"I've been an inpatient at ..."

What I liked

I've been an inpatient at St Ann's on 3 occasions and have weekly specialist therapy there. I am hugely grateful to St Ann's for their unswerving support and expertise. I have a severe, debilitating and tenacious mental illness but thanks to their years of support to me, I've been able to continue working and leading a normalish life.

I'm a very 'awkward' patient because of the compulsively self-destructive nature of my illness. And my work in the mental health field means I have high expectations of services. My friends, family and I are incredibly grateful to St Ann’s for the staff’s amazing kindness, expertise, patience – and, frankly, their sheer tolerance of the ‘challenges’ my illness creates.

St Ann’s is indeed an old and under-resourced hospital. This makes me even more appreciative of how heroically the staff cope with conditions which they find even more frustrating than we patients do. Thank you St Ann’s!

What could be improved

The government needs to take mental health services (and patients!) seriously and invest to bring all services up to the physical standards of the best ones. St Ann's buildings, design etc are long overdue for knocking down and bringing up to 21st Century standards of excellence.

Anything else?

The crisis team seems to be improving but has some way to go.