Diary of a desperate parent: Highlighting the collapse of the NHS mental health services
Brighton, UK. May 2023
-Thursday: 18/5/23 Emergency GP report: Trauma, death, murder and anorexia for years. Suicidal intent. Eating disorder. Crohn’s.
I quote GP: “I am worried about this girl as she is high risk.
Told to go directly to A&E. 12 hours later discharged (A tad better than February Shropshire: 8 hours for an ambulance. 19 hours in A&E)
-48 hrs previously I spent days phoning all mental health services, social services, eating disorder clinic. GP etc
- Forced my daughter back to the country for help after she fled against all advice, but she felt it was make or break as had given up all hope and wasn’t receiving the help she truly needed. Returned to UK after I pleaded and promised she would receive help.
-Friday: No word, despite being deemed ‘high risk’ and them knowing our current critical situation.
-Saturday: Another ‘incident’ with her.
-Sunday: I call yet another helpline, explaining the incident. I don’t even know who I’m calling anymore.
We are assured Monday we will hear back.
-Monday: Nothing, Despite, me calling various departments and leaving messages.
-Tuesday: I go in person to GP surgery after being constantly put on hold for over 40 minutes the previous day and line goes dead. I urge the seriousness and desperation of situation. We are seen within 30 minutes. GP is concerned and apologizes and says we will hear back same day.
-Nothing.
-I receive one call but because I had left message NOT because anything had appeared in system.
-Tuesday night she disappears.
- After desperately searching we locate her at 10. 30 pm on lonely stretch of beach in the cold. (I've just been informed there was an attack on a woman there in same spot)
I am writing this because we are amongst potentially millions of desperate people ‘lost’ in a broken system. NHS =NO HOPE SYSTEM.
The horrific mismanagement of funding during the pandemic, money that should have been poured into mental health knowing the collective psychosis that would afflict an already sick population.
Are you telling me that neither politicians nor those ' high up' within the NHS couldn't foresee the tragedies of the future?
The explosive MENTAL HEALTH FALLOUT following lockdown, isolation, fear and no hope, and now war? Those already fragile would crack and the millions of others that would follow?
How many more suicides? How many more needless deaths?
I am a desperate mother who herself is on medication for major depressive disorder and fighting to keep what’s left of my own mental health so I can save my daughter.
A sick and broken system run by politicians so far from removed from this dystopian reality that I can only wonder where this will all end?
But not with the loss of my daughter’s life.
PD: This has been sent on to various local politicians including Caroline Lucas, Charlotte Nichols, LLoyd Russell-Moyle and local newspapers and TV.
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