NHS Mental Health Patient Deaths

You may well have missed this article in yesterdays Guardian, as the details of Smeargate aired in the Sunday papers. It’s about a new statistic, four mental health patients die per day in NHS care. From 2007-2008 that is 1,282 deaths and another 913 suffered ‘severe’ harm. The government have got a rash of criticism regarding the figures. Norman Lamb the Liberal Democrat health spokesman had this to say:

“These figures are shocking. It’s a scandal that four people a day are dying while under the care of the NHS, and nearly three a day are ending up seriously harmed. It’s an appalling indictment of NHS psychiatric care,”

The government however claim that they’ve put £130million in the past 2 years, into acute psychiatric wards, in order to lower the risk of suicide. A government spokesman responded to the statistics with:

“It would be irresponsible to draw conclusions from this data without knowing the details of each case. But we do know that safety on mental health wards is improving. Suicides have been radically reduced, from 215 in 1997 to under 150 now.”

I applaud the reduction, although with such huge amounts of money being pumped into the NHS  over the last 12 years, one does wonder if all of that money has been put to good use. The most worrying part of the Guardian article must surely be this:

..guidelines intended to help another vulnerable group – mentally ill people who have recently returned home from care, among whom suicides are common – are widely ignored.

Isn’t this rife throughout the NHS? The obsession with targets, getting patients processed, in and out, rather than an obsession with care, and making people better. Following up mental health patients, or general out patients, must surely be part of the care process, not simply when you’re inside the hospital.

We may yet see worse figures than these, as the economic crisis grips, more and more people will find their homes repossessed, their jobs lost, and many will find it hard to cope. Now is the time more than ever, to ensure we’re delivering the best possible mental health service, that cares from before the patient walks through the door, right through to them leaving, and beyond.