Charities call for rough sleepers to have mental health assessments
Winter mental health warning
Homeless people with severe mental illness who endanger their lives by sleeping rough during exceptionally cold weather should be assessed and possibly committed to psychiatric hospitals, according to two leading homelessness charities.
Thames Reach and Broadway have said that ill rough sleepers who are unable to take care of themselves and who put their lives at risk should have their mental health assessed by doctors who could section them if they deemed it appropriate.
Jeremy Swain, chief executive of Thames Reach, said some people would have enough blankets and be able to take care of themselves, but others would be at risk of death.
Mr Swain said there were a ‘handful’ of mentally ill rough sleepers whom doctors might consider sectioning. ‘We would want them to make a decision to go in voluntarily rather than be sectioned but we do not want them to die on street if they cannot make a rational decision.’
He said he knew of two rough sleepers who died before Christmas as a result of the cold weather.
He added: ‘Some people would say it is a civil liberties issue, to which I would say, “you can get into an intellectual debate about that but try being at someone’s funeral and explaining to their children why you let them sleep on the street”.’
A spokesperson for the charity said its outreach teams, which work in 24 of London’s 33 boroughs, had identified 40 rough sleepers with serious mental health problems who it thought should be assessed by mental health professionals.
David Fisher, director of services at Broadway, said: ‘In the summer you might say that they are mentally ill but not putting themselves at any risk, but that is not true when the temperature is this low.’
A spokesperson for mental health charity Rethink said: ‘Provided all criteria to be detained under the mental health act were met, and there were suitably qualified staff and health practitioners present, we understand why that would happen.’
‘This winter will be a killer for a number of people’
Joe Batty, outreach services manager, Broadway
‘This winter will be a killer for a number of people living on the streets with mental health conditions. Attaining assessments and sectioning for those people is a laborious, hit-and-miss affair, with homeless people usually unwilling to wait for necessary medical personnel to be assembled.
‘This protraction of the process is compounded by conservative decision-making, balancing the individual’s human rights to make their own choices with the impact of removing such liberty on medical grounds. This is of particular concern to outreach teams who can spend months building relationships with people and refering them for mental health assessment, when all other reasonable options have been exhausted, knowing it is easier to carry out assessments indoors where behaviour is easily observed.
‘In warm weather, wrangling between medical staff and outreach workers takes place in the knowledge that services are available as circumstances change. Homeless people remain on the streets but they are monitored. Sub-zero temperatures must alter this dynamic. Assessments must be swift and decisive. The cautious outlook of mental health services should be set aside with assessments starting on the premise that life is under immediate threat.’
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