A charity has called for a public inquiry into failings in mental health care.
Mental health charity Mind made the call after a BBC Panorama programme showed a culture of abuse at the NHS-run Edenfield Centre, in Manchester.
The programme showed staff at the mental health unit using restraint inappropriately. It also revealed patients enduring long seclusions in small, bare rooms, sometimes for months.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan is urging the government to conduct a rapid review into mental health services
There was footage of staff swearing at patients and slapping or pinching them.
They also mocked the patients while they undressed and joked about their self-harm.
A number of staff members have been suspended.
Call for public inquiry into systemic failings
In a statement, Mind said the programme raised “serious concerns”.
The charity says it now wants a “full statutory public inquiry into systemic failings of inpatient mental health services across England”.
The scandal is one of several to engulf the sector over the past decade or so.
MP asks for ‘rapid review’ of services
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan is Labour’s shadow minister for mental health.
The Tooting MP said she has asked the UK Government for a “rapid review” into mental health services.
She added the treatment patients experience is “horrific”. Such “dangerous practices” should be eradicated, she said.
Litany of abuse exposed
In 2011, Panorama exposed abuse taking place at the private mental health hospital Winterbourne View, near Bristol.
It showed some very vulnerable patients repeatedly pinned down, slapped, dragged into showers fully clothed, taunted and teased.
Six of 11 care workers went to jail, with five others given suspended sentences.
Then, in 2019, another Panorama investigation at Whorlton Hall, in County Durham, appeared to show support workers taunting and restraining vulnerable adults.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said its first priority was to “ensure anyone receiving treatment in a mental health facility receives safe, high-quality care, and is looked after with dignity and respect”.
Related:
- Ombudsman slams mental health care
- Four in five suffer poor mental health
- Mental health problems go undiagnosed
- Scandal of child mental health spending
- Nine hospital support workers deny abuse
- Dad demands inquiry over alleged abuse
- Care worker sentenced for abuse
- Police charge care workers with abuse
- Abuse ‘endemic across care system’
- Safeguards over care ‘falling over’
- NHS watchdog demands community care
- Parents go to court to fight for rights
- Parents want rights in over-18s welfare
Published: 15 October 2022
