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Crisis Line

Posted By ithacaman

"Crisis Line"

About: Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust

(as a service user),

I needed help. I have a community team in Islington. I have depot injection antipsychotics. I get very bad voices I hear things and get very scared and when I ring the duty worker in the day team where my psychiatrist is they say at night ring crisis team. There is a crisis line number. I have a plan where it says what to do or I get very very ill, I said I am not safe and such a rude man says we cant help you and you must wait to see your psychiatrist or care coordinator ( who had left the team and I was waiting for another ).

But I was having bad visions and suicide thoughts or death thoughts or others and I saw threatening people following me. It was very frightening. And then because I got ill and then there was no support at night or on the bank holidays like always never any staff to talk from crisis team and I missed my injection and no care coordinator as waiting list in the team even when you have a psychiatrist. So no one noticed I wasn't haven't meds and I would ring the crisis team many times and they would say we cant help you or talk to you.

And then I said I wanted to go to a crisis house and they said that is only for after admission to hospital with people with schizophrenia like I have and that crisis houses not for 'people like you'. This went on what feels like very long time. In the end police sectioned me and took to whittington which I found a horrible place to be,  no nurses at all just security men and then I was sectioned. My team psychiatrist said the crisis team did not contact the day team when I rang them so they didn't know. This happens lots people on wards always say the same and in my experience people always say crisis team so rude and really bad. I think they should be replaced with better trained people as some of them don't seem to care

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Responses

Response from Lee-Ann Aldridge, Digital Communications Manager, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust 6 years ago
Lee-Ann Aldridge
Digital Communications Manager,
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 11/09/2017 at 16:52
Published on Care Opinion on 21/09/2017 at 17:00

Thank you for taking the time to write a review – we value all comments, suggestions and complaints and look to our service users and carers to help us develop our services with the input we receive from them.

I am sorry you had to deal with a ‘rude man’ via our Crisis Call Centre and that the contact left you feeling unsupported and unsafe. You also state that when encouraged to call the service at night you felt not listened to by our staff on duty and were advised that one of our crisis houses was not suitable for you.

You felt that because of the lack of support overnight and not being listened to, you were eventually admitted to hospital under section and that this involved the Police and you were taken to the Emergency Department at the Whittington Hospital.

Here at the Crisis Resolution Team (CRT), we pride ourselves on being able to offer support to service users 24 hours per day. Sometimes we get very busy and there may be delays in talking to our service users but if you ring the Crisis Call Centre (Crisis Line) then you can leave a message on our voicemail system and we will ring you back as soon as we can.

At night the service is more limited however with less staff on duty than during day time periods. Overnight we can offer support via the telephone to service users in mental health crisis and we also support the Emergency Departments. If the situation arises we can, if need be, attend service users home environments but do need the support of our Camden CRT colleague on duty to be able to facilitate this.

Without more detail we are unable to fully investigate what happened when you called and to be able to speak directly with the staff involved. However, we encourage you to get in contact with the Operational Service Manager directly who would be happy to meet with you to discuss this. Her contact details are: Debbie May, Operational Service Manager – Crisis Resolution Teams and Crisis Call Centre – email: debbie.may@candi.nhs.uk

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