Disclaimer: TEWV: Betrayal and Broken Promises is not a personal attack on individual clinicians or institutions. This post exposes serious mental health neglect in the public interest. I am campaigning for urgent mental health reform and improved crisis care so that no one else suffers what I have endured.

Trigger Warning: This blog post discusses suicide and mental health neglect that some readers may find distressing. If you are struggling and your need is urgent, please call 999. If you need support, please call NHS 111 (Option 2) or Samaritans free phone: 116 123.

In this post, I show a packet of Zopiclone. This is not intended to promote harm but intended to show systemic neglect – how a psychiatrist recommended the prescription of it long-term without offering or carrying out any review.

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Summary

My previous post documented the immediate failings in the care provided by TEWV (Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust), leaving me with no support after surviving a suicide attempt in February 2025. This post documents serious systemic issues that I faced while I was under their care from March 2022 to March 2024.

Collusion

TEWV’s complicity in the harm that I have experienced across many NHS trusts has been a large part of their neglect, and it has what has made this narrative feel unsustainable. The additional pain that TEWV has inflicted on me is the way they have framed me as the problem.

On 8/12/2023, I confided in a CMHT psychiatrist about a disturbing comment on my medical records. My GP had written, ‘Scan abnormal, to be expected, no further action,’ about the abnormal MRI scan that York hospital detected in 2022.

Two hours after I saw the psychiatrist, Ampleforth surgery locked me out of my TPP online account. Upon regaining entry with a new password, the practice had added ‘no review applicable’ to the record. This timeline indicates that the psychiatrist phoned the GP and gave them the heads-up to alter the comment.

In their discharge summary, TEWV wrote, ‘Felicia thinks NHS bodies are colluding with one another.’ I struggle to understand what the psychiatrist’s actions are if they aren’t collusion in covering up the situation and tampering with my records. But TEWV are framing me as the problem.

Denied Safeguarding

On March 6th, 2025, TEWV’s crisis team also told North Yorkshire County Council, (NYCC) to disregard a safeguarding request. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) asked NYCC to safeguard me from TEWV and my GP in February 2025, after my suicide attempt, which NYCC did close down. This constitutes institutional complicity.

The harm I have experienced is hard enough, but asking me to shoulder the responsibility for their complicity is too much to bear.

Reflection

This shocking timeline of events demonstrates collusion and a concerted effort to conceal clinical facts. It reveals that a TEWV psychiatrist was allegedly involved in prompting Ampleforth Surgery to immediately tamper with my medical records (specifically adding ‘no review applicable’) after discussing a key abnormality.

This action, alongside TEWV telling North Yorkshire County Council to deny me safeguarding and TEWV’s subsequent withdrawal of mental health support, illustrates the pattern of institutional complicity that has caused me sustained harm. This is a coordinated effort to frame the patient as the problem and shield institutional failure.

Cruel Behaviour

In August 2024, I presented at York A&E for help with my suicidal feelings. I saw a TEWV psychiatric liaison officer who assessed me at the emergency department. She referred me back to the CMHT for support. In November 2024, I saw a female psychiatrist at Princes Road Clinic, Malton, who in December 2024 told me that she was not going to provide any support or signpost me. The psychiatrist informed me that the referral was being closed.

That refusal of support was painful enough. But what was so unbearable was that she delivered this news to me wearing a smirk on her face. She was smirking as she told me that TEWV would not be offering me any further support. She seemed to be enjoying telling me this. It was sadistic and cruel.

Zopiclone

During that meeting in December 2024, I explained to the psychiatrist that I was having extreme difficulties sleeping. She made the decision to ask the GP to prescribe zopiclone, a sleeping pill, to me long-term. However, she didn’t see me again after this, so she recommended the prescription of Zopiclone without reviewing me.

Zopiclone is one of the medications that I used to try and end my life. This was reckless behaviour and showed no regard for my safety or wellbeing. And it was her doing all this while smirking that made her behaviour, in my mind, nothing short of inhumane.

Broken Promises

After surviving my suicide attempt in February 2025, TEWV gave me five outpatient appointments with their crisis team before they cut off all further support. One of those five appointments was with their team psychiatrist. I liked him. I found him to be warm, approachable and very human.

He listened, and he said to me, ‘Felicia, we need to come up with a plan. We need to sort your facial pain out,’ which told me that he understood that my physical pain was what had caused my suicidal crisis. This was the first time in twelve years that mental health services had acknowledged this.

The psychiatrist agreed to go through my medical notes and speak to the consultants at York Hospital to find out what was happening with my care and treatment. He promised to communicate with the medical consultants about how my facial pain affects my mental health.

I felt really hopeful. I thought that I may be turning a corner with this: that I finally had someone on my side.

Hiding Behind Bureaucracy

That didn’t happen. He didn’t do it. When I returned to see the psychiatrist, he said, ‘Sorry, it’s been difficult going through your notes.’ I interpreted this to mean, ‘There was too much to go through, so I didn’t bother.’ He told me that he had spoken with my GP and asked them to refer me to a new NHS trust to be reviewed instead.

His broken promises felt like a deep betrayal. By asking my GP to refer me back to the NHS trusts, he was sending me back to the dangerous merry-go-round that led to my suicidal crisis. His actions showed no regard for the cycle of harm I had endured, and it was a cowardly way of hiding behind bureaucracy.

The crisis team then cut off all further support. He left me with no plan or follow-up care after my attempt, and they told North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) to close down the safeguarding concern that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) raised about me, which NYCC did do. They left me with no support when I was at my most vulnerable.

The merry-go-round

I will never, ever return to that merry-go-round. After my gaslighting experience at York Hospital and South Tees, I made it clear to my GP that I would not be attending any more medical appointments. I explained to them that I would not see anymore clinicians about my facial pain unless there was support or safeguarding in place to protect me from the institutional bullying. This is because of the excessive risk to my mental well-being.

Conclusion

The events that included a psychiatrist being complicit in the tampering of my records to conceal evidence, a second psychiatrist smirking at me while telling me that she is closing down a referral, prescribing zopiclone with no further review, a third psychiatrist promising to speak to medical consultants about my facial pain and then not doing so, and denying me care and safeguarding after surviving a suicide attempt amount to nothing short of mental health neglect.

This neglect is human rights abuse, and it goes wider than healthcare-related injustice. After surviving a suicide attempt, being refused protection or assistance goes beyond cruelty. Basic human rights include the right to access care during a crisis. TEWV’s denial of this care and treatment of me amounts to nothing less than institutional abandonment and human rights abuse.

The trust’s treatment of me has been cruel, degrading and inhumane.

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Photo Credits: Betzy Arosemena, Luis Alberto, Alexander Kriviskiy, and Majestic Lukas on unplash. Fotios Photos and Shkraba Anthony o