They hacked off my hair, pushed me into a seclusion room and for a day & night I sat screaming for my mum

Youngster ‘still traumatised’ by the way she was treated aged 15

- BY MARK McGIVERN

A TEENAGE girl's hair was forcibly cut and she was forced to wear a “suicide smock” in a controversial mental health unit.

Sadie McKenzie, now 20, claims she remains traumatised five years on from her experience at the Young Persons Unit of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Speaking out after a report revealed concerns about physical restraint and forced tube feeding at NHS Lothian, Sadie said she believes many young people may have been let down at the unit.

Sadie, whose mental health issues led to suicidal thoughts and self-harm in her teens, accepts that she was in need of specialist help while detained at the facility, now known as the Melville Unit and housed at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People (RHCYP).

But she believes her own “dehumanising” experiences in the unit — run by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) - went well beyond care and entered the realms of abuse and neglect.

An investigation into her care found there was no protocol that would have justified anti-rip clothing - known as “suicide smocks’ ~ to have been used on a teen girl in her circumstances.

Sadie, from West Lothian, gave a harrowing account of the “horror” she experienced in the unit.

She said: “While in the YPU the nurses were instructed to cut my hair off, which was completely out of order and unheard of.

“They roughly hacked off my long blonde hair, leaving me with a short, uneven, messed-up bob.

“I was then pushed into the empty seclusion room with nothing but a mattress on the floor and the staff ran out and locked the door.

“The full day and night I sat, screaming for my mum.

“The next time my mum visited she saw her daughter sitting there, frightened - her long beautiful hair gone and sitting in an ugly anti-ligature dress, with my face red from crying screaming and begging for someone to help me”