Raven

‘When a person is admitted into the mental health ward they are intimidated. I was intimidated and deceived into signing a voluntary admittance form.’

Raven is in her mid-50s and lives with Sjogren’s disease, an immune system disorder, a back injury and congenital hip displacement.

She told the Royal Commission a ‘history of family dysfunction’ and a violent ‘psychopathic’ father are responsible for symptoms that include difficulty recognising faces and forming friendships. She has had delusions and often feels isolated.

Raven said she ended up in a hospital mental health unit about a decade ago after she slapped her sister on the face. Her family had her charged her with assault and health professionals misdiagnosed her with schizophrenia. She said the diagnosis was ‘inaccurate’ and ‘negligent’.

‘Family members are using the mental health diagnoses as a weapon during family dysfunction.’

Raven feels the way she was treated highlights failures in mental health services. She says psychiatrists use intimidation to ‘detain’ people in mental health wards. They exert ‘too much jurisdiction’ over patients without properly informing them of treatments.

She says they also misdiagnose mental illness and administer ‘continuous lifelong medications’ that have ‘a debilitating effect on people’.

‘When I had an interview with one of my psychiatrists about medications, I said to the person "Well, am I going to be 80 years old in a nursing home and still getting medications enforced on to me?" And he turned his head, shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. So, I gathered from that, yes.’

Raven said mental health workers had breached her privacy when she was an inpatient by sharing information with her family members but withholding it from her.

She also had difficulty accessing her medical records. She applied under freedom of information to access case notes relating to her diagnosis, but all she received was ‘mostly a lot of garbage’.

‘Mental health patients are unlikely to ever know the full reason for their diagnosis, and they're not properly able to challenge their diagnosis.’

Psychiatrists again admitted Raven to a mental health facility a couple of years ago. She appealed unsuccessfully to the health ombudsman about her diagnosis.

Because she put up a sustained fight, the hospital released her with her doctor’s support. ‘It was only [with] my persistence that they succumbed.’ Since then, she has been free of the antipsychotic medication and has become an advocate.

Raven wants to see widespread change to the mental health system.

Raven’s experience with relationship support services has been more positive. Psychiatrists had ignored the family dynamics behind her symptoms and simply medicated, whereas counsellors focused on understanding the family dysfunction, building coping mechanisms and changing negative beliefs.

For this reason, she wants independent counsellors to be part of the mental health tribunal hearings that decide on patient treatment, ‘to act as advocates during a diagnosis … [and] balance out the psychiatrist’s propensity to diagnose mental illness’.