Listening to experience

I needed a safe place – somewhere I could not seriously harm myself until I recovered emotionally. I also needed to feel that someone actually cared about me…

In 2010, Mind set up an independent inquiry panel. Between Autumn 2010 and Summer 2011,  the panel heard evidence from 400 service users and professionals about acute mental healthcare in England and Wales. The findings of this inquiry formed the basis for our report on crisis care Listening to experience.

Download the report (PDF 473kb).

Below is a summary of our report and the inquiry panel's findings.

Excellent care

Excellent acute and crisis care exists. We heard about: 

• innovative services that were easy for people to access
• courteous and helpful staff
• well designed, therapeutic environments
• teams with a can-do spirit and approach.

Unacceptable care

Many people told us they had poor and even traumatic experiences and said services should not be:

• leaving people with urgent mental health needs isolated, frightened and unsupported
• traumatising those who use services
• giving people a sense of abandonment when they try to use services
• ‘managing’ those with acute care needs in some of the worst hospital environments in the NHS
• discriminatory, treating some groups more neglectfully or coercively than others.

Our recommendations

To give people the crisis care they need, when they need it we need to concentrate on four areas:

1. Humanity

Action is needed to ensure that acute care is built on humane values and embodies a culture of service and hospitality so people can be treated in a warm, caring and respectful way.

2. Commissioning for people’s needs

People’s needs and home circumstances are different and they way services are delivered must reflect this diversity. For example, different services may be needed in rural and urban areas.

3. Choice and control

We urgently need more direct ways to get help. This means that people can self-refer. There should be an explicit acknowledgement that people themselves know how they need to be treated. People should have more say over what happens to them.

4. Reducing the medical emphasis in acute care

The things people said they need in a crisis – care, safety, someone to listen, something to do – did not need to be delivered by a doctor. They play a valuable role, but this does not mean that they should deliver all of the care.