Woman evicted from NHS hospital ward after being stuck for 18 months

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897ew0ekp4o

But how do you police this? These are adults, we cant conviscate a phone or device. We cant force them to wear headphones. We cant remove them from a hospital setting if they require care and have no allocated placement at a facility. Its impossible for nurses and HCAs to force a grown adult to comply if they have capacity. Once a suitable placement is found, then absolutely, as in this case, she should be removed from the hospital whether she agrees to the placement or not, as i said earlier, any disagreement over the facility should be made outside of the hospital, but if theres no safe placement, and the person has care needs, what are staff on wards to do? The justifiable reasons for removal of a patients are very very few, aggressive, causing danger to other patients and staff yes, unsociable behaviours no.

I'm sure her charger could be 'misplaced'.

So you are advocating for staff stealing from patients...?

No, putting it amongst the clutter

She is a wheelchair user so obviously is physically disabled too. I'm another person diagnosed EUPD who has been in long term DBT for it and you can go shove your ableism and take it elsewhere!

I'm not an expert so maybe you can help me work this out.

I have a relative with EUPD. Since I've known her, she's accused pretty much everyone of abusing her or someone else.

Her ex and child's father abusing her.
Her ex's parents abusing her.
Me, abusing her brother.
Me, abusing my stepdaughter.
Me, abusing her.

All of her friends abusing her, their husbands and their children. Now she has no friends.

The MHCP abusing her.
She has admitted most of this was lies but then repeats it again later.

And currently, her most recent ex. I never trusted him and we did everything we could to try to dissuade her from going back to him over and over again. But she would break up with him, tell us all the horrible things he'd done, get back together with him and tell us she'd made them all up, then break up with him and say she was lying when she said she'd made them up. Until she was lying to us that she was lying when she said she was lying about lying and we had no idea what was true.

I believe her that he was abusive, but even I have some doubts. If I was asked to swear an oath and say it was true, I'd have to say, I don't know. I'd have to say she very frequently lies that people are abusing her and does it to get sympathy. Even in the last few weeks, people she's fallen out with have fed back to me some of the horrible lies she makes up about me behind my back, whilst she is coming to me for support.

So, how do you provide support to someone like this?

it seems illogical to offer people hospital treatment then chuck them out into the streets

Damn straight. A substantial proportion of rough sleepers are mentally-ill. They have often fallen through the cracks in the social care provision. In the city I live near now, we have rough sleepers who quite clearly hear voices because you hear them shouting back at the voices. I've seen rough sleepers who are non-verbal or else very good at consistently pretending to be non-verbal. Many are alcoholics or on drugs.

Some rough sleepers are very aggressive when begging. Even if you don't care about them as fellow humans, you surely don't want to be harassed for money by someone who is mentally-ill and jonesing for their next hit?

It makes absolutely no sense to discharge hospital patients into homelesness.

When the choice is:
Temporarily going to that placement + therapy + looking for another placement while there
vs
staying in the hospital bed
Then I’d say it’s the most suitable option.

I agree though that there should be greater help in an ideal world. Or rather that she should engage in said help.

Something needs to change. Your post is insane. I don't know how you do your job and not end up on an assault charge.

This woman has treated a medical ward as a hostel and behaved with no respect at all, even bragging to other patients that she was going to be there for as long as she wanted.

There's no wonder people think Britain is a soft touch.

Yes it is astounding all the clutter that was around the bedspace. What were the staff thinking? Bag it up send it off with relatives and tell her headphones on or no music .
The needs of the other patients seem to have been totally ignored to facilitate this person's actions.

The level of victim blaming on this thread is quite a thing really.

Surely the family had a moral obligation, both to her and to society as a whole, to look after her until accommodation was found? She wasn't in need of a hospital bed.

How is it insane? We cant just throw vulnerable or unwell people out because they are difficult, if we did there would be uproar. I would safely assume this is what her care home did, probably justified. It states in the articles that this lady became aggressive with staff who provided care. these care workers are on minimum wage with a little bit of training, getting attacked, physically, by the people they are trying to help. A person, who has a capacity, understand their actions. Other articles also show photos of her, and more information. alot of her phsycial health needs are the result of self neglect, a result of her complex mental health needs. But that doesnt mean a care facility is going to accept caring for a person who becomes physically aggressive. I have worked in care homes with resisdents who require 6 care staff to preform personal care due to their aggression and size, if the facility cant accomadate this, then she has to leave. But they had to find alternative care first, such as the hospital, same as the hospital needs to find alternative care before them can evict her too.

Absolutely . I've also noticed that often HCPs will consider expressing genuine suicidal ideation and thoughts and feelings as "threatening suicide." I've had that one used against me many times when I'm the midst of a BPD/ EUPD meltdown. Suicidal threats absolutely are a thing, of course, but in my case it was distress "I feel I won't be able to cope with this; I feel powerless.". It was not a conscious choice to intimidate someone and it was triggered by fear, often linked to the complex traumas (abuse since early childhood and way beyond) I have struggled with. That's not to say those of us diagnosed with BPD/EUPD can't be arseholes at times too, like everyone else can be.

I've seen cases like this. The patient wants to stay in hospital, nothing else will do. Hospital is free, the staff are caring, she feels needed and in place and she likes the occasional drama. Care outside hospital doesn't compare, the patient would have to think about life more and people like this just don't want that. It's really frustrating.

It's v telling her care home dumped her as soon as they could and the police have been called three times already since she moved out. People are dying in ED every day because of waits. Keep your sympathy for them.

Yes, I know. I phrased it badly. I meant to shut so many of them down.

It's not at all 'obvious' that she has a disability btw. Not all wheelchair users who need 24 hr care have a recognised disability.

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12731 explains diagnostic overshadowing between autism and other conditions.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946721000118 the diagnosed autistic population of a small country had their medical history reviewed and 47% of the autistic women had a prior psychiatric condition de-diagnosed after their autism diagnosis. Most of these de-diagnoses were personality disorders.

That's what I mean by "population level data": half the autistic women in an entire country had been misdiagnosed with something else. It is an incredibly common phenomenon, which is why I suggested it.

Plenty of people who use wheelchairs can walk a little, even maybe more than a little, but pain, fatigue, stiffness, balance issues, muscle spasms etc mean they find it very difficult. If using a wheelchair, walker, crutches,walking cane, transport rather than walking helps them not have to spend hours or days in bed recovering from a trip out, then why not? Some people using wheelchairs have issues like ME/CFS or fibro. Interestingly these are illnesses often co-morbid in those women with EUPD/BPD, which let 's face it is often co morbid with a complex trauma history. If this lady is on any medication for the PD, muscle stiffness and rigidity can be side effects of psychiatric medications. Yeah, she could just be lazy. We don't know. But let's forget the flawed concept of wheelchair (or other mobility aid users) being a binary between "can't walk at all" and "perfectly fit and able" when there is a lot of grey area in between.

That's what I mean by "population level data": half the autistic women in an entire country had been misdiagnosed with something else. It is an incredibly common phenomenon, which is why I suggested it.

I know what population level data is. Even from your report it appears that half have been diagnosed correctly - so no reason to automatically assume the diagnosis is wrong, either.

Her family won't be able to cope with her needs. How do you suggest that her mother, who is likely to be in her 70s, keeps her daughter on suicide watch 24/7 by herself? How will the mother cope with violent outbursts? There's no mention of siblings or father.

I’ve seen a patient (and an old lady at that) escorted off a ward by security as she was medically fit and decided she’d rather stay.
She was known for this behaviour and it was all done legally.

They may not have a diagnosis. That doesn't mean they don't have a health condition or disability. I doubt people decide to use a wheelchair when they perfectly fine. Many conditions are diagnoses of exclusion; there aren't specific tests that show them. I don't consider someone using a mobility aid to be able bodied as such, and yes I'm also including temporary disability like recovering from an operation or illness in this.

I blame the staff to a degree. Get rid of all the stuff! It isn't her home, one spare pair of pj's and toiletries is all that is required and get security involved to remove her to a safe place to live.

No, most of the other half didn't have a personality disorder diagnosis at all.

67% of women had a prior diagnosis. 49% had their prior diagnosis de-diagnosed. A mere one-sixth of the autistic retained a prior psychiatric diagnosis.