Will Young's anguish at inquest into brother's suicide

Last year Rupert Young the brother of Will Young (the famous singer and actor) lost his life, he was only 41. Rupert struggled for many years with addiction and depression and finally lost his battle with the illness when he took his own life, falling from Westminster Bridge last summer.

There was an inquest into Rupert's tragic death yesterday, at which, Will gave an impassioned speech. He wanted to know why his brother was not seen by a psychiatrist despite the fact that he had been admitted to the hospital four times in the previous week. Will said he was astounded to find out that his brother had been allowed to leave the hospital only two days after an attempt at taking his own life.

It is very difficult to challenge what is going on in mental health services without the people who work in them feeling personally attacked. In my experience there are some excellent things going on in psychiatric hospitals but they are constrained by lack of funds and are unable to improve certain areas because of this.

The sheer number of staff it takes to facilitate a 24 hour service of care means that there are many bank staff that have to be called on and this means that the patients lack the continuity and trust that they need to feel safe and comfortable while being looked after in hospital.

In my experience, in NHS psychiatric hospitals the patient gets seen by the ward doctor (the consultant psychiatrist) only ONCE a week for half an hour. This is just simply not enough and the result of this is a lot of bottled up personal worries, stress and anxiety in the patients. There could easily be another psychiatrist working alongside who could take individual slots with patients, to ease their minds and reassure them they are working with them to aid their recovery. Again I can only assume that this doesn't happen because of lack of funds.

Another area that is not covered while in a psychiatric hospital is therapy. There was no access to a clinical psychologist or any therapy apart from the art and music groups which is not really what I'm talking about!

This is not the staff's fault and I must emphasise this. Anyone working in mental health needs commending because it's a difficult job and requires much patience understanding. There are some really excellent nurses, doctors and assistants but I am sure they would agree that things could be better with a bit of focus and financial input.

If I ever have a voice I am going to campaign for this! The only way this will happen is if enough people get involved so if you like a post please share it!

You can read the article about Rupert Young in the Mail Online here

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Speak to you soon,

TR