Suicide prevention plan spurs councillors to raise concerns

Councillors shared their concerns about people in mental health crisis having nowhere to turn as health bosses discussed suicide prevention.

Brighton and Hove has a higher than national average suicide rate and members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board were receiving an update on a Suicide Prevention Action Plan 2024-27.

At a meeting on Tuesday (8 April), a leading Brighton GP, Adam Fazakerley, said that the challenge was to reduce suicides in the community by 20 per cent – or about eight or nine a year.

Dr Fazakerley said that 15 more community mental health beds were to be available locally to help people in crisis to receive support nearer their homes.

NHS Sussex chair Stephen Lightfoot said that integrated community teams were the way forward but added that there was no public money available.

Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw said that there was a mental health crisis in Brighton and Hove, having supported two people to receive emergency mental health.

What concerned her was an “apathy” when trying to support people because they did not know who to call.

Councillor Grimshaw told the board that she had spent up to four hours trying to get through to Sussex Partnership NHS Trust’s Mental Health Rapid Response (MHRRS) after the person she was trying to help was turned away from a hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department.

She said: “I just think until we tackle the fact that people will present and get turned away and they won’t know what to do, until we’re presenting a service where we don’t have a huge massive waiting list, we know you get admitted if you’re lucky to get enough, you end up in that ward which is airless.”

At a meeting of the full council in January, Councillor Grimshaw spoke about the lack of mental health beds resulting in people being moved into a temporary ward in A&E called 2C which is windowless, leaving unwell people without access to fresh air or daylight.

Impact Initiatives chief executive Caroline Ridley spoke about a recent situation in the organisation’s Stopover supported housing for young women.

Staff who have had suicide prevention training did all they could to help one of the residents in a mental health crisis.

She said: “It was incredibly difficult to get external support for this young woman. CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) had one clinician on that day who was in training.

“We did hear back from her after several phone calls. We did get to a senior level where something was put in place.

“There is this gap where we’re left. We know what’s going to happen. This young woman had no desire to be in this world and on Friday afternoon we were stuck trying to manage that situation.”

She went on to praise early intervention and preventative measures in schools – run by Impact Initiatives although the charity is still waiting for this year’s contract to be confirmed.

Labour councillor Faiza Baghoth, who chairs the Health and Wellbeing Board, shared her own experience of knowing a person who went to hospital and was sent home and overdosed because they were alone.

She said that people in mental health crisis should be admitted and not left alone as a point of principle.