Mental health is a growing problem in the UK and globally. I have been in the mental health system for 5 years both in inpatient and outpatient settings. During that time I have met a lot of amazing people, all with their own struggles and journeys, however the one thing we all have in common is our agreement on the vast lack of mental health support in the community. 
We have created this petition to try to introduce the idea of having a&e departments or crisis centres nationally that are specifically designed for mental health patients. This would benefit these patients in a number of different ways, for example:

1. General a&e departments can be very loud and busy which can deter mental health patients from accessing the care that they need
2. The staff would be specifically mental health trained so that they could aid in deescalating crisis situations and would be caring and compassionate which would help patients feel listened to rather than judged or dismissed 
3. There would be a higher staff ratio which would mean riskier patients would be able to be kept safe while they were there
4. There would also be more trained psychiatric professionals on site so that the patient wait time is reduced and acutely unwell patients could be seen to and sent to an appropriate hospital more quickly 

These are just a few out of many examples of reasons why this change would help hundreds and even thousands of people on a daily basis.

This change is important to me because 2 years ago the love of my life committed suicide. The pain of losing her hurts me every day but the fact that it could have been prevented by measures such as this hurts even worse. She was inpatient for a short while but when she was discharged she had zero support, living for months in a homeless hostel and suffering alone. In her last few weeks she was shouting and begging for some form of mental health support and made it very clear to professionals that she had plans to end her life but she got nothing and was left to suffer until December 14th 2021 when she finally decided to take her life. 

The purpose of sharing my story is to definitively show that by improving community mental health support then maybe we would lose less people to suicide and we would help millions of people who are suffering and need extra support before it’s too late. 

All signatures would mean everything to a lot of people and every signature counts towards saving precious lives so please help us out! 

Thankyou for all your support! #liveforsymphony x