'I was sectioned and saw true horror of NHS after 14 years of Tory control'

When Hope Daniels was sectioned and placed in an NHS psychiatric ward, she expected salvation. But instead of comfort and care, she was faced with bloody walls, vacant nursing staff, and no treatment plan. Hope, from Hackney, East London, was 48 when she was sectioned. She says: “It was like a prison cell, like something you’d see on 24 Hours In Police Custody. The bed was nailed to the floor, trapped there, just like me. There were no drawers, furniture, windows, radio, telephone or TV. “Every half an hour all through the night a torch shone through the letterbox into my room. I’d have had more peace sleeping on the M25. I slept there for one night, and refused to sleep in it again, and slept in the lounge. Everyone, including the nurses, looked through me. They seemed anxious to avoid eye contact as though my madness was infectious.” In her new book, Inside the Madhouse, Hope exposes the stark reality of the UK’s public mental health services. She says: “You want to see what 14 years of Tory control has done to the NHS? Get sectioned. "From the moment I arrived, I was treated like a prisoner, stripped of control over my life and my healthcare. Medication was administered without explanation – and sometimes without consent. You are admitted at your lowest ebb and placed in an environment that does nothing but make it worse.” After a bad break-up in 2021, Hope, who is now 52, began suffering from psychosis. She explains: “My childhood was traumatic, I was in and out of care and abused. And I carried that with me throughout my life into adulthood. But despite a chaotic upbringing, I’d forged a career for myself as a successful author and project director for Citizens Advice, had two beautiful children, Jake and Lucy, and life was good.” Then a relationship breakdown sent her into a spiral. She says: “I was having paranoid thoughts that I felt were real. I thought I was on the TV show Hunted without my knowledge. I drank heavily. This went on for some months, before I tried to take my own life.” Fortunately, Hope sent a goodbye email to a colleague before her suicide attempt. They alerted the authorities. After a hospital stay, during which she was supported by daughter Lucy, 32, and son Jake, 30, she was transferred to a secure NHS psychiatric unit in December 2021. She was horrified by what she found. Hope says: “It was dirty, the levels of which if found in a hotel you’d walk out. But we couldn’t walk out. Food was unhealthy, with nothing fresh on offer. “Staff didn’t answer questions. Patients would disappear without warning and we wouldn’t be told where they’d gone, which was unsettling. We weren’t allowed pens, yet we all had cigarette lighters stashed in our bras.” Hope also alleges that on multiple occasions drugs were administered without knowledge or consent to subdue psychiatric patients, with low levels of drugs administered elsewhere that “turned them into zombies”. Hope says: “When I acted out or argued, I wasn’t treated like I was unwell, I was treated like an inmate. A person going through a mental health crisis can’t heal with drugs alone, but this was the only thing offered. There was no clear treatment plan for getting me well again.” In the darkness, light came in the form of her fellow patients. And, Hope says, there was an incredible camaraderie. Hope says: “If someone new came in they would be taken under the wing of those who had been there a while. I’d order Deliveroo for everyone so we could eat something that wasn’t slop. Ironically, the other mental patients stopped me from going insane.” After two days, Hope made an official complaint to NYAS and, after six weeks, was moved to a private facility. And it was there that she was able to truly begin her healing. Hope says: “To get there, I was transported by five personnel in a secure van. The type you see going to the court for trials. “In the first hospital, all the staff were in a locked office and never came out. They were behind glass. It wasn’t like that in the Priory, it was open-plan. It was a nicer environment and they had a clear care plan. I had a named nurse. “Staff were available, you could have a hot chocolate with them. I had therapy every day. In the first hospital I was manic, in the second I was silent. I withdrew into myself to recover, and could feel myself getting better.” After eight weeks, in February 2022, Hope was deemed well enough to leave the private facility. “I booked an appointment with a substance abuse group and in the March moved into my campervan on my daughter’s driveway, then the police found me a refuge.” But, as Hope found, mental health care is as lacking outside of official facilities as it is within them. Hope says: “My daughter spent every day calling mental health services, pleading for help. Within weeks, I’d lost £6,000 gambling. I had no mental health support at all – not a single phone call.” Two weeks later, Hope tried to take her own life again. Finally, mental health support was assigned to her and she began to find her feet. Four years on, she is doing well. She works full time as a practice improvement consultant for kids in care, has her own apartment, and a new partner of three years named Stevie, 54, a chef. Writing Inside the Madhouse was cathartic, she says, and helped her come to terms with what she’d been through. And she’s determined in her new chapter to expose the flaws in public health. “Our NHS needs help,” she says. ‘The disparity between NHS and private care feels huge. I recognise how fortunate I was to experience a month of private care, without that I might still have been in the NHS unit today.” Today, Hope has a twice-yearly appointment with a psychiatrist. Both her children have got married, and she has a fifth grandchild on the way. She adds: “I take a terrifying cocktail of drugs, including anti-psychotic medication, and even though I don’t like it, I accept it.” The number of people seeking urgent psychiatric help in the UK has risen by more than 40% in the past 20 years; in 2024 the NHS received 5.2 million referrals. By contrast the number of beds available for psychiatric in-patients are at their lowest since data collection began in 2010 – there are currently around 17,000 beds available to accommodate the 23,000 people in need of urgent in-patient care. Hope adds: “And is hospital care the answer? Being in a unit was in itself a great trauma for me. I felt like I was punished for being ill.” She hopes Andy Burnham’s social care reform will include support for mental health. Hope says: “It’s been forgotten for far too long.” *Inside The Madhouse by Hope Daniels (Mirror Books, £10.99) on sale October 22. Pre-order on Amazon.