BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission people affected by mental illness are among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community. We suffer from widespread, systemic discrimination and are consistently denied the rights and services to which we are entitled.

Late last year, two unidentified mental health workers with the aid of police illegally forced their way into my home without a warrant or any other form of written authority. They subjected me, my partner and our 11 month old granddaughter who we were baby sitting at the time to a number of hours of harassment, bullying and intimidation based on their claim that I was a “dangerous person”. There was no reasonable basis for any such claim. What eventuated was a battle of wits which I eventually won. The consequences of losing would most likely have been permanent internment in a psychiatric aged care facility where by all accounts the standard of care is terrible, and very high levels of contra-indicated anti-psychotic medications are routinely used. According to medical and legal experts I have spoken to, once you are put there under an Involuntary Commitment Order (ICO), and I certainly would not have gone there voluntarily, it is almost impossible to get out.

The event that triggered this offence occurred earlier that day when I walked out of my general practitioners clinic because I was uncomfortable with the unprofessional way that he was talking and acting. The doctor was well aware of my mental health history and it appears that he or someone at the clinic contacted someone after I left and things escalated from there. There was no verbal or physical aggression etc on my part to justify such action but once publicly diagnosed with mental illness we appear to become easy targets for anyone with the “right connections” who wants to silence us or just lash out.

I subsequently lodged complaints with various authorities starting with the Victorian Mental Health Complaints Commission (MHCC). They initially did their best to try and fob me off before advising me that my complaint was outside their area of responsibility because it was a systemic issue. This is true enough. This sort of thing regularly happens to lots of people. The spirit of the law if not the letter of the law is routinely broken. The MHCC advised me to take my concerns to the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist (OCP) who promptly advised me that they refer matters like this to the MHCC who of course claim they can’t deal with it because they consider it to be a systemic issue.

I also made complaints to the Victorian police who advised me that it was not their problem and to the Health Complaints Commissioner about the general practitioner. Apart from acknowledging the lodgement of my complaint, they have remained ominously silent.

My next step in this process would be to lodge a complaint with the state ombudsman against the MHCC but is it worth the effort? It seems fairly obvious where it is likely to finish up. My understanding is that after the ombudsman my last and final option is to try and take the matter to the high court of Australia. What a joke.

Fast forward 8 months. I seem to have inadvertently become an activist for mental health reform. I have become a member of the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC) and Mental Health Victoria (MHV) Both claim to be independent not-for-profit organisations that currently rely heavily on Victorian state government funding. In a couple of weeks time I am off to a day long conference, about reforming the mental health system run by MHV. Who knows where this will lead to.

From what I have learnt over the last 8 months, mental health abuses and malpractice are a huge and complex problem. This is not just in Australia but world wide although Australia appears to have one of the worst mental health systems in the western world despite claims by the Australian government to the contrary. There appears to be very little political will to tackle the problems and vested interests seem to have their tentacles in every possible pie.

Organisations like MHV recognise that legislation or more funding alone won’t fix these problems. There are people who seemed to have wormed their way into positions of authority and power who’s ideas of mental health treatment and services belong to the dark ages. Furthermore, many of them seem to consider themselves above the law.

There are of course many well informed and responsible mental health professionals operating in both the public and private sectors in Australia. Some of these people tell me that they are very concerned about what is going on and the affect it is having on the mental health of many Australians but they feel powerless to do anything. Speaking out is likely to cost them their jobs or their career.

To say that I am feeling over whelmed at the idea of trying to stand up to some of these people and their destructive antics would be something of an understatement.

One of the reasons that these abuses have escalated to the extant that they have is because those of us who experience mental illness are often too frightened to stand up for ourselves. This is understandable, given the possible consequences but unless we do something, nothing is ever likely to change. I have been involved in discussions with people on this forum who have been subjected to abusive and probably illegal mental health malpractice. Scary as it may sound, I would like to encourage people to post any recent experiences of this nature on this forum and to also start thinking about whether they are willing to speak out publicly about their experiences in a safe and appropriate environment.

Regards

Willy