A HEALTH service chief yesterday suggested that a review of the policy

of moving mentally ill patients into the community might be called for.

The call was made following the annual report of the Mental Welfare

Commission for Scotland, which revealed there had been 44 suicides in

Scottish hospitals last year.

The NHS is to investigate whether suicides among mentally ill patients

in long-stay institutions is a growing problem.

A quarter of the suicides were recorded at the Royal Cornhill Hospital

in Aberdeen, run by Grampian Healthcare. The hospital maintains its

method of reporting suicides is more rigorous than those of other

regions.

Chief executive of the NHS in Scotland, Mr Geoff Scaife, making his

first visit to Grampian Health Board, said that, obviously, they would

have to look at how deaths were recorded, although he was a little

surprised to see the line being taken by the Aberdeen hospital,

suggesting that it was its method of recording that explained away the

numbers.

Mr Scaife said in Aberdeen: ''I would want to reflect on what the

numbers are telling us about our policy of gradually closing the

long-stay institutions and moving patients into the community.

''So I would want to know what the processes are, and I would want to

be clear whether the problem of accidental deaths and suicides in our

long-stay institutions is a problem that is growing or not.''

He said they were talking about a few isolated deaths in institutions.

There were few patients who moved into the community where the network

of care and support broke down. But there had been a few well-publicised

cases and it would repay them all to investigate and understand why the

support, that was supposed to be available, occasionally broke down.

''We do ourselves no good in trying to close institutions and trying

to modernise services if we don't get the right balance of support to

people in their homes or in the community,'' said Mr Scaife. ''We have

got to get that right and get it right before we transfer patients

out.''

Across Scotland there was a long way to go in changing the balance of

care of the mentally ill, people with learning disabilities, and care of

the elderly. They needed to develop more community-based care and

improve the resource base in primary care.