Category Archives: schizophrenia

England’s mental health services ‘in crisis’

The mental health service in England is in crisis and unsafe, says one of the country’s leading psychiatrists.

Dr Martin Baggaley, medical director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, spoke out as an investigation by BBC News and Community Care magazine reveals more than 1,500 mental health beds have closed in recent years.Many trusts have all their beds filled.

Care Minister Norman Lamb said the current situation was “unacceptable” and provision must improve.

While there was a drive to treat more people in the community, he said beds must be available when patients needed them.

System ‘inefficient, unsafe’

500 jobs to go in mental health services – Norfolk and Suffolk – Where is the Care?

Suffolk and Norfolk mental health shake-up concerns

SMHP's chief executive Aidan Thomas Aidan Thomas, the chief executive of the trust, hopes change will improve the service

Concern has been raised over the pace of a major shake-up of mental health care in Suffolk and Norfolk.

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust is looking to cut up to 500 staff as it tries to make savings of £40m.

The Trust told the Norfolk and Suffolk scrutiny panel, meeting to oversee plans, that the concerns were being addressed.

Panel chairman Alan Murray said members broadly backed the need for a reorganisation.

The new strategy includes addressing people at an earlier stage of their illness to try and avoid the need for care beds to be used.

The mentally ill are still neglected and stigmatised

The mentally ill are still neglected and stigmatised – just as I found they were 10 years ago

The Schizophrenia Commission’s report, published today, is an indictment of the way we treat some of our most vulnerable citizens. Jeremy Laurance laments a lost decade in mental healthcare

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Ten years ago I spent six months touring the country observing the care provided to people with mental illness for a book I was writing. Pure Madness, published in 2003, described a system “driven by fear”, in which risk reduction and protection of the public was the priority, rather than the care of patients. The public and political focus on the tiny numbers who posed a risk had distracted attention from the “huge majority of frightened, disturbed people whose suffering remains largely hidden”, I wrote.