A CONSULTANT psychiatrist from Burnley General Hospital has said a lack of staff and greater demand for mental health services means the department just "can't cope anymore."

After making a special presentation on schizophrenia at the meeting of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council, Dr Mike Launer told members that doctors were 'stressed out' and that if the situation continued the unit could be forced to shut down.

He said: "No-one is going to come to a place where there is a 60,000 catchment area for each adult consultant. I know people that would come here tomorrow if we had a proper catchment area.

"We will never get accreditation with numbers like this. No-one is going to be able to be taught here because we haven't got the people to teach them and until someone invests the situation is going to get worse.

"Doctors are stressed out. Both junior and senior doctors have come to me to say they can't cope anymore.

"We've got 30 inpatients each on the wards where most doctors have nine or less. If I had only nine patients I could do a good job on that nine and get them out faster. "In the last three weeks, during the day, 56 patients were sent up to the hospital by their GPs -- that's a lot of patients.

"The demand is so great these days we can't cope anymore with it and it's got to be taken seriously. We want parity with Blackburn, which has doubled its number of medical staff in the past 12 months, and we don't see why we shouldn't have it.

"I want an answer as to why we have half the number of doctors that are in Blackburn and why they have been given extra money and we haven't.

"How can anyone justify that? If this continues this service will shut down."

Dr Launer said the mental health unit needed three extra adult psychiatrists and one old age psychiatrist as well as junior doctors to work alongside them.

He added: "Until this happens it is completely lopsided and not fair for the people of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale who just because they have a different postcode get a different service."