"Mental health emergency"

I am writing this as the wife of a patient.   My husband experienced a serious mental health crisis earlier this year and as a first step I called his GP surgery to ask for advice. It was lunchtime, so I was put through to Sheffield GP collaborative phone line. They then said the on call GP for our surgery would call me back. Which they did almost immediately and asked if we could wait 2 hours to see a GP. We definitely couldn't as my husband was severely distressed. So the GP then told me to take him to the northern general hospital a&e.

We arrived there around 1pm and were seen by the triage nurse after an hour or two and sent to a side ward to wait to be seen by the mental health team. We waited there for approximately 7 hours before he was seen by 2 nurses.   During that time he got quite agitated and tried to leave several times. Finally someone on the reception desk gave him some diazepam to calm him down after we'd been there several hours and a wonderful orderly brought us sandwiches and tea and took us to a private room that had become available.

Although the care we received when we were finally seen by the nurses was great, I really don't think that in this day and age it's acceptable for a mental health patient to be waiting 7 hours to see someone. Given the nature of my husband's illness it really didn't help the situation and I believe exacerbated it. Something needs to be done about this situation to prevent further incidences.