I READ with concern about the potential plans to close the mental health wards at the Royal Bolton Hospital.

I have been an inpatient on these wards on many occasions and have come to recognise their pivotal role in providing security and support to vulnerable and desperate patients in crisis and provide respite to overwhelmed carers.

I am thoroughly unconvinced that the loss of beds will not impact the care that service users receive and approach the subject of care in the community with great trepidation.

I have experienced the practice within the unit of suicide watch, wherein patients are observed 24 hours a day, which would obviously be impossible to achieve in a community setting.

This degree of supervision is just not feasible outside the inpatient unit and I fear that this will result in suicidal and aggressive patients being neglected and cause a sharp increase in suicide rates for the town.

In addition, channelling the large volume of patients to other units will inevitably result in many patients falling through the net as cases are prioritised to the point where service users are allowed to reach crisis point before any intervention occurs.

This should not be the mantra of the service as surely the point of mental health care is to provide support before a crisis becomes imminent.

It is my opinion that all that will result from these bed closures is patients being admitted to units much further afield causing increased distress to patients who will be situated far from the support network of friends and family.

Kim Mann Bromley Cross