"—and then we notice it again the following year, which is the part people find restful," said Marcus Ellery, who runs the new Noticing Office inside the health service.
The office opened on Friday with three staff. Its one task is to observe that adults with severe mental illness die 15 to 20 years earlier than everyone else, mostly from conditions doctors already know how to treat. It does not treat them. That is a different office. The plans say it opens later.
I have studied noticing for three years. We took 300 reports that recorded the gap and compared them with 300 reports nobody opened. The deaths were the same in both groups. My confidence is high, which is the dull way of saying I am sure. Rethink Mental Illness raised it again this week, so the office already has work.
"We have noticed it very thoroughly," Ellery said. "Some years we notice it in colour."
I must now turn to the emergency. The office printer has three weeks of toner left, and there is no plan to buy more.
