| I've had extensive experience caring for someone with severe and enduring mental illness. That person had several stays at MH hospital, some as an informal patient and some as a patient detained under various sections of the mental health act. In about 6 years that person's DSH was severe enough to require surgical treatment and inpatient admission to general hospitals or hospitals with specialist services. (Eg burns and plastics wards). I have personal experience of accessing specialist mental health services. All of this is in the UK. I can confidantly say that you are wrong when you say I have no experience of people in acute psycjiatric distress. Locked rooms is very unusual. Locked wards are not normal. A person might need supervision to leave the ward but they are not prisoners and are not treated like prisoners - risk is managed by closer supervision (I know a person who had 2 members of staff within arms reach at all times) not by locking them in a room. There are rare exceptions to this with special soft rooms - all blue with heavy crash mats. In gloucestershire this room is in the low secure forensic unit, which is in the grounds of but seperate from the main adult mental health hospital for the county. A person at severe risk of self harm or suicide will be able to do so in a very bare room - smashing their head on the walls or floor, using their clothing as a ligature. Strip searching patients is inhumane. Intimate searches of patients is just bizarre. Especially when we remember the overlap between people who have a mental health problem and peole who have been sexually abused. Being stripped and intimately searched is distressing for most people, but could be especially so for victims of sexual abuse. The UK charity Mind recently did a report about restraint for aggressive patients and for patients who needed rapid tranquelisation. This is something that should be used as a last resort in very clear situations. That report talked about the need to protect people from unneccessary restraint. I mention this because even this clearly protective measure (even most service users recognise a need for appropriate restraint) is looked at carefully to see if there are safer kinder alternatives. We can't tell from her post how severe her wound was. She doesn't mention any drips, so we don't know if they needed to give her fluids or not. We don't know if they used sutures to close the wounds or if they ised steri-strips. They didn't admit her for surgery. If her story is true it is shocking. You say that you've experienced similar or worse. I am very sorry you went through that, and I am angry other people who should have been caring for you put you through that. (I've noticed a couple of people mentioning my tone so I am trying to work on that. Sorry ifthis post sounds aggressive or grumpy, it isn't meant to. That's just my poor use of English). |