Bipolar Today

The Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman has found that the 2006 death of Carole Foster, a 52-year-old woman with bipolar disorder, and that her needs were not met under the Disability Discrimination Act. Having gallstones, Ms. Foster was discharged from hospital with the expectation that she would return for treatment. However, when the symptoms became worse, she was readmitted to hospital and the pain from her gallstones was attributed to her bipolar disorder. As a result, her gallstones went untreated for seven months and she died. No individuals have been held responsible for the death, but the Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust and Pennine Acute Trust apologized for the woman’s death. More information can be found in this article from the Manchester Evening News.

Commentary

A quite similar death occurred in March of this year, in which a 59-year-old, dying bipolar woman was ignored as attention seeking. It’s a little unclear why exactly Ms. Foster’s pain was considered to be a symptom of bipolar disorder, as acute abdominal pain is not a symptom of bipolar disorder. Presumably, they didn’t take seriously her self-reported symptoms because of her condition.

Both cases were in England, and again it seems that England’s social services need to develop better protocols to deal with self-reported symptoms by people with mental illnesses, as bipolar people are dying when being ignored. It’s humiliating to be distrusted by physicians when reporting symptoms, and it’s discriminatory, humiliating and dangerous when our self-reported symptoms are ignored because we are mentally ill.

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