The heartbroken family of a mental health blogger who died after ingesting a poisonous substance while under the care of mental health services have claimed the facility where she was staying failed her.
Beth Matthews, 26, died on March 21, 2022 after collapsing in front of staff members at The Priory Hospital Cheadle Royal in Manchester where she was a patient after being detained under the Mental Health Act.
Beth, who had thousands of followers online, consumed the poison in front of two supervisors. She suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to Wythenshawe Hospital, but was pronounced dead shortly before 4pm that day.
Her high-risk category meant she was not allowed to open her own post, where the substance had been contained. However, an internal investigation by The Priory, where Beth had been transferred for specialist therapy, found "inconsistencies" in staff’s approach, with some allowing Beth to open her own post.
Now, Beth's mum Jane Matthews, 60, has spoken out for the first time since her daughter’s death, alongside Beth's sister Lucy, 29. The pair have criticised The Priory for their treatment of Beth and believe more could have been done to save her.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Lucy said: “It scares me that there are still patients in there. It is where she should have been safe."
She added: “It’s too hard to be here without Beth. Everywhere is her.”
“I felt like she wasn’t being looked after,” Jane said, who admits she is "an absolute wreck" following her daughter's death. "But by the time we realised what was happening, it was too late.”
An inquest into Beth's death in January heard the 26-year-old first attempted suicide in 2019, breaking her legs, ankles and femur, and fracturing her pelvis and spine. The incident left her with "significant long-term pain and disability".
She spent several months in hospital before being transferred to the Fletcher Ward, a psychiatric unit at Bodmin Community Hospital in Cornwall, from where she was discharged in September 2019. Following this, Beth set up her blog ‘Life Beyond the Ledge’, in which she documented her experiences as a "suicide survivor" in graphic detail.
But in 2021 her mental health deteriorated again and she was eventually transferred to the Fern Unit, a specialist unit for women with her condition at The Priory Hospital Cheadle Royal in Heald Green, Greater Manchester.
Lucy said: "When Beth was sent to the Priory, she told us, ‘I’m glad I’m in here because when I’m in my dark place I know that I won’t go all the way, people will stop it.' She was meant to be safe."
It was a ten-hour round trip for Beth's family but they visited her as much as they could. However, Jane says that they soon began to notice that she looked and sounded increasingly ill. Beth told the family she ate mostly junk food and takeaways, Jane says, and usually spent 12 hours a day in bed, on her phone.
Beth's family say her attempts to take her life were “constant” and as a result she was monitored 24 hours a day by staff. She told her family that the staff watching her often fell asleep.
The inquest into her death heard that the upcoming three-year anniversary of her previous suicide attempt, as well as a recent break-up with her long-term partner Matthew Parkinson, the possibility of being transferred back to Cornwall, and a looming tribunal to challenge her section, were all factors likely to have had a "negative" impact on her mental health in the lead-up to her death.
Recalling seeing Beth a week before she died, Jane says her daughter seemed “lethargic, drugged-up” on medicine prescribed for her mental health, "She looked like a zombie. This was the place where she should have been finding who she was again, not losing it," Jane added.
“I could see exactly what she was thinking, I just knew," Jane said, who feared what her daughter might do. The next day the worried mum rang up the hospital and told them: “I’m really worried. I just need you to be extra vigilant.”
Jurors at the inquest earlier this year found that neglect by staff at the hospital contributed to her death by suicide. On the penultimate day of the nine-day inquest, The Priory Group admitted in a statement that Beth’s care plan "was not followed" as it should have been on the day of her death.
They accepted that "on the balance of probabilities if the measure related to post on Beth’s care plan was followed, she would not have ingested the substance, and would not have died as she did".
A Priory Group spokesperson told The Sunday Times that it “had already taken steps to address how we document risk and communicate patients’ care plans”.
They added: “Despite the risks inherent in caring for such patients, unexpected deaths of this nature remain especially rare. It remains one of the safest mental healthcare providers in the UK.”
The Matthews family, alongside other bereaved families and the charity Mind, have now come together to call for a public inquiry into deaths in all inpatient mental health settings
“It was not a one-off,” Lucy says. “I feel so angry and let down.”
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