'Getting my wife mental health care was a fight from day one'

A husband has spoken about his "fight" to access mental health support for his wife before she took her own life.

Andrea Mann, 61, had suffered from severe anxiety for several years and sought help from Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust before she died in February 2024.

Following an inquest in January, a coroner has written to the trust warning them there had been "lost opportunities" to provide Mrs Mann with appropriate care.

The trust said that "lasting improvements" would be made to its services but Mrs Mann's husband Tony said they had struggled to get support "from day one".

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Mr Mann said his wife's mental health had worsened in 2022 and she had made contact with the trust's community mental health team.

"It was hard to access care, trying to get an appointment, trying to get them to listen, to understand her, to know who Andrea was," he said.

Between February 2022 and November 2023, he said his wife, who worked as a hairdresser, had had four appointments, two over the phone and two face-to-face, and always with a different member of staff.

For one of the appointments, Mr Mann said they had had to wait for six months.

"Even when the appointments happened, it was like a tick-box exercise," Mr Mann said.

"They put us on a carousel and we never got off it."

At the inquest, it was heard that during the appointments Mrs Mann was referred back to her GP for medication adjustments.

Mr Mann said no other help or next steps had been offered, making his wife feel like a burden and that she was not listened to.

Despite frequent requests for a psychiatric appointment, none was offered and Mrs Mann ended up seeking a private consultation at the end of 2023.

But at that point, Mr Mann said, his wife had "given up hope" and help was too late.

She died in hospital on 11 February 2024.

"I feel let down. I feel guilty that I thought that care was coming," he said.

"They let my wife down. I still feel that if she'd seen a doctor or psychiatrist earlier, we would have had a different outcome.

"It's something I'll never know but they never gave Andrea that option."

Paying tribute to his wife, who ran Style Counsel Hairdressing in Idle, Mr Mann described her as a "great mum" to their daughters Jodie and Kerri and a "superb nana" to grandchildren Tyler and Layla.

"She looked after us, she worked really hard and she lived a full life," he said.

"She was an amazing person and she gave me everything I've got."

Angela Brocklehurst, assistant coroner for Bradford, this week issued her Prevention of Future Deaths report to the trust and called for action to be taken.

A trust spokesperson said a "thorough" review had taken place to identify learnings and work had been completed to strengthen patient assessments to ensure services continued to meet an individual's ongoing care needs.

"We will of course act on the additional areas that have been raised to ensure that lasting improvements are made," the spokesperson added.

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