THE country's first emergency mental health unit is to be set up in Manchester under plans to transform the city's over-stretched services.
The new unit will be run alongside the accident and emergency department at Manchester Royal Infirmary and will cater for patients suffering from the most serious mental health crises, including schizophrenia, self-harm and depression.
The centre, modelled on facilities in Canada and Switzerland, will also act as a round-the-clock contact point for mental health patients, their families and GPs helping them get the right services as quickly as possible.
The moves are part of a é4m annual funding boost aimed at revamping the city's mental health services, which struggle to cope with demand and are é6m in debt.
The Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust has been categorised as running at "catastrophic" risk level, meaning there is a high risk of an incident, such as an avoidable patient death.
But Laura Roberts, chief executive of Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, said: "This is a landmark decision, and ultimately means we will be able to deliver a more effective service to users and carers across Manchester.
Opportunities
"With é4m of additional funding available each year to help implement the changes, the process will be well-resourced. In particular, we anticipate that extra posts will be created, and existing staff will have new opportunities to develop their skills.
"The next 12 months will place heavy demands on the trust, but I know that everyone involved will work hard to achieve the goal of providing the highest quality care to patients and service users."
Among the other changes to mental health services agreed by the joint committee of primary care trusts - PCTs - and the executive committee of Manchester city council are an early intervention service and more specialised community, mental health teams.
Service users, carers and members of the public took part in consultation over the plans.
Coun Basil Curley, executive member for adult services, said: "These changes will improve both the quality of care, and the access to care for people with mental health problems."
And chair of the joint committee, Coun Val Stevens, said: "I'm confident these plans will deliver those significant improvements."
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Its about time some money gets spend on mental health people with serious problems are walking the streets and dont get help until they have killed or attacked someone.
Its no where near enough though and there will probably be a epidemic of mental health problems when all the people who did ecstasy etc in the 90s
start to go funny too!
The mental Health Trust has wasted money since it was formed, it is top heavy with extremly poor managers and the frontline staff are worn down by understaffing, long hours and a continual stream of ideas to improve the services to the people of Manchester, these ideas have resulted in less staff and fewer beds with millions of pounds wasted implementing them, oh thats value for money!