Tenille
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.
‘There’s a complete contempt for human rights in psychiatric wards. No accountability. They’re just really cruel. It broke me.’
Tenille is her 50s and lives with mental illness, psychosis and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her psychosocial disability developed while she was a medical intern.
‘The nurses, when I was tired, started me on Temazepam. And then I got depressed and so then they put me on antidepressants,’ Tenille told the Royal Commission. ‘And that started me off in my downward spiral.’
Tenille has been on a Disability Support Pension for two decades. In the housing estate where she lived, one of her neighbours was abusive. One night the neighbour assaulted her.
‘She was continuing to hit my head on the concrete while I was unconscious. Police attended and told me I deserved it and wouldn’t take my complaint.’
The neighbour continued to harass her. Tenille tried to get help from a community legal centre.
‘And they said it wasn’t their responsibility. I thought they were just rejecting me and I had a bit of a meltdown. They called the police and the police took me to the psych ward and I was locked up for three weeks and drugged.’
One of the drugs had a ‘black box warning for suicide’. Tenille said it caused ‘a prolonged suicidal psychosis’ and she tried to take her own life.
‘So they doubled the dose of the medication that was making me suicidal.’
Tenille ended up in ‘a clinical coma’ because of all the drugs. Since then, she’s been admitted to psychiatric wards several times on an involuntary treatment order. She said that each time doctors give her ‘mind-altering medications’ that make her psychosis worse.
‘I think there’s an absolute abuse of antipsychotics.’
Tenille found herself in a cycle.
‘Wandering the streets at night, picked up by police and taken to the psych ward again and locked up. Put on antidepressants and tranquilisers. Discharged.’
Tenille recently spent more than a month in a psychiatric ward. She described it as ‘absolutely shocking’.
‘I had no rights as a human being. Jail’s better than the psych ward. All they do is threaten you to increase your medication, and if you don’t take it to give you an injection,’ Tenille said.
‘They have to help you with your social issues rather than just drug you up. I think that was abuse of power … I mean, I was dribbling, I couldn’t close my mouth, I was dragging my feet.’
Doctors denied Tenille access to an advocate.
‘You need one person to stand up for you so that they will all back off, and nobody ever would. I had to fight them off at the Mental Health Review Tribunal. They were trying to keep me on prescribed medications indefinitely and take all my money and give it to the public trustee so [that] I had nothing.’
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.