Frederic
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Frederic is in his 60s and has borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to childhood sexual abuse. He also lives with chronic back pain.
Frederic went to ‘seven different primary schools and three different high schools’.
‘I was … basically reacting to trauma,’ he told the Royal Commission. ‘I really believe that there should be more access to psychologists in primary schools. A lot of people on disability have just had a traumatic childhood.’
Frederic started seeing mental health professionals in his late 30s. He was ‘trying to get back to work at that stage’, but ‘it didn't work out’.
About 15 years ago, he was referred to a pain clinic for back problems. Doctors found ‘evidence of spondylosis’, and he was booked in for a spinal injection.
A senior doctor was supposed to oversee the procedure, but Frederic said he was ‘basically left alone with an unsupervised intern’.
The intern handled him roughly.
‘He stuck the needle, pulled the needle out … three times. On the third time after he pulled it out, I said, "What the heck you doing?" … I found the whole process incorrectly done. I could not understand why he wasn't supervised fully through the procedure. It was humiliating and triggered a lot of things.’
The experience sparked flashbacks for Frederic of childhood abuse. He said the medical team knew of his trauma, but made light of it.
Frederic made a complaint to the hospital but said it ‘was never followed through’.
Through his various interactions with the hospital, Frederic feels medical staff stigmatised him based on ‘false documentation’ about substance abuse.
‘I've definitely seen in my hospital records a statement of me being a heroin addict.’
Frederic thinks this has come about because of his involvement over a number of years in methadone programs related to his chronic pain. ‘It is not true. It is ridiculous,’ he said.
‘The false documentation’ has been passed on to other health professionals who have then been reluctant to give him appropriate treatment, leaving him in ‘full-blown pain’. ‘They believe that all pain's in the head,’ Frederic said.
Doctors have also put him ‘on dangerous combinations of medications’ because of inconsistent medical records. Twice he was admitted to the emergency department ‘with a thumping in the heart’ because he had been prescribed drugs that clashed with his methadone treatment.
For a few years, Frederic said, he was ‘just not getting the right treatment, not getting the right chances’.
The experience made him deeply distrustful of the medical system. ‘It does leave me seeing the darker side of society,’ he said.
He is still trying hard to set his medical records straight, but says ‘the process of rectifying the documentation is virtually impossible’.
Frederic stopped antipsychotic medication about seven years ago and says his ‘mind's a lot clearer’ now. He recently found a new GP, who he is happy with, and a psychologist is helping him ‘work through the disability’.
Frederic said ‘the best medication’ he ever had was learning life skills in programs for people with disability.
‘I did gardening and music … that's really beneficial. There needs to be more things like 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.