Marta Galikowska knifed her daughters in the neck before slashing her own throat after wrongly believing that her five-year-old had cancer.

‘Delay in GP’s referral to mental health workers about a mother whose mental health deteriorated after assuming that her child had cancer led to a murder-suicide of three.
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Now, a serious case review has reported that the delay in her GP’s referral to mental health workers had been the reason for the deaths.




Mrs Galikowska had wrongly believed that her five-year-old Maja had cancer after doctors found a lump in her neck. So, her worries deepened about this issue and led to suicidal thoughts.
The 27-year-old mother visited her GP on Oct 3 and explained about her suicidal thoughts. The doctor told her that he will refer her to the mental health workers and they will treat her.
But the health workers did not visit her till Oct 5. After that, a follow-up call was made on October 6 and a surprise visit on October 7. They told that the mother's mental health have not deteriorated and closed the case just two days later.
The review criticized the "extremely concerning" delay between the GP's referral and the visit from mental health workers.It concluded that a referral should have been made as emergency and the case would then have been "treated correctly" as a child protection investigation.
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Source-Medindia