The NHS has been repeatedly exposed as covering up endemic negligence and abuse in mental healthcare. Where is the outrage?

  In the same week that debate over the Home Secretary’s remarks on the ‘grooming gangs scandal’ filled social media and the news, another abuse scandal of equal depravity was only mentioned in a couple of mainstream papers. Just like the systematic abuse of vulnerable girls by gangs of men across England, this other scandal involves ‘the wrong type of victim’ and a coverup over decades. Most people would not even be aware that there is an ongoing public inquiry into approximately 2000 deaths over 20 years in Essex NHS mental health units. That’s approximately 2 deaths a week of vulnerable patients in one single NHS trust partnership for 20 years. https://inews.co.uk/news/health/nhs-mental-health-services-full-public-inquiry-staff-evidence-2249727 It’s likely that this scandal would have remained firmly covered up without one incredibly tenacious mother not accepting what she was told about the tragic death of her son. 20 year old Matthew Leahy was found hanging in his room in Chelmsford’s Linden Centre in November 2012. His mother Melanie quickly saw through the lies being told about her son’s death and refused to give up on getting justice for him. Right from Matthew’s last moments those who were responsible for his care tried to cover up what had happened. The doctor who called Melanie to tell her that Matthew had been discovered hanging informed her it ‘didn’t look good.’ However it later transpired that he had been dead for an hour when that call was made. It was also revealed that he had bruising above both ankles and needle marks in his groin that were all unexplained. The police destroyed the ligature and no photos were taken. The inquest in 2015 was left as an ‘open narrative’ with not enough evidence of suicide and yet none of the main staff involved were called. The Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman found 19 incidents of failings in Matthew’s care but wouldn’t investigate anything of a criminal nature and refused to publish their findings. When Melanie managed to get Essex police to reopen some parts of the case a second pathologist maintained that the wounds didn’t look as he would expect from such a hanging. However without the ligature no decisive conclusions could be drawn. In November 2020 Essex Partnership University NHS Trust did plead guilty to being responsible for 11 deaths, including Matthew’s, and paid a fine of £1.5 million. Yet not one single member of staff was held to account and indeed the person in charge was awarded an MBE the year after.

   Melanie’s campaign for justice for her son has now grown into 92 families fighting for a statutory inquiry into Essex Partnership University NHS Trust involving roughly 2000 deaths. The current public inquiry is unable to compel witnesses to come forward and give evidence. Only 11 out of 14,000 NHS staff have been prepared to give evidence in person so far, which is surely in itself an illustration of the rot within NHS mental healthcare. Indeed unacceptable and worrying ‘staff attitudes’ have already been flagged up by the inquiry, along with major concerns around patients mental, physical and sexual safety. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/07/what-is-essex-mental-health-inquiry-why-being-criticised The many dead are not the only tragic victims here. We already have the clearest evidence of an NHS culture of ingrained, widespread, systematic mistreatment, neglect and abuse of mentally ill patients. Of course underfunding and understaffing have played a significant role in the degradation of NHS mental healthcare. These and mismanagement has also undoubtedly lead to deaths. However we can not blame financial constraints and  ‘the system’ for widespread cruelty from staff and the coverup thereof.

   I recently came upon an article from 2017 I had saved from The Times on the ‘record levels’ and ‘endemic abuse’ of patients in mental healthcare settings. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nhs-abuse-of-mental-patients-endemic-wml058tcl A few MPs expressed outrage and I’m sure the usual pledges for ‘lessons to be learned’ and ‘more staff training’ were dutifully made. But the motivation to enact real change and genuine accountability has always been as shallow and long lasting as a puddle. High profile undercover programmes last year, (Channel 4 Dispatches in October and BBC Panorama in September), graphically exposed the horrific abuse of patients in mental health units. A few staff members were suspended or sacked and in February NHS England launched an independent inquiry into the Edenfield centre investigated by BBC Panorama. But all this is a sticking plaster over a lethal wound. Where are the Government ministers demanding answers and justice? Where is the national popular outcry? The media must definitely bear some responsibility. What is the point of a few of brave undercover exposés when the rest of the media, even those in the same company, subsequently more or less ignore the horror that has been exposed? I find it hard to believe that such mental and physical torture of ‘normal’ people in any setting would not grab all headlines and preoccupy talk news channel debates. As I have argued in a previous substack, society is very selective about which victims garner widespread public sympathy. Pretty mothers such as Nicola Bulley are deemed ‘worthy’ of our outrage and tears whereas troubled people in psychiatric units are not. We haven’t fundamentally moved on from the days of asylums such as Bedlam. Hide the ‘disturbing’ folk away so that we don’t have to be disturbed by them.

This abuse scandal also extends to those with autism and learning disabilities ‘cared for’ within institutions. In 2019 BBC Panorama uncovered such vulnerable people were being shockingly mistreated within Whorlton Hall in County Durham. This included mental torture, mocking and treating with contempt. Just one example was a severely autistic young woman who was scared of men and yet was subjected to observation by a male senior care worker outside her room who constantly threatened to call even more men. The staff also snapped balloons in front of her to deliberately increase her distress. They found such cruelty ‘funny’.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65388035 The BBC quite rightly compares this to their 2011 investigation into Winterbourne View, another specialist unit near Bristol. However I can not agree with the BBC’s claim that it caused a ‘national outcry’, unless you mean a whimper lost in the winds of passing time. As they themselves admit, nothing has really changed for these people with special needs just as nothing has changed for the mentally ill forced to be inpatients. There may be tears shed for them by some journalists at the time a particular example of abuse is exposed, but they seem to dry up pretty quickly. Neither the media or Government have any appetite to press for more than a few token sackings and those ever empty promises for ‘lessons to be learnt’. Perhaps even the general public can’t bring themselves to get that outraged about what is done to the ‘crazy’, ‘pointless’ people who they would rather just forget about.

   However this could not be more important to me and my outrage will never stop burning. That is because I am one of those ‘mad’, ‘useless’ people and I could have been Matthew Leahy. Indeed my Mum promised me that if anything happened to me in a mental health unit the rest of her life would be dedicated to seeking justice. It’s hard to find the words that adequately convey the profound vulnerability you experience when you’re an inpatient in a mental health facility. Literally locked away, with even the most basic and intimate parts of daily life controlled by others, your life truly isn’t your own. Most people mistakenly think that as long as you aren’t ‘sectioned’, i.e. forcibly detained under the Mental Health Act, you retain fundamental freedoms and rights. The truth is that for most of us who managed to avoid sectioning our daily inpatient experiences are practically identical to those who are legally detained. In fact the majority of seriously unwell mental health patients are forced into complying with every aspect of the unit’s regime because the threat of being sectioned is permanently hanging over them. It was made crystal clear to me that if I didn’t ‘voluntarily’ sign a self admission consent form for a certain clinic I would be sectioned and forced into it anyway. Likewise on a near daily basis the threat of sectioning loomed large, sometimes overtly and always implied. Every pill had to be swallowed, every cruel rule obeyed, every aspect of my life submitted, no matter how damaging or even abusive. This is apparently a legal grey area as threatening to section someone in outright blatant terms is illegal. Nevertheless this is the hellish land in which probably the majority of mental health clinic inpatients languish. Once sectioned it becomes far harder to ever get out of your healthcare prison. Therefore the threat of using the Mental Health Act is a metaphorical gun to the head as they march you to the medicine dispensary hatch. In the clinic I was in for 6 months there were two locked doors you had to get through to get in or out of the building. These could only be unlocked via the controls in the nurses office. Ironically on the inner door there was a sign that explained the legal right of those who were not sectioned to leave at any time. When I got brave enough to mention this to a nurse who had decided the rain should prevent me going for one of my two permitted 10 minute daily walks, she said she’d tell the doctor I had been ‘causing problems’ and ‘not complying.’ It’s worth mentioning that after I was finally able to self discharge, (having sought legal advice on how to escape), the psychiatric nurse assigned to my care in the outside world admitted I should never have been in that place. Thanks to NHS inpatient mental health ‘care’ I was far more unwell than before admission.

  I saw unbelievable cruelty and inhumane treatment during my six months in that mental health unit. I had seen similar when I was in various different clinics as a teen. Force feeding used as punishment, being watched naked in the shower and on the toilet, being denied water, mocking and frightening aggression from staff, constant lies. . . When a lovely woman who used to give me hugs was randomly denied a visit from her sons she tried to kill herself that night. It’s too much for me to detail here and, even 6 years on, too much for me cope with writing about in depth. I hope to write a book encompassing all that awful darkness one day, not as an autobiography but as a tribute to all those wonderful humans who lived and still live in that same hell. Whilst the medics and staff showed little but disdain and cruelty, (often veiled in faux cheeriness), I have never encountered more kindness, intelligence, strength and love than from my fellow psychiatric patients. It is they who should be our national heroes although they don’t seek adoration, fame and applause but simply the care they need to live as comfortable a life as is possible.

   It could well be the case that some of the thousands of NHS workers involved in covering up the abuse within our mental health units will be attending King Charles’s coronation as guests of honour. Perhaps someone who perpetrated that vile abuse or even caused a death will be sitting in those special seats with a prime view. These people were literally applauded on a weekly basis throughout much of the pandemic. They achieved an even greater heroic status than before and became more untouchable. Who is going to believe or care about the complaints of people seen as damaged and unreliable against our modern day saints? However it’s those who neglect, mistreat and abuse the most vulnerable people who are hollow humans and who society should condemn. We must get justice not just for Matthew Leahy but for the many thousands like him who are victims of an NHS system and NHS workers who need to be held to account and dethroned from their current regal national status.

https://curementalhealth.co.uk/