Mental health crisis: patients left for days in A&E as hospitals struggle to cope

Mental health patients in crisis are spending days and days in England's emergency departments before getting appropriate care.

The data obtained by Channel 4 News is backed up by figures shared exclusively with this programme by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, showing these patients are twice as likely to wait more than 12 hours to be discharged or transferred than all other patients.

And the number of mental health beds has more than halved over the last two decades.
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[rsalt]

I have spent the last 5 weeks in an NHS hospital in the S. West. I was flabbergasted that my room was being used by nursing staff to just have a break, a moment, from the relentless pressure. I didn't mind, gosh they'd just saved my life.

[rustynail]

We've never treated mental health issues in this country properly. I see it every day in my job in the NHS. I've suffered with it too. It's too late for some people, let's not make it too later for others.

[tori]

Thanks for covering, my friend took his life after experiencing terrible mental health issues. He took his life as a result of no one offering him help due to this NHS crisis

[jstone]

This is unconscionable.
Why are mental health admissions regarded as less than worthy of attention and treatment.
This situation is not confined to U.K. alone.
Similar occurrences in Australia too.
God help us all.

[slipperydouglas]

As bad as this is for the patients it’s also absolutely brutal for the staff who feel powerless to help and is one of the reasons I no longer work as a nurse. Furthermore, this mass exodus of staff compounds the problem.
The tories have destroyed the nhs so they can cash in on for profit healthcare.

[LupaDomina]

I have severe mental health issues and I agree. A&E is not an appropriate place for me to be when I have attempted/on the verge of self harming/having an episode. Staff are truly amazing but they are there to patch up/prep for surgery/assess for referral to other depts. They aren't there to keep watch on someone who is likely to try again. They don't have appropriate training to deal with someone who might be having a psychotic episode. It's absolutely wrong to expect them to monitor me, when a RTA/stroke/heart attack case arrives.
A&E is a stressful environment. Noisy, overwhelming and no privacy. It's not the correct place for someone experiencing a mental health crisis to be assessed.
Without adequate funding and resources it will always be this way. You aren't going to attract well trained, specialist staff into a high stress environment without giving them a competitive wage. (That's true for ALL NHS staff imho).

[leigh]

My local GP was amazing and he talked to me for 20 minutes, really listening, referred me to a CBT specialist (6 week waiting list), prescribed me a mood stabaliser, and passed my number to a crisis team who called me the next day.
I think I might have killed myself if he didnt really listen. I actually think just having someone care took away half my pain right away.

[CosmicRhythms]

I waited 9 hours for an ambulance with fractured vertebra completely unable to get up laying on the hard floor all that time. Excellent care once in hospital though, was there a week.

[lkhvw]

This has been occurring since around 2010. Tory austerity has crippled services. You're either too sick to access community services or not sick enough to access nhs services. Its awful. We need community services and support. We need better pay for our NHS workers. We need better pay and support for our most vulnerable in society. I've worked in it, I've accessed it, I've witnessed the failings and it's effects on my patients, family and friends. I've worked with colleagues working themselves to burnout trying to organise help for struggling patients. It's awful.

[katfoster]

I attempted suicide twice within a week and was stopped from attempting a third time by the intervention of the police.

I was told I didn't have any acute mental health needs, that I just had "social issues", that I was just doing it for attention and that I should go back to my parents when I choose not to have contact with my father due to abuse.

Following the intervention of the police, I was mis diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and given a number for a crisis line. I'm deaf and do not use phone calls. I was given a generic safety plan that wasn't applicable to me and told I was on a three year waiting list for a therapy that wouldn't have helped because I don't actually have the illness I was diagnosed with.

At no point was I treated with dignity and respect. I wasn't given help. I was just fobbed off. Once I had the label of BPD, my mental health needs were dismissed as manipulation and attention seeking. I'm still fighting to get BPD removed from my records. I only received help because my family paid privately. Without paying privately, I'd have been left with no access to care and support for months or years, with an inaccurate diagnosis. It's quite probable that I wouldn't have survived.

[MiscellaneousMeMe]

As a RMN (Registered mental health nurse) I find the NHS completely unable to provide adequate care to patients requiring mental health care. I have not worked for the NHS since 2020 due to burn out, which I think all NHS staff will inevitably get because the NHS just does not have the infrastructure to support staff or patient alike.

[joshuastebbing]

When are we collectively going to realise that humans just weren’t meant to live like this?

[Abraham_Tsfaye]

When I was in UK. I saw empty boarded up streets under a constant grey sky, litter everywhere.
Homeless people sleeping in doorways. A women with cat whiskers makeup casually walking into Tesco with her pajamas, without a care in the world. Opioid addicts out of their mind and women so drunk they urinated on the streets. It's a sad declined country.

[SnowofLight]

Damm, not a single window in that building. That harsh artificial light would drive me insane too.

[drimbesatsyed]

Can we take a moment to think that hospitals have unnecessarily bright lights, noisy environment and overstimulated environment...may be that triggers a lot of sensory overload

[dc]

I have borderline personality disorder, PTSD and have had a psychiatrist refer me as "urgent" to the mental health team because I possibly have bipolar disorder too. I self harm regularly enough too. I phoned the mental health team about two weeks ago and told them I was having thoughts or murdering a past abuser and that I know where they work. The mental health team told me to ring Lifeline.
Iv worked my entire life despite all this and paid into the system, I can't even get a council flat and my appointments regarding bipolar disorder have been cancelled 3 times now. If I go off the rails they can't say I didn't warn them. This is also how people with mental health issues end up in prison. Nobody listens.

[psycrow]

Yup, my brother was turfed out of A&E at 1am after taking an overdose of pills in January. He successfully took his own life days later.

[mashmash]

I for one have worked in Mental health services and general hospital. The difference is staggering to say the least. General hospital staff are not trained to deal with Mental health crisis patients, which then puts extra pressure on staff and safety of the person in crisis.

[davidgalea]

The population has inceased by 8million over a few decades..let that sink in.

[laurab]

My mom attempted suicide in 2020, there was no adequate care for her then. She attempted suicide again March of this year and succeeded. She was well known to have suffered mental health issues for decades and still nothing was done. There just isn’t the facilities in this country.