If the true test of a civilised society is how it treats its least fortunate members, the case study we publish today of a patient’s experience of care in an NHS mental health trust is a shameful indictment. The woman, in her late twenties, had already suffered sexual abuse before being admitted to hospital suffering from depression last July. There she was sexually harassed again, this time by male patients exposing themselves to her. The next time her GP would ordinarily have referred her for treatment for depression, he understood why she refused to submit to it. Instead, she tried to kill herself.

This example reflects the overall findings of a profoundly disturbing report by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) that records more than 100 cases of sexual assault and harassment, including ten rapes, in NHS mental health units over the past two years. The document exposes the reality, in some units, behind the Government’s claim to have replaced mixed-sex with single-sex wards across 98 per cent of the NHS. In fact, according to the Healthcare Commission’s last major survey, nearly a quarter of patients in mental health units are sharing wards with members of the opposite sex against their wishes. Furthermore, women in single-sex wards clearly remain at risk from sexually aggressive men in non-segregated communal areas.

But the fate of the NPSA report is even more alarming than its contents. Eight months after the agency forwarded its findings to the Department of Health, they have yet to be published. A Freedom of Information Act request for details of those findings was rejected in April, and yesterday the Department reiterated a vague undertaking to publish later this year, while suggesting that the report still needed “further analysis”.There is little doubt that meticulous thought is still required to end the abuse described by the NPSA. But it is hard to see what “further analysis” is required unless its real purpose is to undermine the report and its case for action. So far, the Government’s response fits a pattern of cogitation and inaction.

Set up five years ago to assess and reduce patient risk throughout the NHS, the NPSA established the National Learning and Reporting System (NLRS) two years later to collect trustworthy data. This in turn commissioned the Mental Health Observatory Report (MHOR) that has now gone missing. At great cost, a problem has been perceived, confirmed, reported — and then buried. Institutional inertia, scarcity of resources and reluctance to accept responsibility are all factors, compounded by the lamentable “Cinderella” status of the NHS’s mental health services, which often feel the impact of budget deficits before higher-profile sectors such as cancer and paediatric services.

Blame for the delay in publishing the NPSA report may yet be assigned to the NHS “gateway”, set up to disseminate such information throughout the service. It has proved more bottleneck than gateway. But the plethora of acronyms in the system that produced the report must also be part of the problem. The NPSA’s chief executives, Sue Osborn and Susan Williams, are the most senior job-sharers in the NHS. They must share with Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, some of the responsibility for a delay that has hidden the suffering of patients who deserve full and urgent protection.

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