I'm going to keep this brief but I am genuinely losing my patience and battle with the public health system, specifically the mental health system.
Content Warning - Mental Health, Suicide and mistreatment.
Essentially i'm an Australian living with schizophrenia, ptsd, mdd, anorexia nervosa and other various issues, I literally have no where else to type this and hurt because I have no where else where people will listen and let me be heard for once.
NSW Health is one of the biggest fuck ups of a mental health system. Firstly i'd like to acknowledge not everyone has access to free health care overseas. I understand I am lucky in that aspect but I'm still absolutely furious with how fucked up this system truly is.
I guess I'll give a graphic and detailed experience description just to show ONE of the many instances of my mistreatment.
I've roughly had 8 psychiatric admissions in my time. NONE of them have done anything positive to me. Some of them have kept me alive yes, however I have walked out with more trauma than I walked in with. To sum it up, to be admitted to a mental health facility in Australia you must present to an emergency department. You either go voluntarily or by being detained under the mental health act (essentially this means a psychiatrist has deemed you unfit to make rational decisions for yourself and you are defined as mentally ill or disordered). The first example of mistreatment is a voluntary admission where I was taken to my local hospital by ambulance > A&E assessment > transferred to another hospital for an admission. Basically I still didn't get a choice despite me legally being voluntary if I tried to leave a&e I would have been detained. Anyway to get straight to the point I was basically admitted to a ward I hadn't been to before, I was at the time underage, this is where the first problem presents itself. There was absolutely no referral, no effort, no nothing to get me into an adolescent ward. Now that's all fine and dandy, bed shortages exist sure I guess, however: I was not given a 1:1 special to supervise me as I was admitted to this ward which happened to be a high risk adult ward. This is purely disgusting. I had other patients screaming at me, I had a man try to groom me (I'm not joking) and the worst of it, a 53 year old man trying to strip himself of his clothes in front of me, it was clearly worsening my condition and not being beneficial. Then when I calmly asked to be discharged as I was legally voluntary, they said there was no plan for discharge and that the ward WAS beneficial to me and that I was being irrational. No 1:1 was offered, no consequences or at least separation of me and the patients that were the actual issue. Eventually I became extremely distressed and started yelling and crying even pleading to be discharged. It took a total of 12 hours of waiting for various doctors opinions and my parents arguing my case against these "professionals", eventually I was discharged. Being a 16 year old within a ward of so many adults that were THAT unwell was a traumatising experience. I went home more unwell than I went in.
Anyway- I surely didn't just get unlucky right? Maybe I was just an unwell patient? There must be justification for me to be treated this way right??
Well no, unfortunately there is countless of mental health patients of all ages in this system that have experienced similar, traumatising and humiliating treatment in the name of "their own benefit".
Majority of people I know with similar experiences have been minors at the time too. It's truly a painful reality of an underfunded system where money and resources are the only thing that matters. If I were to talk about every injustice i've experienced inpatient and outpatient this would be a literal essay.
NSW health does fuck all for mental health during this current covid lockdown too, lifeline australia are struggling to pick up calls and wait times are extended, this should be enough evidence that we need more mental health services in place especially out of sydney.
tldr: we have a shit system and i needed to rant, it's also an interesting insight for people who have no idea or experience
