Sadly this is more proof that Cornwall desperately needs a mental health facility as a Cornish blogger took her life.

Over the past 12,-18 months suicides are becoming more frequent and need to be avoided, especially people jumping over the A30 bridges.

Having no help from mental health teams and no psychiatric doctors and nurses available in Cornwall is appalling, and with suicide rates soaring, this needs to be addressed. 

Cornwall needs a mental health facility

Cornwall desperately needs a mental health hospital facility where people can go without travelling miles out of the county away from their loved ones. 

At the moment you can’t easily access help in Cornwall. I live in South East Cornwall and there is no psychiatrist in the area and Trevillis House is short-staffed as are the rest of the mental health facilities in other areas of the county.

I’ve been told that if I need help I have to go through to Outlook South West who refused to treat me before as they told my previous doctor that they don’t get paid enough to treat my illnesses.

Cornwall blogger takes her own life

Beth Matthews documented her mental health issues in her blog Life Beyond the Ledge, which discusses how she struggled with her health over many years. 

Beth was a mental health sufferer and a severe trauma patient before becoming an influencer on social media.

 Cornwall Live reported that the young Cornish woman died on Monday (March 21). 

Beth suffered serious injuries four years ago when she attempted to commit suicide, which, as she related to her mental health suffering, was not her first attempt. 

The 26-year-old had attempted suicide on several occasions, including on a road in Cornwall in April 2019.

At the time, she was brought to safety by college student Natalia Cartmell who was on her walk to work at Tesco along the A388 Tavistock Road in Launceston. 

Two days later, Beth received multiple severe injuries at the same spot, including broken bones, a damaged spine, and damaged internal organs.

 But she was saved by paramedics and Cornwall Air Ambulance.

Beth, who loved the outdoors, was a blogger and an influencer who had built a following of her own. 

She opened up about her mental health challenges and how she dealt with them, giving others the power and bravery to do the same.

If you feel you need to reach out to someone about a friend or relative or for yourself, please call one of the numbers on the helpline page. Don’t suffer in silence. 

Recent events have proven that Cornish mental health services are failing.

Last week a young man was sentenced for killing his mother and injuring his younger brother. 

Last June, emergency services were called to Crowlas, where Sally Poynton was found dead at the scene. The 44-year-old had suffered knife wounds.

Jacob Poynton-Whiting was charged with murder, which he denied.

The 22-year-old of Tregender Lane in the village later admitted to manslaughter, and the murder charge was dropped.

He also pleaded guilty to a separate charge of unlawful wounding.

Appearing at Truro Crown Court, he was given an indeterminate hospital order under sections 37 and 41 

What happened?

Police were called by the ambulance service to Crowlas, near Penzance, on Tuesday 22nd June 2021, following reports that a man had attacked his mother with a knife.

Mrs Poynton sustained a severe knife wound to her leg before Poynton-Whiting was forced out of the house by a male relative who lived at the property and suffered a severe injury during the struggle.

The male relative dialled 999, and when he was on the line to the ambulance service, Poynton-Whiting broke a window to get back into the house and attacked his mother again.

In the second attack, Mrs Poynton sustained a severe wound to her neck, and she was pronounced dead at 7.25 am by paramedics, who had responded to the emergency call.

Poynton-Whiting was arrested at the scene by police officers and taken into custody.

He was charged with murder, but following psychiatric evaluations, the prosecution accepted his guilty plea to manslaughter when he appeared at Truro Crown Court on Monday 13th December 2021.

Poynton-Whiting was briefly detained at Longreach mental unit in Redruth but was released without a diagnosis and clear support plan in place.

Why Cornish mental health services are failing!

He was struck off the mental health service’s list when he failed to respond to follow up letters.

Mental health patients aren’t always well enough to respond to letters and phone calls. They should be appointed a care person, but due to lack of staff, mental health services in Cornwall is failing as I type!

Mr Brunton said: “Sally battled without success to get Jacob diagnosed and treated. He behaved in a bizarre and antisocial way, but there were no signs of what would come.

The mental health doctor in charge of the Longreach mental health unit is Dr Kusterman, who I had before who not only could not diagnose me, he also broke patient confidentiality and got my notes wrong.

Why are we paying this man £200,000 a year? When two or three staff could be paid this wage to help save lives. 

Mr Poynton-Whiting has been sentenced to a hospital order thanks to Judge Carr and his understanding of mental health. He would almost certainly have been sentenced to prison if it was another judge or up to Cornwall and Devon Police. 

I was sadly less than impressed with the response I received from my local MP after contacting her about Increasing Mental Health Funding.

MQ Mental Health Research emailed me about a campaign they were running on asking MPs about mental health funding.

So I clicked on the email link to my local MP, Sheryll Murray.

Like most MPs, she probably never even read the email as a standard letter from her secretary came back.

Not only did she never answer the question, the fact that the question was about something as important as mental health, which one in four of us in the UK are known to suffer from, and the number increased during the recent pandemic.

The recent pandemic has also taken lives due to there being no help available as free helplines who offer help also have waiting lists as well as the NHS.

Unless you go private which costs around £50 plus per hour, the likeliness of receiving any help let alone the correct help is next to nothing.

This is why we need more counsellors, nurses, doctors and a mental health facility in Cornwall. These mental health professionals need to be properly trained so they can research mental health more accurately.

I received 12 CAT therapy sessions back in 2012 before seeking private talking therapy from 2013 – 2015.

I then received CAT Therapy for a few sessions during 2016 and some refresher sessions towards 2018.

I’ve been on a waiting list for over three years due to the pandemic, and a mental health nurse didn’t contact me until a few months ago.
I’m currently being treated for a mood disorder.

I did receive some free sessions from a counsellor at Cornwall College over the summer, which was mostly talking therapy, and I was speaking to a man from Mind after reaching out to charities for help.

However, they weren’t qualified to diagnose me and suggested I would be better off seeing a psychiatrist.

Although the psychiatrist doesn’t think I have bipolar, I take meds for the same thing.

During that time, I lost friendships and did some unusual things to people, which I regret.

With the correct help, these issues might have been resolved without it giving me another mental meltdown.

Why are there no GP appointments available? let alone mental health teams seeing patients face to face? Why are so-called mental health professionals not around weekends and evenings?

You will be lucky to get an appointment via video or phone due to the increasing numbers of people developing problems due to the pandemic.

More mental health funding is needed to help fund research and staff.

Cornwall needs a mental health hospital as many people with learning disabilities and mental illnesses are placed in unsuitable prisons with the nearest women’s prison in Gloucestershire.

Andrea Coomber, the director of Justice, told the Guardian: “The criminal justice system is not suitably designed to accommodate people with mental health or learning difficulties.

There are still fundamental problems with the criminal justice system’s response to vulnerability, and too few people receive reasonable adjustments to enable them to effectively participate in their defense.”

The majority of women who offend are sent to a prison hundreds of miles from where they live, leaving them vulnerable and more likely to offend as they don’t have any support.

Women are also sent to prison for lesser crimes such as theft or assault.

Out of the women who are sent to prison, 30% according to statistics had a previous psychiatric admission before they entered prison.

A more recent study found that 25% of women and 15% of men in prison reported symptoms indicative of psychosis.

The rate among the general public is about 4%.

26% of women and 16% of men said they had received treatment for a mental health problem in the year before custody.

Personality disorders are particularly prevalent among people in prison with 57% of female sentenced prisoners have a personality disorder.

That’s more than half.

46% of women prisoners reported having attempted suicide at some point in their lives.

This is more than twice the rate of male prisoners (21%) and higher than in the general UK population amongst whom around 6% report having ever attempted suicide.

The statistics clearly show that women would certainly benefit more from being housed in a mental health hospital with therapies and education instead of being put to work in a prison.

Why should anyone be punished for having a mental illness?

Mark Day, head of policy and communications for The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) said: “Simply building more prisons and filling them up with people who are often severely mentally ill, as a result of prison they lose contact with their children and their families.

“It’s not the solution certainly to women’s offending.”

Do you think that Cornwall needs a mental health hospital and that women prisoners with mental health issues should be sent to a hospital instead?

If you or a loved one is in prison or has been to prison and they have a mental illness let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, or you can join in the discussions on our social media pages.

The Westcountry desperately needs a mental health hospital following recent news coverage about mental health patients travelling nearly 600 miles for mental health facilities.

The Guardian said that “Almost 6,000 mental health patients had to be sent far out of their local area for treatment last year, with some travelling hundreds of miles, according to NHS figures.”

“Data obtained by the British Medical Association shows the number of patients with mental health problems travelling long distances for care in England has risen by 40% in two years.”

With one in four people now said to be suffering from mental health at some stage of their lives this number will continue to rise unless a specialist mental health facility is built in the Westcountry.

In 2016-17, 5,876 travelled out of their area for treatment, compared with 4,213 in 2014-15.

One patient had to travel 587 miles from Somerset to the Scottish Highlands for help, the figures show.

Patients sent away for treatment could expect an average round-trip journey of seven and a half hours to see friends and family.

This isn’t ideal when transport costs and facilities in this country are poor and with higher petrol prices rising it isn’t fair that someone who is mentally ill, afraid and frightened have to go to a mental health hospital which is hundreds of miles away from their families and friends.

Louise Rubin of the charity Mind said: “It’s unacceptable that people who are at their most unwell and in desperate need of care find themselves travelling across the country to get help .

When you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, you’re likely to feel scared, vulnerable and alone, so your support network of family and friends are instrumental to recovery.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: “NHS England is investing an extra £400m in crisis resolution home treatment teams as part of our plans for the biggest expansion of mental health services in Europe.

They also added that they are giving local mental health trusts new powers to tailor mental health services to better meet their area’s individual needs, improving local services and ending the practice of sending people long distances to receive treatment.”

Back in April this year North Cornwall MP Scott Mann announced that he was delighted that NHS England had finally given the green light for new mental health facilities in Cornwall.

A new 12-bed mental health facility in Bodmin will be built for young people aged up to 18 years old.

Currently, many young people have to travel out of county to access a mental health bed.

The facility will be built near Bodmin Hospital and will cater for young people in Cornwall with mental health illnesses.

It’s fantastic that children down in the far South West are finally getting recognised and some much-needed help.

However, by no means is this facility enough for the over 18s in Cornwall who suffer from mental health problems, and there are far more adults in the South West, particularly in Cornwall than there are children.

Watch this space for news and updates on this!

Have you had to travel miles away from your home to check into or visit a loved one in a mental health hospital?

What are your thoughts about building a Westcountry mental health hospital?

Comment below, email admin@looneychickblog.co.uk or join in the discussions on our social media pages.