17yo sectioned in all male adult unit

“we remove them from their social support, we deny access to all their usual coping mechanisms, we take them away from anything that was good in their lives, we remove all their choices and control over their own life and environment, we give them crap inedible food, we deny them fresh air and access to outside spaces, we deny them exercise, we deny them meaningful stimulating activity”
This could not be more true. People who haven’t been inpatient in ~certain~ institutions cannot begin to imagine the level of archaic, dehumanising evil inflicted behind locked doors in the 21st century

I am an ex MH nurse. And also a MH service user. Whilst I agree with some of the points that minibroncs makes, I do also think that it misses a huge part of the overall situation.

Ideally, no female should be nursed on a male ward. The times when this is not possible is if there is only one ward for (e.g.) PICU. You won't find many staff disagreeing that this is unacceptable, and the trust I worked for spent lots of money in building additional wards so that we could segregate by sex.

Prior to that, it isn't that cut and dried. If a person is, for example, at a very high risk of harming themselves or others, then they are likely to face a higher risk of harm by not being in hospital, than being admitted but with 24 hour 1:1 care from a person of the same sex.

That's obviously not ideal, by any stretch of the imagination, but if the alternative is that person's possible suicide or harm to others, then it can sometimes feel to the AMHP and Drs sectionning that there is little choice.

With regards to sectionning of individuals who have capacity: capacity often fluctuates, and in its legal sense, has to be ascertained by two doctors. This means that in order for capacity to be fully assessed, a patient would likely need to be admitted anyway. I always tried to avoid any patient being sectioned if I could somehow persuade them to stay informally. Sometimes, that just isn't going to work, and the person needs to be detained for the safety of themselves and others. When I have instigated sectionning, I have never had a patient tell me, once they are well, that they didn't need to be sectioned. Though at the time, they will always deny it. I have always had the patient understand exactly why we had to. Maybe it is about explaining to the patient fully, I don't know, but there are occasions where we would have been doing the patient a great disservice if we hadn't sectioned.

Forcibly medicating is a bloody awful thing to have to do. I have done it many times, often with tears in my eyes, but only after I have answered the question of "would I agree this needed to be done to my family member". I agree that there are some MH professionals who are utter bastards and are in the job for some kind of power trip. The rest of us know the massive responsibility, and privilege it is, and I promise you we don't do these things lightly. Other patients should always be moved out of the way so the person has privacy, and same sex members of staff should deal with the underwear and injection, to.maximise dignity. To be fair to male colleagues in that situation, I have never known one not avert their eyes, even when the patient would not have been able to tell whether they were doing so or not.

"we remove them from their social support, we deny access to all their usual coping mechanisms, we take them away from anything that was good in their lives, we remove all their choices and control over their own life and environment, we give them crap inedible food, we deny them fresh air and access to outside spaces, we deny them exercise, we deny them meaningful stimulating activity"

This paragraph I do not recognise from the wards I worked on, though I appreciate they are all different. We WANTED their social supporters to phone and visit the patients, they had lots of choices of activities - we employed activity facilitators specifically for that, there was a wide choice of food, there was access to outside exercise, fresh air, a gym, a pool, physio, occupational therapy. People were encouraged to make choices and retain as much autonomy as possible.

Maybe it depends on the particular Trust - I worked for a specialise mental health trust. They do tend to have better provision than mixed Trusts.

My only reason for posting all this, is that I would hate someone to read a series of negative posts about mental health wards, and be terrified of ever being cared for in one. I can't speak for all, but I was proud to work where I did, and would be happy to be cared for there myself. Or have family members cared for.

They aren't perfect, but the patients don't see the vast amount of risk profiling that we do to try to keep all the patients safe and as well as possible. We broke our own bodies and mental health to provide the care that vulnerable females needed. And we took complaints very seriously. E.g. a colleague was accused of rape by a patient. This was alleged to have taken place with 7 female members of staff also in the room. Despite all the staff saying "this did not happen", we suspended the staff member, called the police in and the room was a crime scene. The colleague's ex wife heard what happened and refused him.access to their daughter (he had to spend £1000s through the courts to get access back), so he personally suffered.

The police investigated - it was a false claim made by a lady who was very unwell and it was part of her delusions. We knew that from the start. And still escalated it anyway. It is untrue to say complaints aren't taken seriously. They are. They are sometimes unfounded though. When they aren't unfounded, the shit hits the fan internally and there are major investigations.

I say all this NOT to defend a 17 year old being on a mixed sex ward. But to give the other side of MH treatment that the patients don't always see or even know about.

From the little I know it seems like people with autism and mental health needs just get warehouses in whatever secure space is available even if it's inappropriate or miles away from home.

I have a particular interest in the way autistic and intellectually disabled people are treated in mental health provision, and tbh it mostly feels like people aren't that interested.
@SpartacusAutisticus from personal experience - this, a million times

Australia pretty much only has mixed sex wards.

We don't even pretend to offer seperate bedrooms off a single corridor - too much admin.

Last time I was in hospital my mother ended up sleeping next to me on a chair because I couldn't move and was at the end of a corridor with a man in the bed next to me and call times of 30 minutes.

I don't know how or who to lobby for seperate male and female mental health care provision. What I do know is that if young girls were moved into a female only space then being 17 would be less of a problem.

Ok so we need single sex psychiatric wards.

What can we do about it.

No woman should be locked in with men. It's as simple as that.

This has been going on for ages, and it keeps on happening, lessons aren't learned because the men in charge prioritise lower tax rates above the safety of vulnerable people. Here's a paragraph from the article about Karen White on transcrimeuk.com

White then went on to gain access to another vulnerable victim via a mixed-sex psychiatric unit – another closed facility where vulnerable victims could not escape from a convicted male sex offender. White repeatedly raped and subjected the woman to violent, controlling behaviour; in her victim impact statement she also said she had tried to take her own life and was worried she cannot have children due to internal damage from being violently raped by White.

When dd was 17yo she was admitted to hospital for physical health reasons and at 17yo placed on an adult ward. Children’s wards are for 16yo and under apparantly.

So the wards are mixed. Yes there are separate male/female bays but they all open to a main corridor where the toilets are and the men wander up and down.

Dd was on a gastro ward and it’s where amongst others the alcoholics are placed. So a lot of these men had mental health issues but were there for physical health issues. I’ve previously worked on that very ward and was very aware of some of the types of patients on the ward.

It was awful leaving dd there. Male and female patients did wander in the night. There were times when a man would come running past her bay and try and get out the emergency exit near her bed, screaming and banging on the locked door. I had to tell her if she ever felt unsafe not to bother with her buzzer but just to start screaming loudly. Which is an awful thing to have to tell a vulnerable and sick child.

In the old days wards were always segregated and it was well known that many predatory males avoiding jail were in the male wards. It also seemed that many women were using the asylum literally as that...to get away from sometimes unbearable lives. Patients were allowed to mix during the day but mainly because the men benefitted from social interaction it was said. It is outrageous that girls and women have to be incarcerated with men .everyone knows this is a huge problem so why is it happening?

EL8888 she'll likely be on special obs, so have a staff member with her 24/7 but it's unlikely they could guarantee that will always be a woman. My experience is that they'll try to get you a woman to special you if you need to wash or go to the toilet, and if not, the decent male nurses will avert their eyes, but there are always staffing limitations.

Spartacus — thank you; it's shit isn't it? I've only been on general adolescent and adult wards, thankfully, not the hellholes that many autistic and/or learning disabled people are sent to, but general wards aren't that great for autistics either. Or indeed anyone. But certainly it's hard being autistic on a psych ward.

minibroncs:

Wow! Totally inappropriate. I like to think she at least had a female nurse with her 24/7 but it doesn’t say that she did. The postcode lottery is so wrong and unfair

Minibrocs. I didn’t know. Thank for your post

OMG this is beyond horrendous. I've visited someone in an adult male mental health ward and it is the very Last place a vulnerable 17 girl should be. praying she's moved very very soon.

I'm shocked that these facilities are mixed sex

Thank you minibroncs Such a powerful post.

This poor young woman must be absolutely terrified - as is evidently her mother. It just feels that we are so powerless to protect women and girls in any way.

I understand about not having separate young peoples facilities, but I assumed they would be sex segregated. There's nowhere for women then? I'm really surprised. If have thought women and girls would be at risk in facilities like this with men.

JFC.

Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have any influence here?

In terms of inhumane treatment [of women], as in:

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The abuse that happens every day on our mental health wards shames all of us. And I would consider this institutional abuse at the very least.

It's bad enough that we take away the liberty of mental health patients who still have mental capacity solely because they fall into one category of illness, but that we then incarcerate them in mentally unsafe environments, in physically unsafe environments, and on mixed safe wards is abhorrent. When they speak out about the appalling mistreatment they experience nobody listens or believes them because they're "mental" and not considered credible (and how dare you suggest NHS staff might be abusing their power over vulnerable patients).

We take away people's freedom on the say so of people with next to no legal training, we lock them up, we take them away from their homes and everything familiar, we remove them from their social support, we deny access to all their usual coping mechanisms, we take them away from anything that was good in their lives, we remove all their choices and control over their own life and environment, we give them crap inedible food, we deny them fresh air and access to outside spaces, we deny them exercise, we deny them meaningful stimulating activity, we forcibly restrain them and forcibly medicate them in circumstances that are frequently unlawful and abusive, we have male staff physically restraining female patients, staff forcibly pulling down their trousers and underwear to forcibly inject medication, places filled with coercion, patients with trauma histories being retraumatised, patients without trauma histories becoming traumatised...

And then people act all surprised that this does not result in them being magically healed if and when they are eventually allowed back to their shattered lives. Or wonder why patients in hospital are so distressed or become worse, or don't behave how they did in the community.

Shit like this is why I despair every time I see some idiot talking about "if you want to get better, just ask for help" or advocating somebody trying to "section" their loved one. People seek help and our system fucking destroys them and causes lifelong trauma and suffering.

No woman of any age should ever be detained on a mixed ward of any description (eg wards with shared common areas or where the male patients can be seen/heard from the female ward areas) - and that includes staff in determining whether or not it is mixed.

The Equality Act 2010 very specifically exempts hospitals from any mixed sex provision in any way!

See Schedule 3, section 27 [single sex services], subsection 5:

(5) The condition is that the service is provided at a place which is, or is part of—

(a) a hospital, or

(b) another establishment for persons requiring special care, supervision or attention.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/3

This young womane's parents need to get a lawyer and get this provision within the Equality Act 2010 enforced.

And this is why we need to have all of the Exceptions enforced as mandatory provision.

It does make me laugh sometimes when people wank on about conditions for women and children in prison when things are so much worse in psych wards in almost every respect you care to mention.

Psych wards are hardly ever single sex. When they say "single sex accommodation", they mean that male and female rooms aren't all mixed up together, and you don't have to walk through the part of the ward where the opposite-sex bedrooms are to get to the loos for your sex.

In practice, they're mixed wards and there's nothing to stop patients of whatever sex going wherever they like. Or showing you whatever bits of themselves they fancy.

There's usually a women's lounge, too - on the last ward I was on, to get to the women's lounge you had to walk round two corners and past the male bedrooms to the far end of the ward, where hardly anyone ever went, and the corridor and room lights often weren't even switched on. It was generally completely abandoned so you were utterly alone - several corridors away from where any of the staff were, in a room nobody could see into unless they came right up to the window in the door, and even then not the whole room.

Oh, and there were several lovely ligature points that another patient and I spent a few minutes pointing out to each other to pass the time.

Just dreadful.