BBC Scotland Disclosure
Former sufferers at Scotland’s largest youngsters’s psychiatric hospital have spoken out a few tradition of cruelty amongst nursing employees.
Sufferers who had been youngsters once they had been admitted to Skye Home, a specialist NHS unit in Glasgow, informed BBC Disclosure some nurses referred to as them “pathetic” and “disgusting” – and even mocked their suicide makes an attempt.
“It was nearly as if I used to be getting handled like an animal,” one younger affected person, being handled for anorexia, stated.
NHS Higher Glasgow and Clyde stated it was “extremely sorry” and has launched two inquiries into the allegations uncovered by the BBC’s investigation.
Programme-makers spoke to twenty-eight former sufferers whereas making BBC Disclosure’s Children on The Psychiatric Ward documentary.
One stated the 24-bed psychiatric hospital, which sits within the grounds of Glasgow’s Stobhill hospital, was like “hell”.
“I might say the tradition of the nursing staff was fairly poisonous. Quite a lot of them, to be trustworthy, had been fairly merciless a variety of the time,” she added.
The younger folks, who had been admitted between 2017 and 2024, informed the programme that nurses rapidly resorted to pressure, together with bodily restraint and dragging sufferers down corridors, leaving them bruised and traumatised.
One stated she wished the police to be referred to as after an alleged assault however was afraid she can be handled worse.
Others reported the over-use of treatment and sedative injections so the employees may have a quiet shift, leaving sufferers like “strolling zombies”.
Some sufferers stated they had been punished for being unwell, together with being made to wash up their very own blood from self-harm incidents.
Warning: Some readers might discover particulars on this report distressing
Skye Home, which opened in 2009, accepts youngsters aged 12 to 18 who’re often at disaster level.
Most are detained below the Psychological Well being Act, which implies they can’t go away till docs resolve they’re match to be discharged.
The BBC started investigating after one younger affected person reported her remedy on the unit.
Many different instances quickly got here to gentle.
Cara spent greater than two years within the unit, from the age of 16, being handled for anorexia.
She was restrained greater than 400 instances over 18 months, medical data reviewed by the BBC confirmed.
She was typically left with bruises and on one event a clump of her hair was pulled out.
“It traumatises you. You possibly can’t neglect it,” she stated.
As much as 5 nurses may very well be concerned in bodily restraining somebody to a mattress or the ground in the event that they had been a hazard to others or themselves.
Tips say restraints ought to solely ever be used as a final resort, when all different de-escalation ways have been exhausted.
Cara, now 21, would typically need to be restrained to stop her from self-harming however says most of her restraints may have been averted if employees had first tried to talk to her as an alternative of utilizing restraints “as a primary port of name”.
She stated one restraint in 2021 left her bruised and shaken.
“He held me down by the neck to the ground,” Cara stated.
“Fairly scary, to have this man hovering over you, holding you down. His handprint was left round my neck.”
On one other event, Cara’s medical notes reveal, she felt she had been assaulted after being pushed to the ground by the identical nurse.
Cara had requested to name the police, solely to later change her thoughts.
She informed Disclosure this was as a result of she was fearful of the result.
“I simply thought they could deal with me worse than they already had been,” she stated.
When Jenna, from Inverness, was 16, she was struggling with despair, an consuming dysfunction and had began to self-harm.
The closest adolescent psychiatric unit was in Dundee however there have been no beds and she or he was despatched to Skye Home.
“It was hell, like a jail type of atmosphere,” Jenna stated.
Jenna spent about 9 months within the unit.
She was handled for anorexia by being fed by way of a nasogastric (NG) tube, a standard however invasive remedy for malnourished folks which entails threading a tube by way of the nostril into the abdomen.
Generally she can be restrained for this however she says the best way employees administered this remedy has left her traumatised.
“Generally they might simply come as much as me and seize my arms and take me away,” she stated.
“I’d simply be dragged by nevertheless many nurses was wanted.”
She stated typically employees can be so tough along with her she’d be left bleeding and bruised.
“It was a type of refined punishment to show me a lesson.”
‘I used to be consistently punished for issues’
Self-harm behaviour was a function within the lives of almost all of the sufferers who spoke to the BBC.
They claimed nursing employees would typically miss necessary 15-minute checks on sufferers, offering alternatives to harm themselves.
Jenna and Cara informed Disclosure there have been events they’d self-harmed and can be made to wash up their very own blood from partitions and flooring.
Jenna stated: “I keep in mind the employees member type of saying, ‘You are disgusting, like that is disgusting, it is advisable clear that up’. It made me really feel actually horrible.”
Cara stated employees would typically be careless along with her NG feeds and ship the liquid too quick, inflicting her to vomit.
She stated she can be made to wash her sick up herself.
Cara stated: “They might give me wipes, and I might be made to wipe the ground. It felt like a punishment, as if I might completed it on goal.
“I simply felt like I used to be consistently punished for issues.”
Stephanie was in Skye Home for a number of admissions affected by despair, from 2020 when she was 16.
She stated she had been left with trauma from her time there.
“The nurses by no means actually handled you with care or compassion,” she stated.
“As an alternative of asking you what is flawed, they simply put you on the ground and inject you with treatment.”
On one event Stephanie alleges she was assaulted by a employees member who grew to become annoyed at her refusal to take a bathe.
Stephanie stated: “The nurse received indignant with me.
“She’s then dragged me up and doing by my legs, and turned a bathe on, and put me within the bathe with my garments on. After which simply walked away and left.
“On the time I simply thought it was regular. All people else was actually getting the identical type of remedy.”
Jane Heslop is a retired NHS chief nurse who spent her profession in little one and adolescent psychological well being companies and reviewed the BBC’s proof.
“It is abusive, it is fully flawed,” she stated.
“If that occurred as that younger individual described, it is completely and fully unacceptable.”
Ms Heslop stated that it appeared “a few of these employees have misplaced a few of their boundaries”.
Abby is autistic and was admitted to Skye Home on the age of 14 when she was self-harming and suicidal.
She was there for 2 and half years and says she felt bullied by employees, a few of whom may very well be verbally abusive.
On one event, she stated she was mocked for self-harming.
“The nurse got here as much as me and nearly chuckled, like a type of grin, and stated ‘You are being pathetic, like have a look at your self’,” Abby stated.
“It felt like bullying typically. To the purpose the place I simply wished to harm myself.
“It felt true to me that if different persons are seeing me as pathetic, I’m pathetic.”
Abby and her household consider she was over-medicated in Skye Home.
She stated: “Quite a lot of the sufferers had been like strolling zombies, me included.
“Like a variety of the time we had been simply sedated to the purpose the place I assume our personalities had been dimmed.”
Jenna stated employees would over-use intramuscular sedative injections when sufferers had been in misery.
Emergency treatment ought to solely be given as a final resort.
Jenna stated: “With out type of attempting to speak to me first, or calm me down, they might simply go straight to giving an [injection].
“I feel to be trustworthy it was in order that they might have a better shift while all their sufferers had been type of sedated.”
‘Extremely sorry’
NHS Higher Glasgow and Clyde stated a assessment of treatment was carried out in 2023 and this modified the best way treatment was administered.
Dr Scott Davidson, medical director of NHS Higher Glasgow and Clyde, stated he discovered the allegations “very troublesome to take heed to” and accepted there have been cases the place care has “been under the extent we might count on for our younger folks”.
“In gentle of those experiences and of the accounts of different sufferers, a full assessment of the standard of care has been launched,” he stated.
“Now we have additionally requested for an impartial assessment of the unit.”
The well being board stated it had made plenty of enhancements to affected person care together with employees recruitment and coaching of safe-holds.
It acknowledged that Skye Home had confronted staffing challenges up to now which meant company and financial institution employees labored within the unit.
A press release stated: “This was not very best as they lacked expertise in inpatient models and the complexities of the younger folks being cared for in Skye Home.”
It stated motion has since been taken to deal with staffing ranges.
The Psychological Welfare Fee for Scotland has visited Skye Home six instances since 2017.
The principle points raised within the BBC’s investigation don’t function in any of its revealed stories.
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