LIVES AT RISK OVER MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
Hospitals ignore urgent beds rule
A LACK of emergency hospital beds for the mentally ill has led to one killing and a spate of suicides, an investigation reveals.
The tragedies happened after patients were turned away because NHS bosses failed to follow legislation to admit urgent cases immediately.
The British Medical Association probe found some had to wait up to a month for hospital admission – and many of the Clinical Commissioning Groups responsible for carrying out the Mental Health Act rule did not record the long waiting times.
In one case, paranoid schizophrenia sufferer Kierran Fletcher, 29, killed a grandad in a frenzied attack.
It was 24 hours after Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust put him in a queue with 23 others.
Coroners linked 11 deaths in a year, including suicides, to pressures on the Trust’s mental health services.
The most recent victim in 2019 killed himself after a lengthy wait for a bed. But the BMA found this was
part of a much wider problem across England – with half the country’s population living in an area with no emergency mental health beds policy.
Of England’s 135 CCGs, only 100 replied to a BMA Freedom of Information request for details. Of those, just 12 were sticking to the rule.
Last year’s statistics show the longest wait a patient had was 29 days – at Mersey Care NHS Trust.
Birmingham is now following the legislation. Consultant psychiatrist Andrew Molodynski of the BMA said:
“Politicians and senior NHS managers are in collective denial about this problem. How many more people need to die before things change?”
Rosena Allin-Khan, the Shadow Mental Health Minister, said: “Patients have been failed and the public put in danger. Ministers cannot ignore how grave this issue is.”
The Birmingham Trust added: “We are committed to working with partners to make changes that could prevent future deaths.”