Staff told 'Don't call 999' for suicidal Dunfermline woman

Karen MacDonald, 60, who is bipolar, said she had already taken steps to commit suicide in December 2022 and made her "closure" calls to say she wasn't coming back. 

Suffering a crippling low due to her illness, she needed urgent medical intervention. 
Karen said: "What would normally happen is a consultant would come and assess me, decide if I need to go to A&E and be detained. 

"He should have come and assessed me and he didn't. On two occasions. 

"I got told he's not coming to see you, he doesn't have any appointments until after Christmas, that they should 'Just let her go' and don't call the police or ambulance." 

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A member of staff called 999 anyway and paramedics persuaded her to go to A&E, where she was detained for her own safety. 

Karen said: "The ICU consultant said I was really lucky to be alive."

On another occasion it was a member of the public, and not a health professional, who called the ambulance and ultimately helped save her life. 

Her husband, John said: "If they decide a patient has capacity they can say it's their choice, they don't have a mental illness and if they commit suicide it's their decision and we exonerate ourselves. 

"Karen had already taken steps that would have killed her. That December I called the community mental health nurses, they got hold of her on the phone and she agreed to meet them. 

"But when they called the consultant he had said 'She has capacity so don't call 999 unless she tells you to call an ambulance'. 

"He refused to meet her and said she could make an appointment. This was an emergency!

"She would be dead if she had followed the consultant's guidelines." 

An explanation of sorts came when Karen requested her medical notes, it was a year before she received them. 

She discovered that a consultant had - without telling her - changed her diagnosis of 40 years and put in her records a different year for her mum's death to suit his explanation that it had led to her mental illness.

Karen said: "I was originally diagnosed in 1983. As usually happens with the way bipolar works, I was diagnosed with depression to begin with as I was really low. 

"Next time I was on a high and trying to set up a Beatles concert on the roof of my local Tesco!

"That's when they said it's not depression. It's bipolar, or manic depression as it was called then. 

"In my notes he had removed that diagnosis. 

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"Either he's right and I've been treated for 40 years for something I've never had - are 40 years of psychiatrists wrong, from different countries too as I worked abroad? - or he's just decided to change it without telling me or discussing my symptoms with me. 

"My mum died in 1989 but because this doctor wanted to make it look like my illness was a reaction to my mum's death, and not due to being bipolar, he put that my mum's death was 1983. 

"I challenged that and they still won't admit it's wrong and are saying it must be accurate. I know what year my own mum died!"

And she believes she knows why it was done. 

She said: "Consultants don't want to be responsible for suicides so they try and change the diagnosis so they can say the patient has capacity. 

"And it's happening all over as they don't want to be accountable to a coroner if a patient commits suicide." 

Karen said that she had received 17 years of good treatment from NHS Fife but it changed around the time of Covid. 

She said: "When I was younger I was only ill every two to three years. 

"December 2022 was the last time I was in hospital. For the eight years before that I was in and out. 

"During the last few years the menopause exacerbated everything for me but they just ignored it. 

"One minute I was angry, the next I was crying. I would say 'I'm really sorry, I'm going through the menopause'. 

"But in my notes it said 'She made the excuse it was the menopause but she can't prove it'! I couldn't believe it."

She continued: "I've been in and out of wards for 40 years and I've seen the changes. 

"Obviously in mental health wards you've got people who are disturbed and distressed but too many nurses can't do de-escalation as they don't know how to. 

"They're supposed to get mandatory training every three years but they don't, we were told they haven't got enough time.

"They shout back at patients or turn and walk away, which is provocation rather then de-escalation." 

John said: "Karen kicked a door on one occasion when she was distressed and they reported her to the police, claiming she was being abusive. 

"That's the culture now. 

"One, it's not abuse, as abuse is something that is deliberate and repetitive.

"And secondly, it's not justice. The police don't investigate. If the nurses say you did it, the police say you did it."

He continued: "And to them, if it's written down in the patient's notes it must be true. 

"We challenged what was in the notes and were told 'All nurses are trained to be accurate and therefore they are always accurate and do not make mistakes'. 

"It's unbelievable. Humans are fallible. We all make mistakes. We mishear, misinterpret and misunderstand. But we're told nurses never do that." 

In response to the MacDonald's claims, a spokesperson from Fife Health and Social Care Partnership said: "We do not discuss individuals for reasons of confidentiality."