As has been well reported, the Isle of Wight’s mental health services are in crisis.
The service has been rated as Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission, the mental health day care centres have been closed down by the Isle of Wight council, local area coordinators have been scrapped and this week Aspire Ryde announcing many of their mental health services are being forced to close at the end of the month.
One patient’s story
One mental health patient known to OnTheWight recently explained that despite the fact she is known to the service as previously being suicidal, she hasn’t been seen by a consultant psychiatrist since October 2018.
Not only that, but her follow-up appointments in April and August were both cancelled by the service.
Told there were no consultants on Island
When she received the last letter cancelling her appointment, she said,
“I called Chantry House just now and was told the reason for all these cancellations is that they don’t have a consultant on the Island anymore. None.
“They are desperately trying to fill the post, but it won’t be done before September or even October.”
Questions put to IW NHS
This sounded pretty serious so OnTheWight got in touch with the Isle of Wight NHS Trust and asked:
- Are there any consultant psychiatrists working on the Island at the moment within NHS Trust mental health services?
- If yes, what are their names?
- How many patients are they responsible for?
- How many days a week are they on the Island?
- How does the NHS Trust feel about a patient known to be suicidal not having been seen since October 2018 by a psychiatrist and having two appointments cancelled?
- Other than calling the crisis line, what can patients with poor mental health do to seek help?
NHS refute ‘no consultants’ claim
It took just over two weeks, but we finally got this reply.
A spokesperson for the Isle of Wight NHS Trust said:
“There is a national shortage of consultant psychiatrists but we are taking all the necessary steps to make sure that people who need this specialist support can see a consultant.
“We know that mental health services on the Island need to improve and have joined with our partners to publish the Mental Health Blueprint, which sets out how we are going to deliver that much-needed improvement.”
They added:
- The IOW NHS Trust currently has 10 WTE (Whole Time Equivalent) Consultant Psychiatrist with 5.5 (WTE) in post and the remainder covered by Agency doctors who care for Island residents. Consultant Psychiatrists are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
- Rescheduling patient’s appointments is only done when absolutely necessary and all individual cases are risk assessed before a decision is taken to reschedule. A rapid assessment and the provision of community based home treatment or admission to hospital is not reliant on access to a consultant psychiatrist and this is in common with all other national mental health Trusts.
- The service recognises the need to significantly improve the quality of its care and has embarked on an ambitious and modern transformation programme aiming to off a wider range of support to meet the needs of residents.
- For all Isle of Wight residents currently not under the care of mental health services the way to seek help if they are in a mental health crisis or feeling at risk of suicide is to request an urgent GP appointment or contact the Single Point of Access (SPA) team directly on 01983 522214.
- The SPA team follows clinical criteria to triage referrals into crisis (same day), urgent (contact within 24hrs and assessed within 72 hours) and non-urgent (contact within 7 days and assessed within 28 days).
- For Isle of Wight residents who are currently under the care of our community mental health team (CMHT) the way to seek additional help and support if in a mental health crisis is to ring the Duty service based at Chantry house on 01983 525254.
- The CMHT is open 9-5 Monday to Friday and our Duty service can assess the nature of the crisis and if required refer to the CMHT’s in-house crisis service called FACT. The FACT team can provide daily contact and have the ability to arrange weekend cover from the home treatment team.
Image: Kat J on Unsplash under CC BY 2.0
