A young woman who was honoured by Princess Anne for her dedication to charity work was found hanged on a hospital ward after she complained of being intimidated by noisy neighbours.
Kimberley Lindfield, 27, a former youth volunteer for St John Ambulance, had filed a report to housing officials about loud music being played next to her rented flat.
The University of Manchester’s National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness (NCISH) has been awarded a three-year contract by the HealthCare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) to continue managing the Mental Health Clinical Outcome Review programme.
MORE than 250,000 anti-depressants have been handed out to patients in Loughborough and the surrounding villages over the last five years.
And in Loughborough, over the same period of time, 136 people have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
The figures have been supplied by West Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (WLCCG), which commissions local services on behalf on the NHS.
Over 100 people a day with mental health problems are having their benefits sanctioned, according to Freedom of Information requests by the Methodist Church in Britain.
The data, obtained from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), showed that in March 2014 alone – the last month for which data is available – around 4,500 people with mental health problems who receive the sickness and disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) because of mental health problems had their benefits sanctioned.
Authorities in England have pledged to bring an end to the practice of detaining people with mental health problems in police cells.
The NHS, councils and police are now set to come up with plans for how they will achieve this, the government said.
Care minister Norman Lamb said real progress had already been made, and added that “in many parts of the country it’s now a thing of the past”
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been criticized after it was revealed £50 million was cut from the children’s mental health budget – more than 6 percent in real terms – since 2010 when the Conservative-led coalition came to power.
According to government figures, the coalition spent £717 million on mental health from 2012 to 2013, compared to £766 million spent under the Labour government from 2009 to 2010.
Comedian Jo Brand is fighting to save a mental health centre threatened with closure.
The former psychiatric nurse has written to the Solace Centre after proposals by Ealing council to axe the out-of-hours unit as part of budget cuts.
Brand is among more than 1,600 people who have signed a petition condemning the council’s plans, warning that the threat of closure was adding to the “fears and anxiety” of those who used the centre. In her letter, posted online, she said: “As a former psychiatric nurse, I gained considerable knowledge of the discrimination experienced by people with mental health difficulties, as if the ill health wasn’t enough to cope with.
A 17-year-old girl found dead just days after being arrested by police – and held in custody for an entire weekend – had threatened to kill herself in front of officers a month earlier, her inquest has heard.
Kesia Leatherbarrow, who suffered with mental health problems and drug addiction, was found dead in a friend’s garden in Dukinfield on December 3 – a day after she appeared in court.
Less than two years ago, 50-year-old David tried to take his own life in a council house in Salford. You can still see the scars when he stretches out his arm to light a roll-up cigarette.
“Everything just builds up after a while. I was walking around thinking where I was going to get money from, what [was] I going to do about the kids, how was I going to survive?” says David, as his two daughters sit quietly next to him on the sofa. “I’ve been through the bins and all sorts, trying to make ends meet. I’m not proud of it, but needs must at times.”
A PILOT project aimed at giving emergency mental health care to people in crisis in Leeds has proved so successful that it is set to become a permanent fixture in the city.
It was launched 12 months ago as health workers teamed up with police to offer an innovative ‘street triage’ service. After the successful Department of Health funded trial – which saw the number of people being detained by police under the Mental Health Act drop by a third – the Leeds Mental Health Triage is now being offered 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week. Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and West Yorkshire Police have jointly been providing the service.
