A LEADING psychiatrist has called for clear and reliable data on where mental health patients are being treated amid fears that many are being sent miles from their home area due to bed shortages.

Dr John Crichton, the newly appointed chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, also reiterated calls for the widespread introduction of safer kitchen knives to reduce domestic homicides and the re-opening of the State Hospital in Carstairs to female psychiatric prisoners.

Dr Crichton, a forensic psychiatrist who has given evidence in a number of high-profile trials including the case of Theresa Riggi, the Edinburgh mother who stabbed her three children to death in 2010, said he encountered complaints from colleagues on a "very regular basis" that they were having to refer mental health patients to other health boards in order to access an inpatient psychiatric bed.

Between 2001 and 2016 the total number of psychiatric inpatient beds on the NHS in Scotland, including forensic, adolescent, addiction and learning disability beds along with general psychiatry and old age psychiatry, fell by 45 per cent from around 7,700 to 4,250 in line with the Scottish Government's aim to have more patients cared for and rehabilitated in the community.

Dr Crichton said: "Bed closures by themselves are not necessarily a bad thing. If people can be supported in recovering their lives in a more positive way in their home environment, then that's better than being in a hospital bed. What we need is to carefully monitor the problems with accessing particular beds, for example in general adult psychiatry.

"We need to move beyond the current census arrangements where we take a snapshot of bed availability and lump in a variety of different sorts of mental health bed to a point where we're monitoring how many patients are having to travel distance to get the care that they need.

"I think we can do much better than system we've got. What we need to do is look at the number of patients who are actually having to travel distances that we do not want them to travel to get the care they need, because people who are nearer their home area are going to get the support from their carers and family and they are going to be in a much better position to be supported in their return to the community.

"This is why we need to have openness and be collecting the data on a routine basis - reliable data so that we can see exactly what's going on. Anecdotally, colleagues tell me about problems on a very regular basis so this is something we need to address."

In December last year, Glasgow-based psychiatrist Dr Daniel Martin told the Herald that there had been "virtually no reliably available psychiatric beds in Glasgow since mid 2015" and that seriously ill patients were being "routinely admitted outside of Glasgow and at times as far away as Inverness".

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said the "vast majority" of patients were admitted to their local hospital.

Dr Crichton said he had also had "very constructive discussions" with the Scottish Government about admitting women to the State Hospital in light of declining occupancy. The facility has been male-only since 2011. Female psychiatric prisoners requiring high-security care are sent to England instead.

Dr Crichton said: "It does no one any good for that small number of women who require high secure care to travel to Rampton Hospital [in the East Midlands] to get it; we should be providing a Scottish solution for that small number of patients."

Dr Crichton has also been a long-time advocate of retailers selling blunt-tipped knives as standard, following the Theresa Riggi case. Ms Riggi had originally planned to gas her family but instead killed the children - eight-year-old twin boys and a daughter, aged five - with ordinary kitchen knives.

He said the case prompted him to reflect on research which showed suicides were cut in the UK after changes such as having natural gas instead of more lethal coal gas in cookers and limiting the amount of medication, such as paracetamol, that can be bought at one time.

He said that while the blades would remain equally useful for cooking, it would limit their use as a lethal weapon. Knives are the most common murder weapon in Scotland.

Dr Crichton said: "One of the best news stories in Scotland has been the fall in the homicide rate. That's largely been because of limiting the availability of weapons to young people in public places. I think the challenge we now have is to see whether we can make an influence about serious violence in the home setting.

"That has influenced me in the promotion of safer kitchen knife design. One of the things I do in a very small way here in Edinburgh is I will swap my patients kitchen knives for a safe design or have a look through the kitchens of group homes for people with major mental illness and advise them on what could make their environment more safe."