{"id":373830,"date":"2026-04-11T01:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/373830\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T01:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:36:17","slug":"patient-locked-in-single-room-for-more-than-four-days-after-mental-health-crisis-investigation-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/373830\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient locked in single room for more than four days after mental health crisis, investigation finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mental health<\/a> patients in crisis are facing “inhumane” conditions due to legal ambiguities, a new investigation has found. <\/p>\n

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body<\/a> (HSSIB) revealed that A&E staff lack the powers to prevent individuals awaiting assessment or admission from leaving.<\/p>\n

This forces doctors into an difficult choice, described by the HSSIB as selecting the “least harmful way to break the law”. <\/p>\n

One consultant psychiatrist highlighted that the “dilemma is stark”: unlawfully holding someone, breaching human rights, or allowing them to go. <\/p>\n

Inspectors from the health safety watchdog witnessed a patient confined to a single room, with only a toilet, for over four days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not safe for staff to be in the room with them and it was not safe for the door to be unlocked as the patient kept attempting to leave and was desperate to end their life,\u201d a new interim HSSIB report said.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe HSSIB has called on the Government to act to prevent staff from working in a \u201clegal grey area\u201d (Peter Byrne\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cStaff described that the patient was not receiving any therapeutic intervention and it felt \u2018cruel\u2019 and \u2018inhumane\u2019 for them to be waiting so long for a bed when they were so mentally unwell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nichola Crust, senior safety investigator at HSSIB, said: \u201cUnclear legal powers don\u2019t just create operational complications for care.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can have a devastating impact on patients, leaving them exposed to uncertainty, emotional distress and an increased risk of harm at a time when being as safe as possible is paramount.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout clear legal frameworks, staff repeatedly told us that they are placed in an impossible position when trying to keep people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The HSSIB has called on the Government to act to prevent staff from working in a \u201clegal grey area\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-373830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}