Mental health failings

Tom Burridge The Politics Show BBC West

Bishop Mike Hill believes the government is failing some mentally ill people in the West and not enough help is being made available for some of the most vulnerable patients in the NHS.

Bishop Mike Hill believes that the mentally-ill are neglected

He speaks to Barbara Gale...

"I can always remember," he says, "our GP saying that they could never get her into a mental health care facility, it was always very difficult even then, to find an inpatient place."

Four years ago, Barbara's daughter, Fiona, became severely depressed. She started self-harming and was admitted to Green Lane Hospital in Devizes.

"I felt at the time," he goes on to say, "it would keep her safe that that was where she needed to be and sadly it turned out that they didn't keep her safe and they threw her out, with really nowhere to go but her own home and four hours later she threw herself under a train in the middle of the night.

"The provision just is not there for mental health patients, I feel that really the mental health service is the Cinderella service."

Barbara's message to politicians is clear: Spend more money on mental health services.

Bishop of Bristol listened to those affected

...and Denise Richards

"I was already referred by my GP to see a psychiatrist, and before I got to see the psychiatrist I actually made my first attempt to kill myself."

Denise Richards has been a patient using mental health services in Wiltshire for nearly two decades. She is bipolar.

"You keep hearing things on the TV about more money, more money, you know for mental health services - well what I see, personally, is less services, less services."

He talks to staff at a mental hospital in Bristol...

Callington Road is a new Hospital. Patients have a wide-range of illnesses.

Bishop Mike asks Nurse Brent Peplow: "Would you describe yourselves as feeling stretched in relation to available resources?"

"Absolutely yeah," she says, "we have a high care section of the ward, it's only staffed by a couple of staff, sometimes, I think because of resources services are pushed to admit people that are really, their behaviour quite disturbing and challenging - into that environment.

"I wouldn't like to see resources reduced anymore - put it that way."

...and one of the managers

The government has pumped plenty of money into the NHS. Bishop Mike wants to know if mental health is getting its fair share. Mike Relph from Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Trust gave an opinion.

"You're always looking, and being forced to look by government, quite rightly at the way you deliver services," says Mike, "and what you're always trying to do is deliver a higher quality of are in a more efficient way and that clearly leads to change - and that inevitably leads to many difficult decisions about funding."

So what does the Bishop think now?

Find out on the Politics Show this Sunday.

The Bishop will be David Garmston's special guest on the purple sofa.

Join Jon Sopel and David Garmston for the Politics Show West this Sunday - after the Great North Run - at the revised time of 1330 on BBC One. (Or watch again on the BBC iPlayer)

---