the times | Saturday April 30 2022 11
News
The families of three patients who died
at mental health hospitals run by the
Priory Group are taking legal action
over the company’s alleged failure to
care for their loved ones.
Gary Mavin, 54, a father of three,
Mustafa Khan, 40, a racehorse owner,
and Benedict Thomas, 53, a landlord
and father of four, died while being
treated at three Priory hospitals.
The legal actions follow the Priory’s
settlement of a lawsuit brought by the
family of Stephen Bantoft, a millionaire
businessman. Bantoft, 49, killed
himself within hours of arriving at one
of its clinics in December 2015.
The Priory Group, the UK’s largest
private provider of mental healthcare,
which earns 90 per cent of its revenues
from contracts with the NHS and local
authorities, is facing growing scrutiny.
The Times disclosed yesterday that
the NHS had sent a letter to the
Increasing numbers of women are
reporting botched “thread lifts”, a
treatment popular with celebrities and
influencers.
The procedure, which has been nick-
named the “lunchtime facelift”,
involves different types of threads used
to lift any part of the face.
The two main types are made of
Poly-L-lactic acid (PLA) or polydioxan-
one (PDO) and may be smooth or have
barbs, cogs, anchors or screws to
reposition tissue.
Sarah, Duchess of York, is said to
have had a form of the treatment, as
have the actress Eva Mendes and the
make-up artist Huda Kattan. Goop, the
lifestyle site founded by the actress
Gwyneth Paltrow, has endorsed thread
lifts in the past. But according to Save
faces” or occlusions, when blood flow is
blocked. Threads that have been insert-
ed into women’s faces incorrectly are
very difficult to remove without sur-
gery, leaving some women “perma-
nently disfigured and scarred for life”.
Samantha Neyland opted for aGrieving families to sue the Priory
Katie Tarrant, Billy Kenber company last summer warning of
action unless there were “rapid
improvements” to its services.
At least 30 Priory patients have died
over the past decade in cases where the
company was criticised for its care. The
three families are taking legal action to
hold the Priory accountable for failing
to look after their loved ones.
Deborah Coles, of Inquest, a charity
that supports bereaved families, said:
“It’s like David and Goliath, fighting the
might of the Priory Group to expose the
failings, in the hope that they’ll stop it
happening to somebody else.”
Mavin had no history of mental
health trouble until illness prompted
bouts of depression. He hanged himself
using a known ligature risk point three
weeks after being admitted to Priory
Hospital Arnold in Nottinghamshire.
Despite being on staff observation
every 15 minutes he used materials that
had previously been confiscated.
Laurinda Bower, the Nottingham
coroner, criticised staff for not search-
ing his room more thoroughly. She
concluded that neglect had contributed
to his death.
Bower said the hospital, which has
twice been placed in special measures,
was responsible for “one of the worst
examples of care provided to a vulnera-
ble, mentally ill patient”.
An inspection by the care regulator
six months later found no action had
been taken to reduce ligature risks.
Lea Mavin, the patient’s wife, said: “It
feels like utter contempt and disrespect
for not only Gary but for all of the
family, that six months later they still
hadn’t bothered to rectify these risks.”
The case is at the pre-action stage but
two other families have sued the Priory.
Khan’s relatives have filed a lawsuit
after he was discharged from the Priory
Hospital North London as a “low”
suicide risk but was found hanged in
woodland three days later. They believe
the hospital failed him by not docu-menting previous threats of suicide,
failing to give therapy and discharging
him when he was a risk to himself and
the family.
Khan’s brother Murt said: “In this
kind of establishment, when there’s so
much money to be made, there’s not a
real personal touch. It’s all about
money-making: one in, one out.”
The Priory said Khan’s consultant
psychiatrist was responsible for his
care. He denied that he had breached
his duty in any way.
Jane Thomas left her husband
Benedict at the Priory Hospital Bristol
in November 2017. Five weeks later he
was dead. “I gave them my husband
who was really ill and he never came
back,” she said.
Thomas left the hospital on
unaccompanied leave on January 2,- He was due back in six hours but
stood for three hours on a train
platform less than a mile from the unit.
He stepped into the path of a train.
He was assessed several times by the
Priory as high risk overall but with low
risk of suicide and self-harm. This was
despite records from his first week that
he expressed a wish for “everything to
be over”.
His family believe he should never
have been allowed out. They claim that
he was high risk and should have been
sectioned under the Mental Health Act
to restrict his movement.
The Priory denied breaching its duty
of care over Thomas’s death. Robert
Sowersby, the assistant coroner for
Avon, did not criticise the company and
concluded the incident “was one of
those awful tragic events”.
The Priory said it could not comment
on active legal cases. It added that it
“takes all patient complaints and claims
seriously and takes every opportunity
to implement improvements”. It said
that since the NHS letter last summer it
had “carried out a comprehensive
quality review of all our sites”.Women scarred for life by unregulated facial ‘thread lifts’
Charlotte Wace Face, a national register of accredited
practitioners who campaign for
improved safety standards, complaints
about thread lift treatments rose to 213
last year, compared with 74 in 2020.
The organisation typically sees
victims fall into two groups. Older
women over 40 usually opt for “thread
face lifts” to appear younger, while
women between 18 and 30 tend to
choose “fox eye lifts” in a bid for
almond-shaped eyes.
Experts are particularly concerned
about a lack of restriction that allows
non-medics to carry it out following
training courses lasting only a day.
Ashton Collins, director of Save Face,
said it was a “frustration” that there had
been so little focus on the dangers. Her
organisation has seen “some horren-
dous complications” with “infections
that have been deep-rooted in people’s
“thread face lift” treatment to “freshen”
her look as she approached her 50th
birthday. “I had seen it all over Insta-
gram and it just looked very straightfor-
ward,” she said.
Five months later she was having
surgery under general anaesthetic to
remove the threads and swathes of
infected tissue from her face. The scars
are likely to remain for life.
Neyland, from Swansea, who has
been supported by Save Face over the
last year, booked with what she thought
was a reputable practitioner. After the
treatment, the right side of her face was
painful and swollen. Distressing boils
formed within a month.
At one point she ended up in accident
and emergency, where “they just said
‘we don’t know anything about this’ and
sent me home”, she recalled. “Because
it’s on your face, you can’t hide it,” sheadded. “That was the worst part of it.”
In England, providers offering thread
lifts carried out by healthcare profes-
sionals must be registered with the
Care Quality Commission (CQC),
which deems it a surgical procedure.
This does not apply for non-medics,
who can carry out the treatment
without regulation.
Dr Cormac Convery, a cosmetic doc-
tor who is also vice-chairman of the
Complications in Medical Aesthetics
Collaborative, said: “It is not a lunch-
time thing at all. It’s a mini-surgical pro-
cedure that has significant risks and
problems that can be quite enduring.”
The government says it intends to
introduce a licensing regime for non-
surgical cosmetic procedures such as
Botox and fillers. A Department of
Health and Social Care spokesman said
this “aims” to include cogs and threads.The actress Eva Mendes posted a
picture of the procedure on InstagramFarewell, old timer
Gallant, a tall ship
launched in 1916,
passing St Michael’s
Mount off CornwallKRIS MEADEN/APEX