Patient often in distress before death, court told

A hospital patient tried to harm herself with a bin liner the year before she took her own life at the same unit, a court has heard.

Alice Figueiredo, 22, was being treated on the Hepworth ward at Goodmayes Hospital, a mental health hospital in Ilford in east London, when she died in July 2015.

A nurse responsible for her care on a previous admission to the unit told the Old Bailey that Ms Figueiredo would often show she was distressed by trying to harm herself.

The North East London NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, is charged with corporate manslaughter, which it denies, while ward manager Benjamin Aninakwa denies manslaughter by gross negligence.

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Mental health nurse Amy Berry told the jury she had started working on the ward in 2011.

She said she first came across Ms Figueiredo in 2013, and then again on an admission in 2014.

“She was charming and endearing, but her behaviour could be challenging sometimes,” she said.

Ms Figueiredo suffered from bipolar affective disorder and had periods of extreme depression.

The court was shown an entry written by Ms Berry in the system used to make patient observations at the hospital.

It described two occasions on a day in 2014 when Ms Figueiredo was extremely distressed, saying she did not want to live any more.

According to this entry, she twice tried to harm herself, on one of those occasions using a plastic bag.

For the prosecution, Karen Robinson asked whether plastic bags were allowed on the unit.

Ms Berry told the court that visitors were banned from bringing them on to the unit, but there were plastic bin liners in the ward’s communal toilet at the time.

Ms Berry added that the communal toilet was locked, except when a patient asked a member of staff if they could use it.

Previously the court heard that when Ms Figueiredo was a patient at the hospital between February and July 2015 she had tried to harm herself with plastic bags on 18 occasions.

Despite this, they were not removed from Hepworth ward.

On the 7 July 2015, Ms Figueiredo accessed the communal toilet on the ward and used a bin liner to end her own life.

The trial continues and is expected to last nine weeks.

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