Learning from Loss: tell us about your experience of the investigation of the death of a person being treated for mental illness, personality disorder, or learning disability: Family and carers survey

Overview

The Scottish Government is carrying out a review of the arrangements currently in place for investigating the deaths of people who use mental health services. Once the review has been completed we will publish it and present it to the Scottish Parliament.

As part of this review we want to hear from people who have experience of these investigations. This includes where people have died by suicide. If you are a family member, carer or friend of someone who died and can tell us more about what investigation there was (or if there was no investigation at all) then we would like to hear from you.

Why your views matter

When someone dies when they are receiving mental health care and treatment, several different organisations can be involved in looking into what happened. These can include health and social care organisations as well as justice organisations and others. 

However, it’s very important that we get the views of families, carers and friends who have direct experience of these investigations so that we can understand what does and doesn’t work well. We can then help others in a similar situation. Families, carers, and friends will have a unique viewpoint which will be different to that of the services involved.

The information provided by this survey will help to inform the final report which will be presented to the Scottish Parliament in December 2018.

This survey forms part of the Scottish Government’s work to review the arrangements for investigating the deaths of patients — who at the time of death were in hospital, voluntarily or subject to detention, for treatment for mental disorder — as set out in section 37 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 2015.