Mental health: Overdue funding for old NHS hospitals
Mental health hospitals will receive an extra £130m from the Government to upgrade facilities and revamp ageing wards and intensive care units. Funding will be rolled out to regional health bosses from 2006.
As part of the investment, the Department of Health (DoH) has pledged that each mental health trust will have access to safe facilities for those patients brought in under mental health legislation. Previously, inadequate facilities meant that many patients were taken to police stations for initial assessment under the requirements of section 136 of the Mental Health Act, which dictates that access to an 'appropriate place of safety' should be available.
Discussing the move, health minister Rosie Winterton said: "We have been working to improve mental health services, but know that the mental health estate needs refurbishment. Although recent investment has delivered improvements across the country; much of the estate dates from before 1948 and is older than the rest of the NHS."
The mental health estate is much older than the rest of the NHS, with 34% dating from before 1948 compared to 18% for non-mental health trusts. An audit carried out by the DoH in 2004 revealed that more than a third of psychiatric intensive care units failed on serious or critical issues, with 55% not having access to section 136 facilities.
The announcement has been welcomed by a number of mental health charities, many of which have been campaigning against the use of police stations to house mental health patients. A 2003/4 campaign by the charity Mind suggested that to detain an individual experiencing mental health distress in a police cell, rather than a hospital, may be in breach of human rights.
Sophie Corlett, director of policy at Mind, said the funding was good news for mental health sufferers, but warned that a complete overhaul of the system was still far off.
"Dedicated suites for assess-ment under section 136 should be available in all major hospitals. These specialist facilities need to be within a healthcare environment that could also respond to a need for emergency treatment in case of physical health problems. We hope the investment will reach all parts of the country, including rural areas. This is a step in the right direction but there is still a very long way to go," she said.
