Stacey Dooley's New Documentary Back On The Psych Ward Is Coming To BBC Three

Stacey Dooley: Back on the Psych Ward will see the journalist and presenter return to Springfield Hospital, in London, where she works with the team to help patients in crisis.

Nearly a year on from her first visit, Stacey assists staff in helping those with a wide range of mental health issues and delves into how the pandemic - as well as the lockdowns that followed - has impacted patients.

During the doc, Stacey meets 21-year-old Ali who has arrived at the UK's only acute OCD inpatient unit.

Ali has been struggling with OCD since childhood, with rituals ranging from repetitive tapping to blinking to keep her parents safe. Ali's OCD is now focussed around a delusion that her body is contaminated with worms.

"I probably think about it 80-100 per cent of the time," she told Stacey.

"They call it ruminating, so I ruminate my thoughts and obsess about thinking about how I could avoid getting them, or how I might get them if I have got them, feeling like I've got them.

"I take laxatives every night so that I go, because I cant stand food being inside me or feeling full because then I think the worms could feed off what's inside me. But now, because of one of my behaviours, I've damaged my internal organs, which causes me so much pain physically."

Throughout the doc, Stacey works with the doctors and mental health nurses to help Ali on her recovery journey.

Speaking about how lockdown has impacted mental health, one nurse, explained: "With mental health, it was definitely challenging because you can have somebody who is quite psychotic and has delusions and fears about the world ending, mass death, and that's exactly what happened.

"So we had to really carefully balance what was psychosis and what was people's genuine fear. Mental health relies on social support for recovery, people weren't able to see their families. Once you pulled social support away, it was a disaster."

Stacey Dooley: Back on the Psych Ward will arrive on BBC Three later this year.