Peg
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.
Peg, in her mid-30s, has multiple mental health disorders, some caused by trauma. She also has a neurological condition she described as ‘quite physically disabling’, with symptoms that include paralysis and fainting.
Because of these and other health issues Peg has needed to seek out emergency care several times in recent years, but she said she won’t do so again.
‘For me, accessing care in emergency departments has been very traumatic and to me very abusive, and I’m actually at the point now where I – I don’t access care from emergency departments. Even if I am quite unwell, I still won’t access an emergency department.’
On several occasions she went to a hospital emergency department because of extreme abdominal pain, and each time was discharged without a diagnosis. Sometime later she experienced the pain again and returned to the hospital. This time staff carried out a series of invasive procedures including inserting a catheter. Peg screamed out as this process was underway, but the nurse ignored her.
‘At that point I sort of realised it didn’t matter what I said or did, I just had to behave,’ she recalled.
‘As a trauma survivor, I mean – you may get a lot of triggers in the pelvic area, and there was just absolutely no understanding and absolutely no room to tolerate my level of discomfort … I think I just felt so abused in that situation, not because of what they were doing but because they just used so many tactics of gaslighting me and just dismissing my experience, dismissing my pain, dismissing my triggers.’
She described another occasion when a nurse challenged her account of her symptoms. When the nurse found out about Peg’s mental health history, she ‘started to sort of gaslight’ her, Peg said.
Another time, Peg experienced unrelenting migraines for weeks and her GP advised her to go the emergency department. The doctor she saw there asked her why she had come.
‘What are you expecting to get out of your presentation to emergency?’ he asked.
‘Like, no doctor says that to a person coming in, in an emergency,’ Peg said, ‘but for me that’s what he said. As if I had a choice … Like I thought, “Oh, you know what? I might just go to emergency for the afternoon and waste, you know, 10 hours there.”’
Peg believes medical staff in emergency departments need better training to help support people with disability or mental health issues. Her experience in those settings has included emotional abuse, neglect and the withholding of treatment.
‘They treat you in a way where they’ve already deemed you as crazy, and they use those aspects against you or it’s a further reason why they neglect your care,’ she said.
‘They don’t have time to have deep emotional conversations because I guess most of the time their line of work is life or death, but when it comes to disabilities, mental health and chronic pain, they need to – they still need to adapt their level of care so that they’re open and I guess willing to hear people’s experiences in order to care for them properly.’
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.