Tash
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.
‘Chemical restraint and seclusion are absolute punishments. They are not therapies to help calm patients.’
In the early 2000s Tash was ‘extremely depressed’ and tried to take her own life. She was admitted to a hospital psychiatric unit under a treatment order.
‘This was my first real stay in a psych ward and I was very frightened,’ she told the Royal Commission.
Tash was in her late 30s.
At the end of her first week she experienced a thyroid storm which was misdiagnosed.
Instead of receiving treatment, the psychiatric registrar placed Tash in seclusion.
‘I was slapped in the face by a wardsman, who then kicked my legs out from under me … then forcibly carried me to a seclusion room and held me face down.’
Tash said he pushed his knee into her back and she was ‘gasping for air’.
‘The registrar then injected me in the shoulder with a chemical that totally immobilised me such that I couldn’t move or speak.’
The staff then left the room and locked the door.
‘I cannot describe the level of panic I felt.’
After about half an hour the registrar checked on Tash and suspected ‘some deeper trauma’.
Blood tests revealed Tash needed an emergency thyroid ablation.
When Tash was discharged she complained to the hospital about her treatment but the doctor defended her actions.
The doctor said the thyroid problem wasn’t diagnosed before it became an emergency because there was a delay in receiving Tash’s blood test results.
The restraint and seclusion had been used as a last resort and while the doctor regretted Tash saw it in a negative light, ‘it had all “worked out well” in the end’.
But it didn’t work out well for Tash.
Tash said the treatment ‘deeply added to the trauma I was already suffering’.
When Tash was in her late teens she had been repeatedly locked in a small room, beaten, restrained and then left alone.
‘Many horrible and disgusting things were … done to me.’
This included being ‘threatened with electrocution and murder if I spoke to authorities, at one time being strapped down and wired up with electrodes to intimate parts of my body’.
After about four months the police became involved.
Tash said she was shocked by the parallels between these two incidents.
Both included ‘slapping, tackling, being held face down, restricted breathing, absolute restraint, and being locked into a small room not knowing what was going on or what was going to happen to me’.
Tash no longer trusts psychiatrists and said she needed counselling ‘to get over what the psychiatric system did to me’.
Tash’s believes seclusion and chemical restraint never benefit patients and are only used to make patients ‘shut up and shut down in under-resourced and unpleasant working environments’.
She would like these ‘treatments’ to be banned. If they are used, ‘then the psychiatrist or registrar must be held to account’ and each incident must be investigated by independent authorities.
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.