THE closure of the district's only remaining facility to help people with mental health issues has left former users wondering where they can turn.

Spanners social club, which used to meet twice a week at St John's Church Hall, in Church Lane, Loughton, has now closed for good, and although members are trying to continue to meet on a voluntary basis there are now no custom facilities for the mentally ill in the whole Epping Forest District.

The closure of Spanners, after grant withdrawals from the NHS and county council, follows the shutting down last year of mental health drop-in centre Roding House, in Buckhurst Hill, and the removal in 2007 of facilities at St Margaret's Hospital, Epping, to Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow.

William Long, 70, of Lushes Road, Loughton, whose son Michael has mental health issues, said: “They have literally stopped everything. There's no local facility at all- there's only Harlow and that's a difficult place to get people into. They're over capacity and they haven't got any beds.

“It seems to me to be an unfashionable illness. It's not the same as other illnesses. If you're mentally ill you're treated like a quasi-criminal. People have been abandoned.”

Jim Marchant, 44, of Lancaster Drive, Loughton, used to attend Spanners every week and now has nowhere to go.

He said: “The services in this area have just been slashed completely. I know they have to make cuts but it seems the people who have the most need are not getting help. They're going to force a lot of people into hospital and that's going to cost the tax-payer more money. It's very sad.

“They took away Roding House and now Spanners. They seem to think people will go back into society.

“I'm at a loss myself. I used to go to that club every Wednesday and Friday evening. It's a reason to get out and get up and that's gone. People used to come from all over: Epping, Waltham Abbey. Now the only activity is in Harlow, and I don't even think that's every week. It's every third Tuesday or something like that.”

A spokesman for North Essex Mental Health Partnership Trust said: "Our services cover the whole of north Essex, Suffolk and east Hertfordshire. This also includes Epping Forest. We have an Early Intervention in Psychosis service where people can walk in when they experience psychosis for the first time.

"However, we are a secondary care service and generally people are referred to us by their GPs. People can also go to A&E and we have specialist mental health professionals who can see them in A&E.

"We also have the following teams that work in the community and are not restricted to a particular location and they cover the whole of north Essex."