More than 1,000 patients in mental health hospitals across Scotland have escaped in the last five years, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

In many of the cases police, and sometimes sniffer dogs, were involved in returning the patients to their hospitals.

Deadline News Agency report:

PATIENTS have escaped from Scottish mental hospitals an “astonishing” 1000 times in just five years.

Vulnerable dementia sufferers as well as people detained under the mental health act were among at least 1,067 patients to go missing from medium and low risk units across the country.

And the total is likely to be much higher as Scotland’s largest health board – NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde – failed to provide information despite a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.