Disclaimer: TEWV silencing the suicidal 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 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.

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Summary

TEWV (Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust) is my current mental health trust, under whom I have suffered prolonged harm and suffering. TEWV discharged me when I was a high suicide risk, and they have left me with no support following a suicide attempt that I survived in February 2025. This post documents the immediate failings with TEWV’s duty of care.

Context

I have been in a serious and sustained mental health crisis for six years. My mental health crisis is not an isolated incident or related to mental illness. My crisis is the result of both living with undiagnosed facial pain for this long and the institutional harm that I have suffered across so many NHS Trusts for 12 years. The magnitude and scale of the harm, and the absence of any appropriate support being in place have been too much to carry alone.

Discharged While I Was at Risk

In May 2024, the CMHT at Princes Clinic, Malton, discharged me. TEWV did this knowing that I was a high suicide risk. They also discharged me without doing any new assessment, and they gave me no warning that they were withdrawing their support. The CMHT did not discuss it with me first. They just wrote to me to tell me they had discharged me from their care.

TEWV knew, following repeated discussions that I had had with one of their mental health nurses, that I was suffering with chronic suicidal ideation. They therefore discharged me unsafely when I was at risk.

Denied A&E Support

On 10th June, 2024, I attended Scarborough A&E for help with my suicidal feelings. I saw a psychiatric liaison officer from TEWV. He told me that I could return to A&E for mental health support again. I told him that I felt actively suicidal, but he said, ‘You cannot come back. This service is for emergencies only.’ I’m not sure what being actively suicidal is if it’s not an emergency.

He then told me to self-refer back to the CMHT and to North Yorkshire County Council, whom he knew had both closed my file and discharged me. The TEWV officer said this, knowing full well that a patient cannot self-refer to either of those services. They require a professional referral, so this guidance was misleading and dishonest.

This rejection was a kick I had not experienced before. TEWV blacklisted me from going to A&E at Scarborough hospital for mental health support.

Refused Internal Referral

In August 2024, I attended York Hospital A&E for help with suicidal feelings. I saw a female psychiatric liaison officer from TEWV. She was a pleasant lady. She did an assessment, and she told me that she was re-referring me back to the CMHT in Malton for support.

The CMHT at Princes Road clinic assessed me in November 2024, but in December 2024, they told me that they were not providing me with any support, nor signposting me anywhere for help. They gave me no reason why they were denying me any mental health support.

It was self-defeating that TEWV refused a referral from one of their internal psychiatric liaison officers. TEWV boycotted an internal referral, which highlights how nonsensical their bureaucratic processes are. That’s secondary to how negligent they are to deny a patient mental health support after an A&E officer has urgently referred them back to the CMHT for support.

Abandoned After My Suicide Attempt

On 7 February, 2025, I tried to end my life. After years of institutional harm from numerous NHS trusts, I had been hovering in a state of suicidal ideation. However, it was the conglomeration of TEWV’s, North Yorkshire County Council and Ampleforth Surgery’s neglect that pushed me to try to commit suicide.

I couldn’t hold the heaviness of TEWV withdrawing their support, North Yorkshire County Council withdrawing my social care support and my repeated discoveries that Ampleforth surgery was falsifying my medical records. It was too much.

The shock and the trauma were too much to hold. I had nowhere to turn for help with it. I felt desperately alone and frightened, and I wanted to go.

Misled about an Inpatient Bed

I took a large overdose out in the open in coastal Northumbria. As I understand it, some people found me unconscious on a golf course, and I woke up twelve hours later in A&E at Cramlington Emergency Care Hospital. After they administered IV NAC for 48 hours, CNTW assessed me. They said that I was still at risk and that I needed an inpatient admission. They confirmed that TEWV were arranging an inpatient bed for me at Cross Lane Hospital. The audio clip below records this conversation I had with the CNTW crisis team in Northumbria.

The discharge summary from Northumbria NHS also states that a bed was being arranged for me.

On 9th February, after Northumbria NHS discharged me, TEWV told me on the phone that there ‘was no bed’. There was no inpatient admission. They misled me. The crisis team at TEWV gave me five outpatient appointments at Cross Lane Hospital and then cut off all further support.

On 6th March, 2025, the crisis team at TEWV also told North Yorkshire County (NYCC) to close down the safeguarding concern that the Care Quality Commission, (CQC) raised on my behalf. This did lead to NYCC closing down the concern and taking no action. As a result of TEWV’s action, I was left with no safeguarding when I was deeply vulnerable and at risk.

It has been nine months since I survived my suicide attempt, and TEWV has left me with no support and ensured that I have been denied any safeguarding by NYCC. It is inhumane and cruel.

Conclusion

I can’t put words to how it feels to have had no mental health support for this long. And to have been denied safeguarding. I wish Northumbria NHS had left me unconscious because I’ve woken up to more abuse from TEWV than I went to sleep with. Things are worse than they were before I tried to go.

Being denied mental health support after surviving a suicide attempt is like being thirsty and not being able to get a drink of water. It gets harder as the days pass. The thirst deepens. That thirst translates into a numbness I have never experienced before. I cannot feel who I am anymore.

It’s also horrific knowing I cannot even go to A&E at Scarborough for support.  I can’t go anywhere for help. I’m trapped. If I go an A&E department for help in another location, they will likely liaise with TEWV, who will control and manipulate the narrative.

I think the lasting memory of TEWV is what one of their crisis team nurses said to me at one of my five outpatient appointments in February.

She asked if I had any further plans to end my life. I told her I did. I told her what they were. She said, ‘You want to keep your cards close to your chest, because if you tell us your plans, I’ll have to write it in your notes, and we’ll scupper your chances. Keep things quiet and you’ll succeed.’

I’m really not joking.

It’s incomprehensible.

The silencing of the suicidal.

Video 10: Advocacy Video Campaign

  Photo Credits: Ron Lach and Alex Green on Pexels. Hasan Almasial, Andreea Popp and Mehrpouya on Unsplash. Copyright Free Pictures on Pixabay.