Lived Experience Forum

[kristin]

Hi  @ivana @kenny66 @kato @Alessandra1992 @Maude 

A couple of things:

Firstly I recently visited a hospital A&E with my former partner (who also has a MI) to have him checked out after what may have been a heart attack or mini stroke. They were excellent with him.

However in the next cubicle was a woman who was clearly experiencing some sort of MH episode. At one point she totally lost it and started screaming and threw something. She shouted at them "you are supposed to help me". The A&E response was some sort of security alert announcement and a big rush of staff (about a dozen) to stand outside her cubicle. One courageous (compassionate?) person went in and spoke to her quietly. It seemed to make a difference and most of the others eventually wandered off after standing about staring for about 5 minutes.

To be honest I felt that either my former partner or I would have been more help to this poor woman. He was wired up for monitoring and I was already close to break point with overload. I now regret not going to speak with her and asking if I could help.

Secondly SANE has just finished a fairly in-depth survey of people who have suffered suicidal episodes in the past, and their experiences. @NikNik might let us know when it is published on the website. It is well worth a read. I took part in it myself. It speaks eloquently about the realities and the need for change.

I completely agree that it is about time these issues got into the KPI's of hospitals etc. There need to be MH peer support/consumer advocates in place in hospitals etc, and they should be surveying people on their experiences at the time of release. I will start leaning on the DoH about this through the health & wellbeing group I'm in.

Kind regards,

Kristin

[ivana]

Kristin,

Hopefully your ex partners ok.

It disgusts me the way that those staff overreacted to this ladies situation.
It was total fear based reaction,totally not clear headed or rational,and completely disproportionate to the situation.
This woman could do no amount of physical damage that could necessitate for 10 plus staff to need to be there.
Calling security guards because a woman feels despair or frustration and throws something is just pathetic.
I've witnessed similar situations to what you described and worse,numerous times and feel it's a breach if human rights.
Unfortunately at the time I didn't say anything due to fear that I would then be treated the same way out of "retaliation".

Nothing has improved in regards to people with Mental Ilness treatment at some hospitals and it's important that organisations like Sane step in and create programmes to reeducate and retrain the staff.
There should be compulsorary programmes for Hospital Staff which are run by patients/expatients which teaches them to treat these patient with compassion,dignity,respect and deesculate difficult situations instead of reacting from fear,control issues,aggression or as it's their "entertainment for the night" etc...

There should also be punishments for staff who refuse to apply dignified treatments as currently there's no accountability.

Stigma and mistreatment go hand and hand and stigma will never be eliminated as long as patients are still being treated in disrespectful ways by Medical staff.
What this sets up in Doctors,nurses etc minds is an "us and them mentality" -a seperation where they would feel embarrassed to ever be considered on the same levels as those "weird mental patients"

I think the Government should employ people with lived experience to work in Hospitals too and model to other staff how to treat people coming in for Psychiatric presentation,because there are so many things that they could teach them.

I also think it's unjust that security guards are legally allowed to use physical aggression/force for "unruly" patients with mental illness but are legally not allowed for other patients.
At the very least make security guards should never be allowed to touch women due to the size difference plus dignity factors.

[kristin]

Hi @ivana 

He seems ok for now thanks, follow-up tests to do over next fortnight. The biggest breakthrough was him agreeing that next time we ring an ambulance at the first sign of trouble. This is a huge breakthrough from the "I'm fine, don't fuss" before.

On the rest your points are well made & I completely concur. I will do what I can to work on it here in my patch of Victoria (encouraging DoH) and see what ball we might get rolling.

@NikNik this is a good point here - can you pass it on to the rest of SANE for both research & education into MI sufferers' treatment at hospitals? I know it is something which came up in the recent research into suicide. It seems to me that MH admission to hospital and an in-depth experience survey is definitely warranted, to help point towards the difference that "best practice" approaches can make to MH.

Kind regards,

Kristin

[NikNik]

Hi @kristin 

Sorry it took me a while to answer your question.

The report is realised this Wednesday.

Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the rest of the members 🙂

Nik

[Baboo]

Once upon a time i did some support work for some people who were in a country hospital psyc ward- Kind of like mentoring or the old " big brother/ sister" person role.

While i was there i noticed there was no game consoles, no library, no computer access, minimal board games and craft selections, no communal veggie garden, no pet therapy .

i thought to myself : Geeze if i were in a place like this i would only be thinking about MH, theres no distractions here"

All the poor hospital staff were over worked- running around busy busy busy. It didnt look like any one had the time to have a passing conversation with a client. Unless they were experiencing an emergency.

I know too of course about government funding- how hospitals are only ment to deal with certain things- but it did make me wish i could change things. I got some donations for the place, No where near what i wanted thou

[Baboo]

ohh, sorry - theres some spelling mistakes in there 😛

[Baboo]

If i had a wish for hospitals and what they could have- it would be:

All hospitals must have a communal :

vegetable garden

Mini farm ( pet therapy)

More client support workers- like HEAPS more.

And more " In house programs and jobs" for clients to do over their stay at the hospital.

Im not sure if i dreaming too big here- but thats my dream for our hospitals

[ivana]

Great ideas Baboo.
To that I would add:

*Exercise Physiologist and gym equipment
*Dance lessons
*Beauty therapists for facials,massage etc (to reduce patients cortisol levels)

[Ellie]

One of the big issues here is that general hospital nurses are not trained sufficiently in mental health issues. I think that may still stem from a time not that long ago when nurses were trained either as psych nurses or general nurses and 'never the twain shall meet!'

Since the very late 1990's, nurses are nurses and if they wish to work in psych settings, then they have to do extra courses such as PART (Predict, Act and Response Training). General nurses working in hospitals don't have to do any further psych training except for the minute little bit they do during their university schooling unless they follow it up themselves. Unfortunately, very few nurses graduate from their uni wishing to go into a psych settings. Even fewer ever go to general nursing from psych. A lot of those general nurses are very young and do not have "world experience." They're like little mice who look and act very pleasantly and indeed usually know their job, but they're also fearful. Fearful of old ladies waving their canes around, fearful of old people suffering dementia and especially fearful of those with MI because of the stories and gossip surrounding them. To them, their first line of defence is to call security!

The other side of the coin (pardon the pun) is money. Not so much in relation to the training of nurses to work in emergency areas or to work with those suffering MI, but insurance. If an innocent person is even so much as traumatised by an angry patient (and not just those with MI) then the hospital can be sued. The American pathway of litigation is now well worn in Australia unfortunately! And so the hospital will act to reduce the risk of litigation by telling nurses to call security at the first sign of trouble.

Also, nurses aren't suppose to be "punching bags" yet I've seen the statistics on violence towards nurses and it's not pretty. I can look it up if anyone's interested, but it's massive. Not caused so much by those suffering MI, but by people off their faces on drugs and relatives of people who are receiving treatment in A&E where those same relatives deem the process to be taking too long.

It's all a vicious circle that can only be solved by better training and throwing buckets of money at it, but most certainly, the latter isn't going to happen!

Ellie.

[Terry]

Thank you for raising this topic.  My theory is that if people with mental illnesses had any human rights at all (please refer to the Mental Health Acts of Australia and the rest of the world for further illumination of this point) they would have to be treated with some respect.  Thank you.