AGAINST the grim background of turned-away and discharged patients committing suicide and, in one case, also killing someone else, the improvements to mental health care at Blackburn's Queen's Park Hospital in the form of the new £6.76million unit are as welcome as they are evidently necessary.

But we have to ask once more whether the distress experienced at Queen's Park will be avoided in the future.

For the crucial problem at the root of these recent tragedies is, it seems, hardly being reduced.

Will the risk of disturbed people killing themselves after being turned away from Queen's Park because of a shortage of beds - as has happened twice in the past year - be lessened when this plan entails the creation of just two extra beds?

That is our concern. And it is one also recognised by the hospital trust.

For last year, when proposing these improvements, they acknowledged that the current provision of 70 beds was low for a population of more than 270,000, for which 80 to 100 beds would be usual.

Yet they have settled upon a new 72-bed unit and, it seems, hope that the level of community-based care will safely cope with the pressures on it for accommodation.

But, if that is the strategy, is it not dependent on the investment in community services being sufficient?

And in view of the problems the health authorities are encountering at present, with a £200,000 shortfall in funding restricting the cover provided by the 24-hour rapid response team that is meant to deal with emergencies in the community, it would seem that the decision not to provide far more beds at the unit amounts to a gamble.

Hospitals boss John Thomas tells us that, in addition to the new unit, the trust "will continue to seek every opportunity to develop 24-hour community-based services as part of the overall strategy."

Is this enough?

Will there be enough beds?

In view of the horrors of the past, we very much hope so.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.