A DOCTOR has called for mental health wards to be set up at every general hospital.

Dr Tom Smith, Lancashire Telegraph health expert, called for action as a commission called for the practice of sending mentally ill people long distances for treatment to end. Around 500 mentally ill people every month are estimated to travel more than 30 miles to be admitted to hospitals far from their own homes.

These long-distance admissions are due to difficulties in finding acute inpatient beds or suitable alternative services in the area where they live. Dr Smith said: “Problems arise with people who really need to have proper care having to go a long way to find a place suitable for them. That can be quite traumatic. What we need is better mental health services. At each general hospital there should be a mental health ward. Mental health is not a separate illness from physical illness, it’s just that physical part we call the brain.”

A new independent commission led by Lord Nigel Crisp and supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists says thousands of people in England each year action and calls for the practice to end by October 2017.

The commission wants a new four-hour wait target to be introduced for admissions or acceptance for home-based treatment following assessment for acute mental illness. Blackburn GP Dr Paul Fourie, said the practice was ‘not that unusual’.

He added: “In general, the mental health services, counselling and appointments are local and easily accessible. The concern is for specialist and in-patient care, and those places are limited and may be full.”

Lisa Moorhouse, from the Adult Mental Health Network Director at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said it had experienced an increased demand for inpatient mental health services.

She said: “Our number one priority has been to ensure that our patients receive the highest quality care when they need it and in some cases this has resulted in referring patients to beds outside of the Lancashire area to ensure they can receive the treatment they require.”

The Trust has recently developed initiatives to reduce the pressure on beds which as resulted in the numbers of people receiving treatment in a bed outside Lancashire dropping by 66 per cent, she added.