The father of a man who took his own life after he absconded from a psychiatric hospital ward has claimed that a health trust failed “to provide a safe and secure place” to treat his son.
Maurice Campbell was speaking after the inquest into the death of 26-year-old Patrick, who died at the Ulster Hospital after he fell from its multi-storey car park shortly after scaling an outside fence nearly two years ago. Coroner Suzanne Anderson said in her findings that the Queen’s University student from Donaghadee, Co Down, had died on September 16, 2013 “by his own act when the balance of his mind was disturbed”.
She accepted a consultant psychiatrist’s evidence that open wards, where Mr Campbell was being assessed, had to “strike a balance to provide an environment that is safe but not necessarily restrictive”. She agreed with his view that a single-purpose psychiatric care unit should be provided by the South Eastern Health and Social Services Trust to replace the current three units, none of which were purpose-built, and will send her findings to Health Minister Simon Hamilton.
A spokeswoman for the trust said the lessons had been learnt and recommendations implemented from the serious adverse incident review conducted after Patrick’s death. “The trust concurs with the views of the coroner that a purpose-built inpatient mental health unit would benefit the treatment of our patients in an open ward environment,” she said. “The death of a patient by suicide is a tragedy, and one that our mental health professionals, doctors, nurses and social workers continually strive to prevent.”
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Vulnerable: Patrick Campbell
Filed under: Mental Health, NHS, mental health
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