Please tell me why a telephone assessment is deemed appropriate for a suicidal client? How many people have commited suicide because of IAPT’s ‘Opt In’ policy? Why is it beyond the remit of NHS Psychiatric Hospitals to offer a ‘One Stop Shop’, including CBT, for suicidal patients?
These pressing issues occurred to me recently when I came across a person who had in recent weeks stepped in front of a car to kill himself and narrowly escaped death on a railway line, because of the care of a passer-by. After attending the Emergency Department of the local NHS Hospital, within days he was assessed by a Mental Health Practitioner and he referred him to IAPT.
The latter wrote to him asking that he ring them to book a telephone assessment, which he did not do and so IAPT discharged him. Inspection of his Hospital records should have alerted the Hospital of this likely sequence of events as he had dropped out of the first session of counselling treatment at a psychiatric Unit a few years ago.
Dr Mike Scott