"intensive care unit"

Our daughter has bi-polar disorder and has been well for over 18 years. Following the birth of her son she remained well for the first 8 months and then became aware that she was sliding. Visit to health visitor and GP proved useless and she continued to decline until a major breakdown. Visiting psychiatrist recommended mother and baby unit but no place could seemingly be found and she was transferred to a secure unit with both men and women. Shambolic approach and no treatment plan put in place for 10 days so she became progressively worse. Place finally becomes available at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Not very impressive as she is bundled into a taxi without sedative medication and consequently is terrified and not particularly cooperative on route. Staff at this unit unimpressive and cannot meet her needs and after less than 24 hours she is bundled into the back of a secure (cage) ambulance and driven off to what has been described to us as Intensive Care. The image of our daughter being put into the back of this vehicle surrounded by large ladies (I counted 8) will stay with us for ever. Visiting hours at ES1 at night so we turn up expecting to find our daughter being well cared for. This ward is like looking back in time and a very bad time at that. Stripped bare of any life enhancing attributes, colourless and drab and with very unwell women around, screaming. Pictures could easily been of Bedlam back in the dark ages. Getting information from this ward is virtually impossible. Phones rarely answered. Our daughter has deteriorated rapidly since admittance to this hospital. We are working on trying to extract her from this ward but are appalled that such a place is in existence in a so called state of the art hospital.