to everyone leaving hospital after a mental health crisis.

Its findings show the lack of appropriate follow-up is also putting significant pressure on the NHS as people are not getting the help they need to recover.

Those not followed up within seven days were more than twice as likely to end up in A&E as a result of their issues within the first week of being discharged.

Sophie Corlett, Mind’s director of external relations, said: “Thousands of people with mental health problems in England and Wales are not getting the appropriate follow-up when they are first discharged from hospital. “This is not good enough. “It is a tragedy that so many people so very recently leaving the care of hospital are losing their lives.

“The Government has put suicide prevention as a key patient safety issue for the NHS as a whole and pledged to reduce suicides by 10 per cent in the next five years.

“Timelier follow-up for patients after they leave hospital could help achieve this.

“If you don’t get the right care after you leave, if you’re left to cope alone, you can end up in a revolving door going straight back in to hospital or be at risk of taking your own life.”