'Unless something is different there are going to be more deaths'

CORONER TO WRITE TO HOME SECRETARY AFTER ANOTHER DEATH AT PSYCHIATRIC UNIT

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

A CORONER has vowed to write to the health secretary because ‘things need to happen’ following another concerning death at a psychiatric unit run by The Priory Group.

Assistant coroner Andrew Bridgman spoke out after a jury returned a ‘misadventure’ verdict over the death of Amina Ismail, 20, who they concluded died of ‘ligature strangulation’. She went into cardiac arrest after her constant, one-on-one observations were reduced to every 15 minutes, the inquest has heard.

Amina, 20, was found collapsed in her room on the Pankhurst Ward, a locked psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU), at the Priory’s Cheadle Royal Hospital, Stockport, on September 15 last year. Emergency services attended and continued resuscitation attempts which had been commenced by staff, but she was pronounced dead shortly after.