NHS Secure Rehab Was 'Too Expensive' Before South London Teenager Died?

A nineteen-year-old vulnerable patient, Soviya Rajaratnam, was tragically deprived of vital long-term care after an NHS mental health trust deemed a secure rehabilitation placement too expensive, an inquest jury sitting at South London Coroner’s Court in Croydon has formally determined. Miss Rajaratnam, an articulate and cherished young woman from Kingston upon Thames who had been detained under the Mental Health Act, died from heroin and synthetic opioid toxicity in Thornton Heath on 9 September 2021, just twenty-four hours after absconding from hospital staff during escorted leave. The jury concluded that systemic omissions by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM), specifically a missed opportunity to provide locked rehabilitation in the late spring of 2021 and severe deficiencies in communicating subsequent clinical decisions, contributed materially to her death.

Cost Barriers Override Clinical Need

The court proceedings laid bare the devastating institutional resistance Miss Rajaratnam and her family encountered while desperately navigating South London’s statutory psychiatric services. Legal counsel Patrick Dunne revealed that when social worker Adrianna Lazdins strongly recommended admitting the teenager to a specialised locked rehabilitation facility between May and June 2021, a manager within the SLAM community care team dismissed the proposal, declaring in written correspondence that locked rehabilitation was very expensive and that the trust would not fund the intervention.

Addressing the jury, independent expert forensic psychiatrist Dr Sohom Das dismantled the rationale behind the trust's financial refusal, testifying to Daily Dazzling Dawn that statutory mental health pathways must remain grounded in personal diagnostic presentation rather than balance-sheet preservation. Assistant Coroner for London South Sebastian Naughton highlighted Dr Das’s evidence, wherein the clinician expressed acute bafflement over the financial justification, confirming that an early referral to locked rehabilitation represented a critical protective intervention that was inappropriately denied to a teenager in profound crisis.

Heightened Vulnerability and Communicated Distress

Miss Rajaratnam had carried complex psychiatric diagnoses, including paranoid schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder, a borderline learning disability, and substance dependency. Despite these multifaceted challenges, her family maintained continuous advocacy, urging clinicians to provide the structured environment necessary for her long-term stability. Following a discharge, her condition deteriorated, resulting in readmission during August 2021 to a general acute ward at Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham.

The turning point occurred on 7 September 2021, when ward clinicians abruptly informed Miss Rajaratnam that she was to be transferred to a locked rehabilitation unit. The news provoked immediate destabilisation, transforming her expectation of imminent release into profound fear of indefinite detention. Both Miss Rajaratnam’s mother and her allocated social worker urgently flagged her distressed reaction to medical staff, warning that her risk had escalated. Jurors affirmed that treating clinicians failed to demonstrate a sufficient appreciation of this heightened risk, finding that the manner in which staff delivered the transfer decision actively contributed to her demise.

Fatal Escort Lapses and the Family Search for Accountability

Despite the stark surge in her risk profile, ward staff permitted Miss Rajaratnam unescorted proximity outside the hospital grounds the following morning. Accompanied by registered mental health nurse Oluyinka Obisesan and care support worker Odunola Adewoye for escorted leave, the teenager requested permission to step outside the hospital gates to smoke a cigarette. As soon as the party cleared the perimeter, Miss Rajaratnam fled on foot. Although nursing staff initiated emergency calls to the Metropolitan Police just prior to midday, she evaded immediate search efforts.

Daily Dazzling Dawn understands that Miss Rajaratnam arrived in an intensely distressed and intoxicated state at the Thornton Heath property of an acquaintance, who later departed before returning to find her unresponsive. Paramedics confirmed her death from synthetic opioid toxicity, with the jury formally recording that drug consumption in the context of untreated severe mental illness brought about the end of her life.

The jury's conclusions stand as a definitive vindication for Miss Rajaratnam's family, whose years of bereavement have been marked by a relentless campaign to expose institutional penny-pinching and care neglect. For the grieving family, the verdict establishes that Soviya was failed by an administrative system that prioritised cost containment over basic therapeutic protection, underscoring an urgent imperative for nationwide reform in adolescent psychiatric security.