"Horrendous experience"

The full story wouldn’t fit in 1000 characters. My partner was suffering from an episode of psychosis, we went to A&E and waited for 9 hours to be seen after telling them he was having delusions and hearing voices.

After our 9 hour waiting and finally seeing a psychiatrist and mental health nurse my partner was totally dismissed and sent home with a leaflet and told to walk the dog. From here things only got worse, the voices and delusions got worse and more frequent, we had to phone an ambulance two days later, who turned up with police.

No one was allowed to travel with him in the ambulance and we were told not to follow on for a few hours at least. My mother in law by chance went to hand her phone number in to a&e and found my partner wandering the waiting area alone after being taken there by the ambulance service.

His mum found him in a panic accusing another patient of stealing money from him, while no hospital staff done anything to help or diffuse the situation, after another lengthy wait, 5 hours this time, he was eventually admitted to ward 3 for a few days.

Ward 3 lost all of his belongings including razor blades and a charger wire (bare in mind this is mental health we are talking about) after 1 day in Ward 3 we came to visit him and things had gone for bad to worse, he was completely delirious, profusely sweating, heart rate up, face was bright red and was visibly extremely distressed.

After being moved wards twice that night he was finally intubated and moved to ICU where the staff could not possibly have done more for him and for us. After a few days he had shown a vast improvement (still no actual help for his mental health) the psychiatrist wanted to have him discharged from here, he asked to stay and told them he wasn’t ready to come home, so he was moved back to Ward 3.

The next day when we visited he was manic again, sweating, agitated, not sleeping  Ward 3 had made huge mistakes with his medication and he was being given a dangerous cocktail of medications, his face was drawn and his eyes were dark and sunken. They still had made no effort to find his belongings and he was discharged the next day with 4 diazepam and a naloxone.

He was made feel like a burden the entire time, spoken down to, then thrown out the door 2 days  after coming off a ventilator. I’m disgusted with Forth Valley Royal Hospital (FVRH) and the staff in A&E, the ambulance service and the mental health service.

My partner was treated like dirt from start to finish and left feeling worse than when he went in, after loosing 2 family members due to failures of the mental health service in the last 18 years, I feel things have never changed, in fact I feel they have gotten worse. I have absolutely no faith in this hospital and would never be able to in good conscience leave a loved there ever again.