‘Failures’ at an NHS unit linked to suicide
A SEVERELY depressed man was let down by ‘serious systemic failures’ at an NHS mental health facility in the days before he took his own life, a fatal accident inquiry ruled yesterday.
Dale Thomson, 28, died four days after being released from the Carseview Centre in Dundee for the third time in weeks, despite showing worrying signs of deteriorating mental health.
Sheriff George Way issued a judgment describing Mr Thomson’s death as ‘unavoidable’, before blaming ‘relevant’ shortcomings at the centre for contributing to it.
Mr Thomson’s mother Mandy McLaren, 50, of Dundee, yesterday blamed Carseview for her son’s suicide. She also called for a public inquiry into the facility.
Miss McLaren said: ‘The sheriff says there was no reasonable precautions they could have taken.
‘A reasonable precaution would have been to keep him in hospital.
‘He wanted to make a better life for him and his daughter.
‘But he knew he needed help. If he didn’t want help he wouldn’t have gone to the doctors repeatedly.
‘People are crying out for help and they are not listening.
‘Dundee is the worst in mainland Scotland for suicides – does that not tell you something?
‘Doctors must start being held accountable for their errors.’
Mr Thomson, from Charleston, Dundee, died on January 27, 2015, after leaving Carseview against medical advice. His daughter, Evi, was an infant at the time. He had gone to his GP over suicidal thoughts and was sent to Carseview for emergency assessment. He was admitted on a voluntary basis for two nights before discharging himself against the advice of doctors.
Police returned him to the facility after he threatened to burn down houses, and after another assessment he was again released.
Mr Thomson went back to his GP on January 22, 2015, and again underwent an urgent assessment at Carseview the following day.
This time he was placed on medication and told to go back to his GP if his mental health deteriorated. Four days later he was dead.
Yesterday, Sheriff Way released his determination following an earlier fatal accident inquiry. He wrote: ‘[Mr Thomson] accepted voluntary admission. He should have seen a senior consultant the next day [who] would have carried out a mental state exam and devised a treatment plan. The failures of Carseview are perfectly clear.’