One in 10 calls to ambulance service are for mental health issues!

[301963Laurie]

Definitely time for MH problems to get better funding and support for all these poor people who are struggling! It’s only going to get worse 😢

Not surprising really...

I'm surprised it's that low to be honest.

The situation is far, far worse than most people realise. A friend of mine has a lifelong severe mental illness, he's heavily medicated and functions well most of the time, but when he's ill he's very ill. His last episode saw him going from house to house in his neighbourhood stark naked, banging on doors and screaming that there was an air raid on. Two separate ambulances were called, both refused to take him. We arrived a few hours later to find him contained in a neighbour's bathroom crying and shaking. We took him to A&E, who refused to take him in and told us to call his CPN; several of us had been trying to do that all day and got no answer. Eventually his CPN came out the next day and agreed he needed inpatient care. He was admitted to a unit 250 miles away because it was the only bed available. That was just before the pandemic. I shudder to think how much worse it is now.

I can’t go into detail because I come across these situations in a work capacity but I can tell you first hand that the situation is dire. There are vulnerable people being left unwell, untreated, with no money or resources, who are being declined treatment because professionals take them at face value when they say they’re not ill, regardless of the fact that a lack of insight is a key risk factor. I can only assume that they do this because the demands on the service are so high that it’s easier to walk away and hope that nothing happens than try and do a proper assessment and have to deal with the persons complex needs when they invariably come out.

In over thirty years of working in mental health I have never known it as bad as this.

There is a real crisis at the moment. I run a national helpline for people with a problem in a particular area. We've always had the occasional really distressed/suicidal caller but it has gone from a very rare occurrence to each member of staff dealing with multiple ones daily.

We've been flagging it to government for well over a year. The pandemic started it, but the cost of living crisis has been the real driver of extreme distress.

I thought it was more. I once watched an episode of '999 what's your emergency?' I think it was called. Anyway it followed call handlers, police and ambulance workers and there were loads of people ringing up 999 as they needed help for mental health issues.
We get hardly any help here in the UK for mental health issues. I've known people waiting months for an appointment. It's the same with addictions.

It really is a huge problem l The government really do need to take poor mental health very seriously!

There’s just no staff. Last March Nursing (Mental Health) branch didn’t run at my local university and they only have 4 on the course for September. My work had to put the advert out 3 times for mental health nurses before we had any applications. No one wants to do it

There's lots of people who do not really need emergency services however the services they do need are just not available due to cuts hence they repeatedly call 999 or present at A&E.
I run a helpline (NHS and council run so I can see medical notes and care plans etc) and there's a large number of people who repeatedly ring 999 unnecessarily and have plans in place to prevent this however the plans do not always function as there's just not the type of support needed available

I was on a thread all night where people considered cancer more important to mental health. I think mental health is just as important if not more. People in my eyes are getting treated for cancer in some way, even if terminal. People with mental health problems are being ignored. There are people living near me that patrol the river nightly, trying to prevent people jumping in. They are jumping in because they are not getting any help. A lot of the time it is a cry for help.

I think I watched the same episode. A really nice Police Officer said that he regularly had to attend people with mental health problems. He was frustrated as he said he didn't become a Police Officer to be doing that.