God this rings so true to me, it actually sent a shiver down my spine.I haven’t caught up with the whole thread yet but have just heard from a (absolutely devastated) friend that poor Caroline was badly let down by the laws regarding mental health crises in this instance. I don’t want to say what my friends job is, but he is well positioned to know the truth about the inner workings of police work/social services etc and is not a bullshitter, so I have no reason to disbelieve this: She apparently took an overdose the night before she died and was visited by paramedics. The dose was not so toxic that she needed medical attention and she didn’t didn’t reach “threshold” for sectioning and refused to accompany medics to hospital for a psychological assessment - although her friend that was staying with her and parents wanted her sectioned so that she would have no choice but to go to hospital and get help. The next morning she seemed brighter and her friend that was staying over to look after her went out to the shop. They came back 15 minutes later and she had dead-bolted the door and hanged herself. Took them more than an hour once emergency services were called to get inside the flat.
My friend said that as soon as the call came in saying a woman in the area Caroline lived had been found hanged he knew immediately who it was. He also said that the paramedics who couldn’t section her but couldn’t persuade her to come to hospital on Friday night are absolutely flattened with shock and regret- although of course it is not their fault. My friend thinks there’s a strong argument for the threshold to be sectioned to be lowered as a result of this; he said that she was very clearly a danger to herself and needed the assessment of a doctor. To think that someone who has purposefully taken even a small overdose doesn’t count as being ill enough to reach the lower limited necessary to be helped against their own will is terrifying.
Poor, dear girl and her poor family and friends and those poor emergency workers who couldn’t do more for her. I hope that she has now found peace
I had a suicide attempt almost two years ago and exactly the same thing happened - wasn’t a toxic dose, a crisis team visited me the same night and that was it.
I don’t blame the MH staff at all - but it really isn’t good enough. There is never enough psychiatric beds for the need at any one time.
I’m absolutely horrified by this story. RIP Caroline.