| State Hospital for Scotland and Northern Ireland | |
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Shown in Scotland
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| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Carstairs, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom |
| Organisation | |
| Care system | Public NHS |
| Hospital type | Psychiatric |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | No Accident & Emergency |
| Beds | 240 However a rebuilding of The State Hospital due to open in July 2011 will reduce this to 140 beds |
| Links | |
| Website | http://www.tsh.scot.nhs.uk/ |
| Lists | Hospitals in Scotland |
The State Hospital for Scotland and Northern Ireland[1] (also The State Hospital or Carstairs Hospital) is a psychiatric hospital providing care and treatment in conditions of high security for around 140 patients from Scotland and Northern Ireland who need to be detained in hospital under conditions of special security that can only be provided by the State Hospital. The hospital is located near the village of Carstairs, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
The hospital is run by the State Hospitals Board for Scotland which is a public body accountable to the First Minister of Scotland through the Scottish Government Health and Wellbeing Directorates. They are a Special Health Board, part of the NHS Scotland and the only hospital of its kind within Scotland. Following a restructuring of secure psychiatric services in Scotland a new hospital is being constructed on the current site at a cost of £60m.
The Board and the Hospital has around 700 staff.
Their aim is "to help patients recover sufficiently from their illness to enable them to be transferred to services closer to their homes. Where this is not possible, we strive to help them to cope with their disabilities, and to live their lives as fully as possible."[2]
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The hospital has an alarm system that is activated if any patient escapes to alert people in the vicinity, including those in the surrounding town of Lanark, and local villages such as Ravenstruther. This alarm system is based on World War II air-raid sirens, and a two-tone alarm sounds across the whole area in the event of an escape. The system is tested on the third Thursday of every month at 1300hrs when the all clear siren, consisting of three 30 second blasts, sounds.[3]
One infamous incident of a break out happened in 1976, when two patients Thomas McCulloch and Robert Mone, brutally murdered a nurse, patient and a policeman in a pre-planned murder plot.[4]