A mentally ill man was turned away by medics despite his daughter “begging” for help, it has been claimed.
Marissa Hodge says she feels let down by staff at Murray Royal Hospital after her pleas to help her 66-year-old dad, who was suffering a psychiatric crisis, fell on deaf ears.
Her father, Bruce Sands, said that, at the time of the crisis, on March 6, he “felt like lying down in the road and passing away”.
His daughter claims that despite her best efforts to get mental health professionals to assess him, they were instructed to go elsewhere.
Marissa said Mr Sands, who lives in Bankfoot, had just been discharged from Perth Royal Infirmary (PRI), where he is undergoing cancer-related treatment.
The 34-year-old said: “I could tell that he wasn’t in the right frame of mind; he was really quiet and looked really fragile.
“I asked him if he was OK and he said no, he didn’t feel safe and he felt insecure.
“I went back up to PRI and talked to the nurses and they tried to get in touch with Murray Royal because when he’s like this, he’ll talk about not wanting the suffering to go on.
“However, the advice we were given was for him to take diazepam and for me to take him home.
“He didn’t feel he’d cope at home, so I took him up to Murray Royal. We found the crisis team and thought they were bound to be the right people (to help).”
However, she said staff at the facility did not even talk to her dad before advising them to return home.
“They basically told me to take him home, as it wasn’t a drop-in centre and you needed to be referred,” she said.
“I was so livid that they would turn somebody away who was in such mental turmoil. It was pretty hellish.”
Mr Sands added: “Mentally, I was in a very bad way and that’s the only reason my daughter took me up to Murray Royal.
“We tried to get help at PRI in the ward that I’d left and they couldn’t do anything for me.
“We thought the obvious thing was to go to Murray Royal but they turned me away, even though I was in a terrible state.
“Mental anguish was crippling me. I really needed professional help to get through it and, unfortunately, there was none.
“I feel very let down. Whatever reasons they have policy or bureaucracy it’s not an excuse to turn somebody away when they are in such a bad state.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: “Due to patient confidentiality, we are unable to comment on individual cases.
“If anyone has concerns about their mental health, they should contact their GP in the first instance or NHS 24 during out-of-hours.”