Chamber and committees

Petitioner submission of 9 December 2021

PE1871/H – Full review of mental health services

Under the freedom of information act I requested information NHS Lanarkshire. The question and response from NHS Lanarkshire are detailed below.

1. How many suicide reviews have took place within Lanarkshire from 2018 to 25/10/2021?

71 reviews have been carried out and concluded for suicide incidents within the period of 01/01/2018 to 25/10/2021

2. How many people attended A&E at all three hospitals in Lanarkshire with mental health related illness? Out of the number that attempted how many were admitted to hospital?

The number of patients attending A&E with a mental health related attendance, broken down by the number requiring admission to hospital for attempted suicide is outlined below.

• 2018 – out of 8011 patients, 1,983 were admitted and 6,026 were not
• 2019 – out of 8161 patients, 2,042 were admitted and 6,119 were not
• 2020 – out of 7,191 patients, 1,988 were admitted and 5,192 were not
• 2021 up to 25 October – out of 5,621 patients, 1,441 were admitted and 4,180 were not

Between 2018 and 2021 (up to 25 October) 7,365 patients were admitted to hospital after attending A&E at all three hospitals in Lanarkshire and 21,619 were not.

3. Out of the people admitted to hospital, how many were to medical/general bed and how many were mental health beds?

Following a mental health attendance at NHS Lanarkshire emergency departments, 6,709 patients were admitted to non-mental health beds and 626 were admitted to mental health beds.

4. How many mental health beds are available?

NHS Lanarkshire has 274 beds.

Let me put that into perspective, in the full of Lanarkshire both North and South there are only 274 beds for mental health. According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2018 North Lanarkshire had an estimated population of 340,180 and South Lanarkshire 319,020. That is 659,200 sharing 274 mental health beds. The mental health services are on its knees. They can not cope with the demands on their services.

With so little beds, I am shocked at the number of people who have been admitted to mental health beds. Only 626 people out of 28984 people went to mental health beds for 3 years. There are simply not enough beds to support demand and this is just NHS Lanarkshire.

A suicide review is carried out if a person dies by suicide and it either open to the mental health services or took their own life within a mental health service. This is to have an opportunity to review the case and learn lessons. In my experience with suicide review, they do not learn lessons from past mistakes. The review carried out with my partner found all policies and procedure were followed. If this is the case then policies and procedure need reviewed, as my partner Luke asked for help and was turned away. He completed suicide not even 24 hours after seeing a mental health professional. If lessons had been learned and people had not slipped through the cracks, then the amount of reviews being carried out would be lower than 71. To me this suggest the system is broken and needs fixed. Risk assessments are failing. Staff have high case loads and over worked. Demand for service has increased and the service can not take much more.