HM Mental Health

Albion Ventures, one of the largest independent venture capital investors in the UK, has sold Nelson House, a mental health rehabilitation hospital to a joint venture formed by Care UK and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust for £8m. The transaction is the first to involve a joint venture between the NHS and a private healthcare provider to acquire a hospital.

The board of beleaguered learning disability care provider Castlebeck placed the company in administration on March 5, some 18 months after a gruelling television expose into abuse began a full-scale national investigation into mental health care homes.

Glen Care has opened the next phase in the development of its specialist care service in Anerley, South London.

The mortality rate among people who are in contact with specialist mental health services is nearly four times (3.6) that of the general population, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).

A new service to address the lack of specialist care provision in London for people with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is being opened by Glen Care.

Cygnet Health Care, one of the largest outsourcing providers to the NHS of acute and intensive care mental health services, has noted that patient length of stay has fallen in several key areas.

The Department of Health launched two funding competitions in January – with funding of £5m up-for-grabs – to encourage businesses to design products and services to help people with mental health issues and people at end-of-life. The competition for mental health funding calls for creative ideas and technologies that could mean mental illnesses are diagnosed earlier, and the disease better managed through a more tailored approach to care. The other competition focuses on how new technologies can help people have a better experience of end-of-life care. Ideas could include new technologies that provide greater comfort and help with managing pain.

Some mental health hospitals have allowed a culture of containment and control to take priority over support and care, according to David Behan, chief executive of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

A group of MPs has published a collection of essays about their personal and professional experiences of a range of mental health issues. However, at a meeting of mental health experts at the House of Commons Westminster, organised by national think-tank the Centre for Mental Health, to mark the publication, Professor Philip Sugarman, chief executive of mental health charity, St Andrew's Healthcare, asked why NHS mental health expenditure has shrunk in the last year, despite the government’s commitment to maintain mental health funding and the unprecedented comments by sitting MPs in the House of Commons last September.

St Andrew’s Healthcare has received £52.5m of funding from Lloyds TSB which will allow it to develop brand new facilities at its Northampton base. The deal, agreed last month, will allow the mental health charity to build a 90-bed psychiatric hospital and provide secure accommodation for a number of new services. It will also allow for the expansion of existing services on a national scale. Professor Philip Sugarman chief executive officer at St Andrew’s said: In the last ten years we have completed a £200m programme of development and refurbishment across four sites, with our new units achieving high levels of occupancy. We have seen continuous growth and a recent sharp rise in market share.