Tala

Tala is in her 50s. She told the Royal Commission that until 2010, she had been ‘condemned’ to live with ‘unrecognised autism’.

‘Autism wasn’t recognised. People like me were named under conditions. They didn't understand our behaviours. I had a learning disability, ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], dyslexia … I did things differently to others. We didn't have the proper care and protection … We were put in mental hospitals.’

This was Tala’s experience for 25 years.

‘At school I was non-verbal until I was six. I was scared of the other kids. They were strange to me, and I had no idea …The teacher couldn't get me to talk. I had to go the toilet, but I couldn't tell her … I then wet the floor, and the other kids laughed at me.’

Through high school, Tala ‘wasn’t getting any help’ because she was in ‘normal classes’.

When she left, she was ‘completely lost in the outside world’.

‘It was terrible. It was very traumatic for me.’

She started doing seasonal work on a farm, but was hit by a car and acquired a brain injury.

After that, Tala went with her family to live overseas for a while. Tala became pregnant, but her baby boy died.

‘I got back to Australia and I was a mess. I had undiagnosed autism, and now PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] on top of that.’

Within weeks, she was admitted to a mental health facility, ‘really stressed out and repeating [herself] and talking loud’.

A junior doctor diagnosed Tala with 'hypomania' and put her on antipsychotic drugs, even though her mother insisted the behaviour was 'nothing different to normal'.

‘She knew my autism … He didn’t recognise this.’

For two decades, Tala was in and out of ‘psychiatric wards’. During that time, she said, mental health professionals ‘punished’ her for her disability.

‘They would lock you up, medicate you involuntarily.’ Nurses were ‘cruel’ and would ‘attack’ Tala. ‘Shining lights on me and injecting me when they didn't think my behaviour was good enough. I kept getting more and more medication.’ She was ‘sat on and injected, held down by force and hurt’.

Tala said at times staff put her in a ‘cell’ and left for up to 36 hours ‘with no food, no water, urinating in the corner’. The ‘time-out rooms’ were nothing like ‘the sensory rooms with squishy balls and teddies, and blue lights’ used today.

‘They were cold, hard rooms made for adult criminals.’

Tala felt she was being detained ‘for no reason’.

‘[With] little lighting, no windows, locked doors, imprisoned, afraid, terrified and trapped.  Thinking over and over, “What did I do wrong?”' 

The years of ‘inhumanity and degradation’ stole her dignity.

‘I felt like I was worth absolutely nothing, lower than a worm in the earth by the way I was treated. It was extremely and absolutely terrible.’

The drugs took their toll too. They made her ‘brain injury worse’ and ‘masked’ her autism.

‘The drugs were to control our behaviours. They thought it was a mental problem or deliberate bad behaviour, rather than being understood as sensory meltdowns or childlike behaviours.’

Recently, Tala was discharged. Doctors found ‘no evidence of psychotic and mood symptoms' and ended the antipsychotic injections.

She is currently in a rehabilitation centre struggling with the ‘full choice and control of being thrown into the outside world’ after the ‘overcontrolling mental health services’.

Tala has a dream – to create special ‘sensory free areas’ in health centres and hospitals, ‘where it’s quiet and doctors understand people with disability’.

‘We need to learn to live in the outside world, and they need to compromise and live with us.’