In years to come, this will be the biggest scandal of all
Mental Health provision in the UK is virtually non-existent...
What I was sent by the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk was about their calls for a criminal investigation into an apparent scandal that decisively surfaced over the summer, centred on the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust (or NSFT), which sees to mental health provision across those two very large English counties. It is centred on the “unexpected” deaths of 8,440 people between April 2019 and October 2022, all of whom were either under the care of the trust, or had been up to six months before they died. The story of the failures that led to that statistic date back at least a decade; the campaign says it amounts to nothing less than “the largest deaths crisis in the history of the NHS”… More here.
How many people die in the UK every single day due to mental health?
It must be in the 100’s, but we will never know because the problem is barely recognised yet alone dealt with.
I know of a few people who are struggling to get any help at all and as a family we have had to help a family member for 9 years, and to this day she cannot get any support.
We have gone the private route which has proven to be less than satisfactory as well. £150-200 per appointment, £40 per set of medication and an obvious money grab above anything else.
This is further complicated by this individual being told by the NHS during a recent emergency mental health visit that the private medication she is on is wrong. But, they have no ability to follow up with her and so they just left her feeling that her medication is pointless.
This problem for us, and especially her, will continue for some time to come and the battle to save a life will also continue, but just how many people are also having the same problems. It is a disgrace…