Sexual safety on mental health wards

[BingerGeer]

I haven’t seen much publicity about this CQC report on sexual safety in mental health inpatient wards, and I thought people on this board might be interested as it shows women are more likely to be assaulted (though there’s also a fairly high, but lower, number of reports of men being assaulted).

Strong constitution needed to read some of that, for me. I've posted before about my experience of being sexually assaulted on a mixed sex psychiatric ward. It makes me a very strange mix of queasy down to my abdomen, cold and angry to realize it's just so common and how many other women will have faced what I did.

God, I swear the emotional toll of how badly women fare in this world is almost like another aggressive act against us.

Years ago a very talented (and very beautiful) female student of mine had a breakdown and ended up on a mixed ward in the local psychiatric hospital. Her parents lived miles away so I went in to visit her. I won't ever forget it. She was cowering in a corner being harassed by numerous male patients - young and old. I was so disturbed by the reality of her 'care' that I offered to bring her home to my house. I'm astonished to discover that this is still the norm.
And to you Floral. You've clearly coped with so much in your life. You must be so bloody strong to be still standing.

Oldstyle, I've only realized just what I'm made of in the last year and a half. Four decades worth of scrabbling around trying to find stability and continually falling into traps will either beat you or make you fight free.

To my mind, having mixed psych wards is as bad as if not worse than putting men in women's prisons, because not only can the female patients not flee, they are also mentally ill and hence very vulnerable.