«Il reparto sembrava una prigione. Cosa avevo lasciato fare?’: come mia figlia è stata schiacciata da un servizio sanitario destinato ad aiutarla.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/08/daughter-death-mental-health-act-nhs-huntercombe
di pajamakitten
7 commenti
These ward environments are not anywhere you would want to spend any extended amount of time. They’re there purely as a very last resort when the risk cannot be managed in the community. Consider them a heavy handed “last resort” – you effectively give up your liberty as part of the process of being a formal patient (or, rather, your liberty is taken away for your own safety). The article highlights the rules of these environments (visiting times, locked doors etc) which are absolutely appropriate given the suicide risk which sadly came to pass for this young girl. My heart goes out to the family, but I think they were a bit unrealistic expecting more creature comforts in an environment where the number 1 goal is to protect life.
I work in these environments. I would highly suggest people find a way to see the inside of these places (whether it’s via work or some community give-back scheme, like putting on an activity for the patients). It helps to understand. Many of my patients are begging to get into a ward of this nature, but are pretty shocked when they step foot on the ward. I personally do a little jump for joy every time I get to walk out the front door.
For what it’s worth – the true mental health recovery doesn’t happen in hospital. It happens at home, in the community. The hospital is just to course correct in a crisis – to try to protect life and bring the patient to a state where the risk and symptoms are reduced so they can safely engage with a community mental health team.
Someone I know had a stint in a ward like this, it was worse than useless.
NHS mental health services are beyond useless. In all seriousness it would be better to offer nothing that promise and then deliver like this.
I think we need to start understanding that these places are just to keep you alive whilst you are in crisis. Recovery begins at home. And mental illness is so complex, there is only so much people can do.
It ‘felt like prison’ but they still were not restrictive enough to save her from herself, because sometimes its just impossible.
My daughter has been sectioned three times in the last 20 months. These wards are terrible, the last one was shockingly bad. It had infestations of pests, staff raising chairs at kids in crisis, one member of staff bragging that he came here on a fake passport. They’re hideous, hideous places. The mental health services in this country are so pathetic, so incapable of any coherent, grown up way of organising themselves, that they’re as responsible for the mental health crisis as any other factor.
People want the security to be high enough to prevent all deliberate self harm and at the same time to be so unrestrictive and welcoming that parents can wander around the ward and it to all seem like a lovely hotel.
People get very angry when a patient absconds, or dies, or harms themself or someone else. People get very angry when a patient or their family reports locked doors or compelled medication or physical restraint. People are horrified to hear the environment is sterile and unwelcoming and lacking comforts. People are appalled if someone has access to items that they use to harm themselves or others.
There is such a lack of realism.
The frustrating thing is that things can be better even within the current NHS with the resources we have. I have worked across a variety of inpatient psychiatric wards, including eating disorders. Some of which were genuinely therapeutic environments, with a decent mix of psychiatry, nursing, OT, clinical psychology input. Others were frightening and worse than the prisons I have visited.
Leadership is the common factor that cuts across everything. If the team leads are good, then good work tends to happen. Leadership creates a culture that you want to work in. It picks good staff and keeps them. It contains the anxieties of the team and the patients. It creates an environment of consistency, trust and fairness. It doesn’t block innovation because “it’s the way it has always been done”.
Obviously you get the odd staff member who isn’t great or the kitchen breaks down. No ward is ever going to be perfect. But good leads go a long way.