Steven

‘Medication cannot mitigate an environment that denies you the basic human needs.’

Steven is in his late 30s and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He battled ‘chronic feelings of emptiness’ for years as doctors diagnosed him with other things.

‘It was just really difficult to maintain emotional stability. I didn't know what was going on,’ he told the Royal Commission.

Steven managed ‘to get [himself’] through university and became a health professional.

He became involved with, and married, an abusive woman. The psychological abuse triggered the trauma Steven held from a violent childhood.

‘I started taking home the discarded portions of opiates from work … just to help me get through.’

About decade ago, Steven was diagnosed with PTSD.

‘That's when she started hitting me … gaslighting me, saying like, you know, “You're a psychopath.” I just lost a sense of reality … losing my mind sort of thing.’

Steven turned to his employer.

‘I showed them the … marks in my arms … The abuse got to the point where … it was just far too much.’

He also ‘confessed’ to them about the opiates. Instead of offering him support, he got ‘a flat-out termination’.

‘Like they didn't want me there anymore. They were convinced that I had like a personality disorder or something … This is all unfounded and it turned out to be, like, undiagnosed ADHD stuff.’

Steven said the way his employer treated him contradicted workplace policy.

‘That anyone who was experiencing family violence … would be supported … That it would be a health issue. They took away my registration … It was torture.’

Steven reported the domestic violence to police.

‘They didn’t believe a word I said, because of, um, the mental illness. He had already made up his mind before I even said anything that, um, I was the perpetrator … So he coerced my statement.’

Steven made complaints to an anticorruption commission.

‘No-one listened to me. That was really distressing because you know, it didn't matter what I said.’

About four years ago, things were ‘settling down’.

‘I got through my PTSD. Started to go back to work. I got my registration. So that was the second chance at life, alright? So that was great. It had been five years and I'd never touched a drug or anything.’

But Steven ‘got knocked back for so many jobs it was not funny’.

Two years ago, he got the ‘life changing’ ADHD diagnosis.

‘Everything just started to make sense. Took the medication … literally all the tension in my body just went. It was just like, ah. For the first time in my life I don't feel empty, I feel complete.’

But he still can’t get work. At one interview, an employer saw that he sees a psychiatrist.

‘The second they saw that they reneged on giving me a contract that they promised.’

The ‘miracle of being diagnosed with ADHD and the potentials that opened up’, he said, have been ‘completely nullified’ by discrimination over his psychosocial disability.

‘I've got this new brain that can actually learn stuff, but now I've got an environment of people who keep saying, “No, you can't do that”, or “You're weird, so we don't want you.”’

Steven’s health is deteriorating and he’s having suicidal thoughts.

‘I've been bullied at every stage of my life … My career was taken away from me and I did nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘I've been excluded from society.’