SHE WAS I tried 100 times to get help for my suicidal daughter but they called her a f*****g waste of space. And then she killed herself
Hannah stricken by psychosis’
A DESPERATE mum begged for help more than 100 times over nine days before her daughter killed herself.
Mandy Park’s distraught pleas were not only ignored by a mental health worker – but ridiculed.
Her daughter Hannah Groves was labelled an “attention seeker” and a “f***ing waste of space”.
Hours later she was found dead at home, aged 20.
Hannah had made numerous suicide attempts in the nine days before her death yet was repeatedly denied admission to hospital. Heartbroken Mandy, 47, was physically sick when she heard the comments about Hannah, who was a constant danger to herself.
Mandy said: “It beggars belief that anyone could treat another human that way.
Catastrophic
“Hannah changed overnight from a happy young woman to a totally different person. She was my world. I love and miss her. She had so much to live for and to give. If she’d got the right treatment she’d still be here.”
Tragic Hannah is just one victim in a growing mental health crisis among women as female suicide rates hit a ten-year high.
In the UK the number of women taking their own lives has grown steadily since 2011.
But while mental health issues make up 23 per cent of contact with the NHS, it received only 13 per cent of the funding.
And since 2011 the number of beds for mental health patients has fallen by 8 per cent.
Last month Mandy, a former support worker for deaf children, was awarded £ 260,000 in an out-of-court medical negligence settlement from Southern Health Trust. It admitted grieving Mandy had been a “secondary victim” of its failings after she developed post-traumatic stress disorder and spent six weeks in a specialist mental health facility. She has contemplated suicide too but could not leave her son Patrick, 21, without a mum. Mandy said: “Finding Hannah’s body was the wo worst moment of my life. I have flash flashbacks every day. It’s like a film on a constant loop. “The effects of these failings have been ca catastrophic. I’m terrified it will ha happen to someone else’s child.” Hannah, a straight-Ast student studying French at university, had no mental healt health problems until October 2012. Mandy believesbeliev she suffered a sudden onset of psychosis but this was not diagno diagnosed because she was not prop properly assessed. On the n night she got ill, Mandy dro dropped Hannah at her boyfr boyfriend’s and later had a pa panicked call from him. S She picked up her daugh daughter but on the trip hom home Hannah rep repeatedly tried to j jump from the moving car. She also attempted to run into oncoming traffic.
Mandy said: “She was such a sweet, gentle person. But it was like she was possessed.
“Her voice had changed and she was speaking in a monotone.
Numb
“She didn’t smoke but she would pace the floor, chain-smoking and staring into space. I was terrified of my own girl. She kept saying she felt numb.”
Mandy took Hannah to A&E where the medical staff referred her to the trust’s mental health crisis team. But staff from the trust assessed Hannah and decided she did not meet the criteria for a bed in Antelope House, in her home town Southampton. Over the next week she repeatedly attempted suicide. Mandy took her to hospital, to her GP and even to an out of area mental heath facility trying to get help.
Police and paramedics regularly attended the family home and she begged mental health workers to intervene, in vain.
Mandy said: “One time she had a scarf round her neck and I had to hold her down. I spent hours on the phone to the mental health A MENTAL health expert has said Hannah’s symptoms were consistent with the sudden onset of acute polymorphic psychosis. Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Dr Iain Macmillan said suchdisorders come on without warning and most patients experience their fir st episode aged between 15 and 25, with symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, emotional trauma and intense anxiety. He said they should be admitted to hospital and watched for 48 hours. He said:“Early intervention is key and patients should expect to make a recovery and get back on track with the right treatment.”