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

[SerendipityJane]

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

WRT the wheelchair, it is obvious that this woman will not be as mobile as Ms. Average. She is morbidly obese.

Can you imagine how much worse this woman's condition would be if had nothing to do all day though ? Would you say the same about someone in their 80s with dementia or/and other age related difficulties who is blocking a hospital bed because they can't go home? I would hope not. I don't deny this woman isn't helping herself if she is refusing to engage with help she's been offered, and I feel for the staff having to cope with this, but let's have a little compassion.

It seems to me that there are increasing numbers of people who cannot cope with life for various reasons. Is it a new thing, if so why and if not, what happened to them previously?
It's very sad.

You involve a psychiatric team because unpicking the motives for compulsive lying is going to take a long time. Your relative is extremely vulnerable because, if she is abused for real, no one will now believe her.

That some psychiatric patients have compulsive lying in their presentation doesn't mean that we stop believing all the other patients, and it doesn't mean that we reflexively brand any patient who complains of unproven abuse a liar. Most abuse is unprovable.

True. Binge eating is a common form of self injurious behaviour which is one of the symptoms for diagnostic criteria for EUPD/BPD, obesity is also very common with other psychiatric issues too because of the side effects of the medications. I went up 6 stone when on antipsychotic and mood stabilizer combined.

People were put in insane asylums.

Some clients are just difficult to place, whether behaviourally (also see dementia sufferers) or because of profound needs. Providers are not obliged to take them at an affordable price, or at all (hence this lady sacked off by previous provider). They end up without the choice promised them by the law, hence this court decision.

Given the lack of resource, and reluctance to regulate the private sector, I don't see a solution in sight, and there could be more of these tales.

In her mother's home? It must have been an absolute nightmare for hospital cleaners.

Or imprisoned under the Vagrancy Act.

Clearly this lady has such extreme mental health issues that she can’t act in her own best interests. I genuinely believe that staying on that hospital ward was not in her best interests

But she has capacity. More than that, she more than likely thinks that staying in hospital is in her best interests. She gets attention, free food and accommodation, any caring she might require or desire, and she was probably happy as Larry there. The point is she has given zero thought to other people’s interests - the people waiting for that bed. It’s utter selfishness. Now how much of that selfishness is part of her PD and how much isn’t is impossible to know.

She should have been given two choices: go to the flat she was offered with two carers day and night, or leave and find her own place. Staying should never have been an option. TBH, I’m surprised someone didn’t pinch her bed while she was out of it toileting or washing, unless she literally never moved from it.

Some of the comments on this thread are disgusting. Only read a couple of pages and seen comments saying that helping her is ‘of no benefit to society’ and that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to help ‘someone like this’ due to cost. Imagine swapping borderline/EUPD for another illness in this sentence, EUPD is stigmatised as it is (as evidenced by this thread alone!).

People forget diagnoses like these often come from trauma. EUPD is messy. People with it act in ways that seem weird or unreasonable or unpleasant because the symptoms of it are unpleasant. They often have few friends as they can be extremely hard to put up with! Attention seeking and volatile and an enduring fear of abandonment. I know this as I am diagnosed with it as a result of sexual assault in my early teens and a truckload of other trauma slapped on top. If they wanted to house me near where I experienced the trauma in my life, I’d not want that either. Perfect recipe for more attempts and straight back into hospital. Shocking they assessed 120 places and only 1 was suitable!

Just under 10% of people with EUPD go on to take their own lives. It sounds like she’s been a nightmare to deal with as a result of her being ill. Sadly so many of the long-term mental health hospitals have been closed and everything swapped for ‘care in the community’ which doesn’t work for a lot of people. That’s why my friends who work on mental health wards see the same people attempting on their lives over and over, discharged from the relative safety of hospital to limited help outside and then they’re back in the next week. It’s really shit, but a general hospital ward isn’t the place for someone with such a complex illness.

Just because her mental illness isn’t ‘pretty’ or easy to understand, doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve help. Whole thing makes me quite sad really. Clearly a lot going on for this young lady and no where really for her to go.

@MrsSunshine2b @selffellatingouroborosofhate Thanks for this. For me compulsive lying was part of the extreme shame and abandonment fears involved in EUPD/BPD, also paranoia about people's intentions towards me meant I couldn't always be sure if I was being gaslighted (and therefore emotionally abused) by those around me. I grew up with an abusive parent who used gaslighting as a way to hurt their victims. Sometimes for me even invalidation or perceived lack of belief from others could flash me right back to my childhood and youth.

I had a HCP on my mental health team who decided to deal with the lying by refusing to believe anything I told them and then if I mentioned something I was struggling with she would deny I had ever said it. I ended up taking an overdose and going back to cutting myself after a long period without doing it, whilst I was under her care. No one likes a liar, and yes I was to blame for a lot of it but it didn't help me in any way. She would twist everything I said regarding the abuse from my family and implied she would ask them if I was telling the truth ? Of course they wouldn't have admitted it or they would have downplayed it. I felt hopeless and powerless. I would be unable to speak from sobbing on the phone and she would laugh at me saying "you're not distressed." I would slash myself to ribbons , I felt so hopeless and alone. She had a right to feel angry with me but her way of trying to punish me for lying was very harmful.

Not let them have all that 'stuff' in a hospital for starters. Only personal things that will fit in/on a bedside locker. She played the system for as long as she could, along with her mother.

We can't. She goes to a lot of different hospitals and tells different stories. She won't let them tell us anything, even when she threatened suicide and then disappeared, we were calling police services, ambulances, and finally A & E wards. She had been taken into A & E in another county but was actually fine, just high on drugs. We only know that because we heard it from the person who called the ambulance and managed to get in touch with us. She's still lying to us about the reason she was there. I'm massively overwhelmed with it and to be honest I feel a lot of resentment.

And to the people saying ‘where are all the people like this coming from’, years ago they’d just lock you away in a state asylum to be abused yourself and hidden from the world and put on whatever meds made you easiest to manage. My family who experienced long-term inpatient care in the 80s and 90s are still traumatised to this day by what they went through. Genuinely don’t know what the solution is- but it’s not keeping patients on general inpatient wards for months and it also isn’t chucking people with complex needs out to cope on their own with sparse check-in appointments under ‘care in the community’ and become a frequent flier in A&E because they haven’t got the help they need.

DH is a police officer that has had to deal with this woman. She’s a trouble maker and a freeloader. The police were always wasting time being called out to her kicking off and throwing things around the ward when staff didn’t bow down to her.

Sis in law works in the hospital and this woman flatly refused to leave and take the accommodation offered to her. It was a little ground floor flat in a nice area. Monitored 24hrs by a care / support team.

She also has family who will help her but she doesn’t want that as it means she won’t be waited on.

She treated the hospital and staff like it was her own home with servants. She was rude to staff and patients.

She clearly has mental health issues of some sort but apparently she can look after herself but refuses to. If she was a veteran with PTSD she’d be kicked out and made to live in the streets!

@LaTristesseDureraToujours You've said this better than I could and as a fellow survivor of this diagnosis, I wish you complete healing and peace yourself. Thanks for expressing so articulately and giving us a voice on here. The stigma is still appalling, it does seem as though some mental illnesses are seen as more "deserving" than others these days, it's very disappointing.

This. Quite a few years ago, I have been involved in a very similar situation as a health care professional. The person wasn't evicted from hospital and was going back to the same place but it was very difficult getting them to leave and two of the MH team who had known them for a long time had to remove them from the hospital. Very distressing for all concerned including other patients.

I don't blame the nursing home for refusing to have her back. She sounds like a nightmare. We all know someone like this, if they're in a workplace they're impossible to manage and create difficulties for everyone. It's like she doesn't want to be helped and thrives off being inconvenienced and having a difficult time.

I'm not denying that she has mental health difficulties, but for this to be used as an example of systemic failings is a massive misrepresentation of the issue. She was literally offered a placement with 24 hour support and refused it because of 'bad things' happening. Many elderly people aren't given that option let alone for free!

It is appalling that any physically and mentally disabled person should be kicked out on to the streets. Really horrifying.

There are a lack of disabled access accommodations as well for a wheelchair users or anyone mobility impaired (but especially in a wheelchair, as ramps etc may be needed).

I'm surprised she was able to turn down one more than one place because wheelchair friendly flats or bungalows are so scarce. I have significant mobility needs and had to be on a waiting list for ages and I was fleeing domestic abuse as well as mental health needs.

You would be frightened to tell the truth to people who you thought might weaponise it against you. Anyone would be.

It's terrible. She didn't want to be in the general hospital on an open ward, it's just there was nowhere else she felt safe offered.
The fact they forced her somewhere is awful. Why not give her a few options, even if they're further away?
I know the hospital bed she was occupying was needed urgently by someone with acute needs, but how can the system be so lax?

I was blocking a bed in an ortho ward for a month, the doctors would come round sighing and rolling their eyes every morning. Like 'why are you still here'. But the only other hospital I could be moved to had no beds and as I was a psych patient on section I couldn't go home.
All the while they were kicking elderly ladies out of the ward who couldn't walk, to go home alone to a flat up thirty stairs. Days after they'd had major hip surgery.

What a nightmare.

"She also has family who will help her but she doesn’t want that as it means she won’t be waited on will be abused again" is sadly also possible. If her EUPD diagnosis is accurate, the EUPD didn't come from nowhere.

Her mother should have to take it for her or arrange to put into storage - hospitals are not for people to store their personal possessions.

I'm disgusted by the talk of 'wouldn't it be nice to have the old mental institutions back'.

My great gran was a matron at an old 'asylum' in the 1950s and trust me, the inmates often wanted to get out. They were under lock and key; their only 'crime' to be mentally unwell.

My great gran was actually a decent lady - she recognised when inmates needed help and would represent them in court if they'd attempted suicide (a crime then) or represent them if they were locked away and not actually that unwell (something that sadly happened to many women!).

Personally as a woman living with Schizoaffective disorder I think going to any kind of hospital is my worst nightmare. Where you can be controlled. Sorry, but no.
And no, eugenics and assisted dying for the mentally ill like in Nazi days can fuck right off too.