"Lack of mental health awareness"

My wife recently had a short stay in hospital (three days/2 nights).

Because of her mental health conditions and OCD she has a strong phobia of hospitals, and being in one is a living nightmare. I'll use the word torture, and it's not an exaggeration. Due to her phobias she is unable to use a hospital bed, and slept 2 nights on a chair. She is also unable to get undressed in a hospital so had to stay in the same clothes throughout.

We told staff at every juncture about her mental health conditions and how it feels to be in hospital. Out of all the staff we dealt with only one seemed to have any idea of what she was going through. Some staff even seemed to visibly switch off and stare at the wall if we mentioned mental health, and waited for us to stop talking then continued on with complete disregard to what we'd just said.

After being seen by a doctor in AAU (Acute assessment unit) a treatment plan was agreed and started.  At frequent times during the stay staff would apparently forget was to happen next. For example, saying someone would take a blood sample...significant time passes...nurse comes in to take BP...we would mention someone was going to take bloods...they would say, oh, yeah, has that not happened yet, I'll remind them... 

Have they any idea what kind of impact this has on patients? Especially those with a hospital phobia.

Mid way thought the treatment plan we were told we'd be moved to a ward in order to free up the cubicle in AAU. We were clearly told that the treatment plan would continue and be carried out there. On arriving at the ward we were told there were no beds, and put in a corner to wait. We asked if the treatment could continue while we wait (iron infusion) but were told no, it had to be done in a bed. After several hours a bed became available, but it seemed that a room which had been used for storage was quickly cleaned out (partially) and a bed put it.

When staff read the notes passed up from AAU they read out aloud all the clinical details and then appeared to obviously baulk at the mention of mental health conditions.

They asked my wife to get into the bed, but she asked to be allowed to stay in the chair. We were aware of no clinical reason why she would have to be in a bed. Staff continuously ignored her mental health condition. 

After many hours the treatment (which was a simple iron infusion) was still not started and staff said we had to wait for a doctor. When asked why they can't used the notes from AAU to continue the treatment plan we were told in no uncertain terms that this was a different doctor now, and they would start from scratch with their own ideas. This added hours and hours of torture to my wife. 

Eventually the doctor agreed with the same plan that had been agreed 8 hours earlier and started the infusion.  By this time it was far too late to expect to be discharged that evening, so another overnight stay was needed.

The next day bloods were taken and sent for analysis, the results were as expected and my wife was told she could go home. Except that we now had to wait for a discharge letter. We were told the doctor could not take my wife's mental health conditions into account as they had clinical health conditions to deal with. Basically we understood that they would not write the discharge letter until they'd dealt with the 'real' health issues, not my wife's 'imaginary' ones. This is utterly unacceptable.

When I tried to explain to the doctor, they told me they will write her letter, but first they have to deal with others' medical issues - it's hard to put across here, but what I understood from this statement was that they clearly didn't think mental health was as real as physical health. I politely asked if we could just go and let them post out the letter but we were refused.

In future we will not attend hospital as it is a mental torture ground. My wife says she would rather die at home then be put through such things again. I am not eloquent enough to be able to put in words exactly how clear it was that the staff, especially senior staff, only seemed to have time for surgical and medical conditions. Mental health issues got ignored, or misunderstood at every turn. I also felt that egotism added many hours of unnecessary delays. I myself do not suffer mental health problems, but I do fully understand what my wife went through. I could also positively identify many areas of inefficiencies that could drastically improve turn-around and reduce stress.  Some years ago I was also in the same hospital and nearly died because the doctor on the ward refused to accept the word of a doctor in A&E. I'm so angry and sad to see this is still the case today.