Disbanding mental health team will cost lives, bosses warned

BUT SCANDALHIT TRUST INSISTS MOVE IS A POSITIVE CHANGE

- By JOSHUA HARTLEY

THE end of a team that was tasked with helping some of Nottingham-shire’s most complicated mental health patients will cost lives, bosses have been warned.

The specialist unit within Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) had dealt with complex treatments for diagnoses like borderline personality, histrionic personality, and antisocial personality disorders - the latter of which can make people very aggressive.

The scandal-hit trust has argued that moving personality disorder specialists out into general local mental health teams would improve its service, but an employee has anonymously told the Post that they believe this could create a fatal lack of support for patients.

“I think there will be deaths, because [these] patients have a lot of attachment issues and a lot of the work done was to rebuild relationships that have been damaged by local mental health teams.”

They added the “key team” within the trust had been disbanded with little notice provided to workers or users.