Hundreds of mental health beds needed to end ‘shameful’ out-of-area care – The Guardian

Cuts in mental health beds have gone too far, leading to the shameful practice of patients being sent hundreds of miles from home to be treated, according to psychiatrists.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for the NHS to urgently create hundreds of extra beds for people who are seriously mentally unwell in order to tackle a damaging shortage.

Cuts in the number of mental health beds have gone too far and patients and their families are suffering as a result, said Prof Wendy Burn, the colleges president. It is clear that some parts of England urgently need more properly funded and staffed beds. Hundreds more are needed.

Trusts struggling with dangerously high levels of bed occupancy are being forced to send seriously ill people hundreds of miles away from their homes for care. That must stop.

NHS data shows some mental health trusts are operating with all or almost all their beds full, despite the colleges belief that they should never exceed 85% capacity. For example, between April and June, bed occupancy at the Sussex Partnership trust was 100% while it was 98.9% at the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey trust in London and 97.2% at the Birmingham and Solihull trust.

Widespread and persistent shortages of mental health beds have led to trusts sending patients out of their home area in order to get a bed elsewhere in England. That happens regularly even though mental health experts agree it can harm patients by increasing their distress, separating them from their family and setting back their recovery. Such placements could have a devastating impact on patients and their loved ones, Burn said.

The government has pledged to end the use of clinically inappropriate out-of-area placements for adults by 2021. However, the most recent figures show that, on 31 July, a total of 745 people in England were being treated outside of their home area.

Steps taken so far to tackle this shameful practice have not worked and that is why were calling for more beds, although of course we recognise this is only part of the solution, said Burn.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists wants those parts of England which regularly send patients out of area to be made the priority if hundreds of extra places are approved. These areas are Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire; Devon; Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; Lincolnshire; Norfolk and Waveney; and Nottinghamshire.

The 8,640 people who had an inappropriate out-of-area placement between August 2018 and July this year travelled a total of 555,000 miles to get a bed, according to an estimate by the college.

The number of NHS mental health beds in England has fallen by 73% from 67,100 in 1987-88 to just 18,400. That was part of a drive to provide more care in the community and treat more mentally ill people in or close to their homes. However, the promised expansion of out-of-hospital mental health care has not occurred on anywhere near the scale originally envisaged.

A new report commissioned by the college into the availability of mental health beds found that a much larger number of beds 1,060 need to be created in order to reduce bed occupancy from 90% to the 85% level psychiatrists think is good for care.

Vicki Nash, the head of policy and campaigns at the mental health charity Mind, said: These figures are a stark reminder of the growing crisis in mental health. As demand increases its tantamount to negligence that beds are being cut in some areas without a viable alternative.

NHS England declined to comment.

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Hundreds of mental health beds needed to end 'shameful' out-of-area care - The Guardian