‘Treated like an animal’: NHS nurse attempted suicide twice while waiting 10 days for hospital bed

A senior mental health nurse suffered “degrading and humiliating” treatment while she languished for 10 days on an unsuitable NHS ward during a mental health crisis, The Independent has been told.

Rachel Luby, 36, was admitted to Basildon Hospital A&E in Essex on 5 January this year after attempting to take an overdose of over-the-counter medicine following a traumatic assault.

This, she claimed, was the start of weeks of horrific care she endured while waiting for a mental health bed. It culminated in her being restrained and forced into a caged van “like an animal”.

She revealed her story after The Independent reported on a warning from top emergency doctors that self-harming and suicidal patients who go to A&E are not being treated with compassion because staff are overwhelmed.

Ms Luby, an award-winning nurse, said she waited more than a week and a half in a general hospital before she was moved to a bed on a mental health ward.

Ms Luby was able to leave the ward and find medication to overdose again, despite staff allegedly assessing her as a risk. In a second incident, she went to the bathroom and attempted to take her own life.

She told The Independent: “I feel that this is something I will not recover from. I will not ever reach out for help in the future.

“If this is the treatment that I’m getting as a nurse, then what the heck is happening to those that don’t have the voice or education that I have? It horrifies me to think what is happening to people that are far more vulnerable than me.”

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Source: The Independent, 27 March 2024