Yuna
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
Yuna, in her early 60s, has medical issues that include breast cancer and chronic pain from a spinal condition that impacts her mobility. She has lived with depression since she was a teenager.
Yuna worked for many years in mental health services in Australia and overseas.
‘I have experiences from both sides of the fence with regard to so-called mental illness and don't always believe that illness is the right description of what is occurring for me or for the patients I have been involved with,’ she told the Royal Commission.
Yuna has come to see that the depression she experiences is caused by childhood trauma, which needs specific care to recover from.
She is grateful to the counsellor who helped her recognise this and believes all health professionals need training in trauma and trauma care.
As a patient, seeing someone without that expertise is expensive.
‘It costs me time, energy and my life force on a huge level dealing with other people's assumptions about me or things that relate to what I would call invisible illness,’ she said.
Yuna decided she wanted to work in mental health services after she attempted suicide in her teens. An ambulance took her to hospital and the paramedic advised her not to cry – if she did, she’d be hospitalised for longer. ‘I thought well, that's really not fair. It doesn't seem appropriate,’ Yuna recalled. She resolved to be someone who would ‘encourage people to cry’.
‘And I did. I got a lot of people to cry, while I was working. Obviously not because I did anything to them but, you know, if they wanted to cry I would encourage it.’
She believes she understood even then the importance of trauma and trauma care – ‘but there wasn’t the language’.
Yuna stopped working in health services after an incident in the mid-2000s. At the time she had casual employment as a nurse at a hospital-run group home. One night when she was the only person working there, she narrowly escaped a sexual assault by one of the residents.
It didn’t occur to her to call the police.
‘I mean if they had come, what would they have done or said? I imagine they would have said “Well, nothing happened,” and on one level, I believed that too, nothing happened,’ she said.
‘So I was okay that night, but then I started to deteriorate. About two weeks afterwards, I would say that I had symptoms of PTSD.’
Yuna sought worker’s compensation in a claim that took years to resolve. The process was debilitating and exacerbated her health issues. ‘I have never recovered from the treatment that I received by the legal process,’ she said.
‘Basically, before this thing happened to me at work, I was actually living the life that I wanted to live. I had a fiancée, I had a whole bunch of friends and I was working a lot and … I was never frugal but I had money.’
These days she lives alone.
‘I am reduced to more or less living in my pyjamas and lying down in bed watching the TV,’ she said. ‘There are times when I feel very sad about that.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.