‘And if things had been better he would still be here today.’īut none of this has come as a surprise to Melanie Leahy. ‘He was very unwell and needed treatment, and he was sent to the right place to get treatment,’ she said. Two days after she was discharged, Abbi killed herself in an Essex park.Īnother mum, Michelle Booroff, told how her son Jayden died aged 23 in October 2020 after he escaped from the Trust’s Linden Centre in Chelmsford.
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Shortly before she was discharged, Lisa wrote to Abbi’s psychiatrist asking him to seek advice from a specialist autism unit about how to reduce her risk of self-harm. I was disregarded and excluded from her life.’ Her mother, Lisa Wolff, told the documentary: ‘It felt like once that system had Abbi, she was lost to me for ever. I’m checking out, when I get out of here.
Not one member of staff came in to see if I was OK. In one final haunting video message she recorded shortly before her release, she said: ‘Last night I was crying and crying. She was autistic and had spent a decade bouncing in and out of psychiatric units in Essex. The documentary features the stories of those who have died while under the care of the Trust.Ībbi Smith was 26 in February when she took her own life, just days after being discharged.
There are no protocols that say you drag someone or manhandle someone in that process.’ĭawn also recorded staff asleep on duty while they were supposed to be monitoring vulnerable patients at risk of self-harm. Sometimes patients continued to be restrained long after they had stopped resisting.Īndrew McDonnell, a professor of clinical psychology, said of the footage: ‘I get angry when I see unnecessary use of force and restraint. But she found that the technique was used in most shifts she worked. This, however, is part of the problem – mental health units are struggling with recruitment and rely on poorly trained, poorly paid staff from agencies to fill vital healthcare assistant roles.ĭawn’s in-person training had focused on using restraints – something they were told was ‘a last resort’. To investigate further, Dawn took on the job, which began with basic online training and just one week of face-to-face guidance. The Trust was prosecuted last year by the Government’s Health and Safety Executive for the deaths – which happened on its wards – and was fined £1.5 million.īut in February, another young woman was found to have killed herself just days after being discharged from the Trust’s care. The Essex Trust that runs Rochford Hospital was chosen following concerns that lessons had not been learnt following 11 suicides that happened between 20. The Dispatches footage was filmed by former police officer Dawn Goddard, who worked 13 shifts as a healthcare assistant on two adult mental health wards at Rochford Hospital and Broomfield Hospital. One in 20 mentally ill patients discharged from hospital are readmitted within a month, according to the mental health charity Mind. And for the majority of patients, this type of treatment ‘is traumatic and not beneficial’, according to Dr Jorge Zimbron, consultant psychiatrist at Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge. When a patient is sectioned, they can be injected with medication and restrained. They also highlighted the four-fold increase in people detained under the Mental Health Act – being sectioned – over the past four decades. Staff were filmed apparently mocking, slapping and pinching vulnerable patients in footage now being investigated by the police.Īnd in August, The Mail on Sunday reported concerns of experts about spiralling numbers of patients receiving inappropriate treatment in psychiatric hospitals. The film comes a month after the BBC’s Panorama uncovered allegations of bullying and abuse at the Edenfield Centre, run by Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. Everybody has a stake in seeing this improve, because every single one of us may become overwhelmed at some point and find we hit a crisis.’ ‘These units are supposed to keep people safe, but this film shows they’re not. ‘I asked the peer support workers we train about their experiences of the system, and they described seeing repeated ligaturing, people being dragged by their feet and being restrained. While the Essex Trust is just one of 54 across England, mental health professionals and families warn that such failures are widespread.įormer mental health nurse Julie Repper, director of imROC, an organisation that helps improve patients’ experiences in mental health services, describes events in the film as ‘literally abusive’. Former mental health nurse Julie Repper, director of imROC, an organisation that helps improve patients’ experiences in mental health services, describes events in the film as ‘literally abusive’
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