Chippenham support worker Tristan Simpkins, whose depressed wife had to sleep in a police car when there was no available hospital bed over the bank holiday weekend, has called for changes to the way mental health patients are treated in the county.

Mr Simpkins, 22, of Frogwell, criticised underfunding of the mental health service after his wife Katie had to be sectioned by police and was put in a police cell in Melksham.

He said: "It is shocking that between Bristol and Bath there are only four section 136 beds and in Wiltshire there are nine in Salisbury, one in Swindon and one in Devizes which will soon be four. That means there are only 15 beds between a county and a half and nine of those were taken up by people from Bristol this weekend."

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Mrs Simpkins, who has emotionally unstable personality disorder which makes her prone to severe depression was sectioned for suicidal wishes by police and taken into custody where she was later deemed a ligation risk.

The 25-year-old was then forced to wear special clothing that Mr Simpkins argued was rough and something criminals would be forced to wear and that she was no allowed to have her hair tied back or have her phone to listen to music; both of which help calm her down.

"I think there should be a second policy for people who have been sectioned in custody," Mr Simpkins said. "It seems to be one rule for everyone and you get treated like a criminal. Katie got very claustrophobic in the cells and described the clothes she had to wear as a ligation risk as canvassy. She didn't want to wear the shorts because she is very self-concious of the scars on her leg but she was told she had to."

Mrs Simpkins was sent home in the morning, but after getting out of the car and walking away from her husband, four officers helped calm her down and found a bed in Green Lane Hospital, Devizes, which was still being used on arrival.

He said: "When we got to Devizes, we were told the bed still wasn't free but the police officers said we would wait and allowed Katie to sleep in the back of the car in the car park until it became free a couple of hours later.

"It wasn't their fault they couldn't get a bed but these officers were all really lovely with her and I want to say a big thank you to them."

Mrs Simpkins is still receiving treatment at Green Lane but is making progress and hopes to be discharged soon.

Sgt Mike Hughes, who looks after mental health issues for Wiltshire Police, said: “When a person is in crisis and has been detained under the Mental Health Act we always endeavour to avoid detaining them in custody, which is only ever used as a last resort. However, sometimes no health-based place of safety is available and our main priority has to be keeping the person safe from harm.

“We are working closely with our partner agencies within the local Crisis Care Concordat Group to improve health-based place of safety provision in Wiltshire and the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Avon & Wiltshire NHS Trust have already committed funding to develop a new place of safety for the residents of Wiltshire which will see an increase in capacity and further improvements to the service delivered to patients.

“Together with our partners from the CCG and NHS Trust, Wiltshire Police has invested resources in improving the way we deal with people with mental health issues, including the implementation of our Street Triage team based in the police control centre, who are available to provide advice and support to police officers dealing with mental health incidents between the hours of 8.30am and midnight each day.

“However, there is always room for improvement, and we continue to work closely with our partner agencies to make sure all the people we have contact with receive the best possible support and care.

“If Mr Simpkins would like to discuss this further then I would urge him to contact us so we can try to learn from what happened in this instance and see what changes could be made for the future.”