Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor: Vulnerable deserve the chance of recovery

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Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 8 November 2007

Vulnerable deserve the chance of recovery

• THE Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust is quite wrong to think that closing the Tottenham Mews walk-in centre will save money.
Quite the opposite. Closing the centre, which regularly serves around 90 of the most unwell and vulnerable in Camden, will cost the trust huge sums in the form of entirely preventable admissions to hospital on the part of the trust.
Closure would be a massive own goal.
The extended consultation on the closure ends on November 23.
To view the Tottenham Mews consultation document see: www.candi.nhs.uk and to make your submission email colin.plant @candi.nhs.uk
Thomas Kabir
NW1

• MANY have benefited from the support, containment and safety that somewhere like the Tottenham Mews walk-in provides, (Letters, November 1).
I feel strongly that vulnerable people should have the chance of recovery should they become so mentally unwell they consider suicide.
According to Camden Council, there are 6,000 residents on incapacity benefit because of mental illness.
They need to be encouraged to use mental health services and supported when ready to come out of those services.
The walk-in provides such a care pathway.
It seems ludicrous even to contemplate closing down an essential safe haven which could have catastrophic consequences. In recent years there have been numerous examples of the mentally ill suddenly going out of control.
Mentally ill people won’t go away just by closing services. I urge the mental health commissioners to reconsider and re-evaluate the serious consequences of their decision.
Jean-Luc Lucien Leiritz
Eversholt Street, NW1

Crisis care

• The NHS managers proposing to close the mental health walk-in at Tottenham Mews should themselves see a psychiatrist.
It is madness that at the same time as proposing to cut 25 in-patient beds, the Camden Mental Health Trust wants to close the walk-in which acts just like a psychiatric ward in the community.
The walk-in is remarkably cost-effective because it supports 300 outpatients (not the 35 that the trust claimed) with only four part-time staff.
People only go there when they need it, like me. Compare that to expensive in-patient admissions or years of psychotherapy.
Where else are dangerously ill people to go for instant crisis care and clinical assessment of their risk to themselves or others?
Should the walk-in close, the real alternatives are not Mind or other charities, as the trust suggests, but more suicides and homicides in Camden of which there are far too many already.
PC, WC2
Name and address supplied

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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