Children 'being treated in wards full of drug addicts'
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Your support makes all the difference.Children with severe mental health problems are being treated as inpatients alongside hardened drug addicts and alcoholics in adult units. Patients of 14 are being sent to mental health wards following the closure of a pioneering psychiatric unit specialising in treating youngsters.
Woodside in Epsom, Surrey, was one of only 80 units helping young people recover from mental health problems including self-harm, depression and eating disorders.
However, Surrey Oaklands NHS trust has decided it cannot afford the 12-bed unit. Instead, it has placed at least six teenagers in adult wards, a move branded "totally unacceptable" by mental health campaigners.
Those affected include Raymond Bridges, whose 14-year-old son Stuart has spent the past three weeks in a secure room on an adult ward at Epsom hospital. Health officials have now offered Stuart a bed in Orpington hospital, Kent, which represents a 75-mile round-trip for his parents.
Officials took four days to find a bed in an adult unit for Stuart, a cannabis user, after he started suffering severe paranoia and hallucinations. He is now being treated with anti-psychotic drugs on a ward where adults are treated for drug and alcohol addiction. "It's disturbing for us to see him like this," said Mr Bridges. "He feels rejected, and at the moment he is only 30 minutes away. When he's moved we'll only be able to visit him at weekends. He's not getting the attention he needs."
In Britain, there are just 900 beds for children in mental health units, and these are in great demand. Recent research found that fewer than 40 per cent of requests for admission were accepted.
Guidelines from the Royal College of Psychiatrists say that adult units are unable to cater for the needs of children, and are unsuitable.
Surrey Oaklands NHS trust said there would always be a "small number" of patients who would have to be placed in adult beds "usually while an adolescent bed is located".
But Mind, the mental health charity, said the lack of beds for adolescents highlighted the lack of investment in mental health care. "This is unacceptable," said chief executive, Richard Brook. "It's an indication that the Government is promising to improve services, but is failing to deliver."
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