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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 30 August 2007

We need to keep mental health day hospitals open

• THE NHS day hospital in West Hampstead will not be the only casualty of the proposed £7.1 million cut in mental health provision in Camden and Islington (Letters, August 23).
All four day hospitals are set to close, to be replaced by two so-called ‘recovery centres’, with a reduction in the number of places in north Camden of almost 50 per cent.
Consultant psychiatrists, in attendance at day hospitals currently, will be replaced by locum doctors, not necessarily specialists in psychiatry.
The availability of therapies, such as art therapy, is not assured.
A cut already in place from July 1 involves outpatient psychiatry.
Only one consultant psychiatrist for the whole of Camden will offer outpatient appointments.
As outpatient appointments normally form an important part of a consultant’s duties, it is not difficult to see that shortly the number of consultants will be reduced. One much-respected consultant psychiatrist has already been moved out of Camden.
Many of the most vulnerable of our society will be left without support and therapy. Desperate people commit desperate acts!
PROFESSOR GERTRUDE FALK
Hampstead Hill Gardens, NW3

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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