Suicidal students lose support care (From Daily Echo)
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New Forest MP attacks break-up of support group for scholars
9:00am Saturday 19th December 2009 in Time to Change
Julian Lewis MP
STUDENTS in Southampton with serious mental health problems have lost a “lifeline” following the dismantling of a specialist service, a Hampshire MP has told Parliament.
Julian Lewis, Tory MP for New Forest East, accused local health bosses of wreaking “covert destruction” of a mental health team of five therapists dedicated to treating suicidal students, mainly from Southampton and Solent universities.
He told the House of Commons that the team, having been run by Southampton City primary care trust (PCT) for about a decade, was recently transferred to the Hampshire Partnership Foundation Trust, after which most of its staff were made redundant and its student services merged with those for less seriously ill adults.
Following a tender process, milder cases of anxiety and depression in Hampshire are now handled by Dorset Healthcare Foundation Trust, under a programme known as “improving access to psychological therapies”, while NHS Hampshire tackles more serious and complex mental health problems. In both cases, students are treated alongside the general population.
Dr Lewis said: “We find that the [student mental health] team has been dismantled and its personnel have been, for the most part, made redundant. The students have lost an important service and a lifeline.
“In effect, what has happened is the destruction of a specialised service for seriously ill young people in the Southampton area. The effect of that is disastrous.”
Dr Lewis has also called on the Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to reopen the Ellingham Ward, a six-bed psychiatric intensive care unit in Woodhaven Hospital in Calmore, near Totton, and for an end to the “continuing threat” to the future of Crowlin House residential rehabilitation unit in the New Forest.
Comments(5)
Donald2000
says...
9:43am Sat 19 Dec 09
What people are failing to see is that the way society is going, a lot of us are becoming half insane - what could be more psychotic than giving all our money to the banks, or MPs helping themselves to millions of pounds worth of expenses while poor people with all kinds of problems go to the wall.
Its little wonder that youngsters are becoming so seriously depressed; that just mirrors the general state of society. To take away any support from students who may have nervous breakdowns is quite typical of what is becoming an extremely nasty little society, devoid of any sympathy or compassion for those who are most deserving of it.
The money clawed back from greedy MPs could have funded this service for at least a couple more years. Shame on this greedy grasping nasty little society and those who run it.
Condor Man
says...
1:52pm Sat 19 Dec 09
Donald2000
says...
4:21pm Sat 19 Dec 09
Condor Man wrote:Thats a very simplistic theory you have there, Mr Condor Man. There are many and various reasons why depression is caused, including people inheriting the condition from their parents, or suffering from post-natal depression, so those factors are something to do with society because if we knew which genes caused depression we could eradicate them. I am sure there will be other people with greater knowledge than myself along on this thread who will also explain to you the connections of depression with society and how it can be better dealt with.
Depression is an illness, it has nothing to do with society. The sooner people recognise depression as a chronic condition, like diabetes, the sooner people will get proper treatment. People with depression would feel no happier if they won the lottery.
sooey
says...
3:13am Sun 20 Dec 09
Donald is also correct because the things that happen in society have an effect on everyone, but those with depressive illness are vulnerable because of their condition & consequently are more succeptable to suffering from the effects of negativity.
Condor Man says...
9:23am Sat 19 Dec 09