"unpleasant experience"

I was admitted as as a voluntary patient and was discharged 2 months or so later. You state "The service focuses on assessment of need, treatment, and recovery and places the service user at the centre of care planning. " After my experience I can safely say that nothing could be further from my experience. I felt that decisions made about my treatment and care were completely out of my hands. The weekly ward review were an unpleasant experience; I felt like the psychiatrist had made his mind up about what was going to happen before my family/friends/advocate & I entered the room and all we were given the opportunity to do ultimately was agree. I think the senior doctors on that ward should take a step back and consider how intimidating & over formal those ward reviews are for some patients: being sat in a room with sometimes up to 10 or so staff & students all just focusing on you is very daunting.

As for some of the staffs, probably due to staffing levels, they acted mostly as prison wardens. Some were very good, some ok, but one particular member of staff I felt was nothing short of a bully. I never understood what Highbury Live was all about apart from leaflets and posters promoting itself everywhere around the place. They had no contact with me while I was there. Also even as a voluntary patient you could not leave the ward for days at first and some days I couldn't even get any fresh air, it really did feel like being in prison. I used to be threatened with being sectioned if we returned from time off the ward more than a few minutes late, this looking back was disgraceful.

I think someone from the CQC needs to go on to that ward and speak with patients and unless things have drastically changed since I was there, I think they'll hear the same things.

To end on a positive, it was the OTs and in particular the peer support workers who really made an effort to make things a bit more bearable. Unfortunately, more often than not many of the planned activities were cancelled probably due to lack of staff?