I’m too tired to RTFT but wanted to share my relevant experience. I will browse previous posts in the morning, with coffee.
I have spent around 18 months of the last 5 years sectioned and detained on a few different psychiatric wards in different hospitals. It is worth pointing out that on some occasions part of the initial reason I was ‘put away’ was due to sexual vulnerability. Lack of insight and awareness of the dangers of my behaviour obviously also played a part. I am not sure how much people know about Bipolar mania but sharing that may provide some background.
My first experience of a psychiatric hospital was when I was placed out of town on a mixed sex ward. I had one bloke who stared at me for the full 28 day stay. I had another who for a good few days followed me everywhere rubbing his penis. Eventually I bought it up with staff and was informed that he was ‘vulnerable’ but that they’d have a word. I wish I’d had the insight to say ‘I’m vulnerable too’. He did stop but I spent a lot of time avoiding being anywhere alone anywhere near him.
The main psych ward in my area has a mixed sex assessment ward. I have been there anything between 2 days and 9 weeks. The main difference between this ward and the previous is that only you and staff can access your bedroom. There is an en-suite toilet in your room. I was once blocked into my room as I tried to leave by a 6ft angry bloke with a habit of spitting on the floor. Thankfully a staff member happened to wander down the corridor and intervene.
It is worth mentioning the male staffing issue. All of the wards I have been on (bar the one I’m on at present) have had large numbers of male staff, including women only wards. On the women’s ward you share a room with a door that doesn’t close. Your privacy depends on a horribly flimsy taupe curtain. Staff do not knock when they do checks. It makes for an unnerving experience trying to get undressed. On other wards there is a window on the doors where staff can release the shutter with a key and peer in. Male or female. When I have been on 1-1 supervision I have frequently woken up to a random bloke next to my bed. Often these are not staff you have met before, just random NHS bank staff.
I have never been a victim of male sexual violence or indeed physical abuse yet I often feel very uncomfortable with the intrusion of men into my private space when I am vulnerable to the point of being legally detained. Many of the women I have met in these hospitals have a history of sexual trauma. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it must feel to be so powerless to escape their past when even in a supposed ‘safe’ place their safety and dignity is compromised.
I am also aware of how many women are ignored when they raise allegations of sexual assault and raped. I dread to think of the victim blaming that could arise from such a scenario; ‘she was crazy’, ‘she imagined it’, ‘she made it up’.
My fear is, I guess that the already voiceless, the mad and often despised women will be totally silenced and eventually forgotten. I struggle to reconcile that the times I have been deemed legally and medically unable to consent to sex yet have been locked in a building with unwell and volatile men.
I do not want to make this utter farce of a system even easier to exploit.
I should add, I am currently on the mother and baby mental health unit. Needless to say all patients are women and thankfully so are all the staff (bar psychiatrist and psychologist). Incidentally I have never felt so comfortable in this type of environment in my life.
This has been significantly longer than I anticipated. I believe my thoughts are relevant but I shall return to read pp’s in the morning.
Pyjamas on, brain off. Night all.