Warwick mental health crisis: Residents claim critical lack of services, care risked their lives

‘The system is not going to help us’: Warwick residents who claim they were dismissed by health professionals in their most desperate moments of mental illness say a critical lack of services is going to keep costing lives. WARNING: Distressing content.

The tragic death of a Warwick teenager reportedly failed by the town’s mental health system has sparked an urgent plea from the community for an overhaul of existing services, with residents now sharing their own heartbreaking and often life-threatening experiences.

The devastated family of Cale Bonner, 16, claim the boy was denied mental health care at the Warwick Hospital only 24 hours before he was killed in a horror crash at Glengallan last week, with the hospital now investigating the incident.

For Allora resident Rhiannon Clark, feeling abandoned and alone in her most desperate moments of need is an all-too familiar story.

At one of the lowest points of her depression and searching for any end to her suffering in April last year, Ms Clark said she drank a significant amount of alcohol and called an ambulance to get herself to the Warwick emergency room.

“When I got to the (hospital), they put me in the furthest room from their station and left me to sit on the bed with the lights off,” she said.

“I was checked on maybe once after being there for hours and that was by one of the cleaning staff. They basically just left me there to ‘sober up’.

“I was not able to articulate to the doctor what all my problems were because he was in a rush to send me home. I sat outside after being dismissed and cried my eyes out.

“I went back into that hospital and told (a staff member), ‘If I wasn’t suicidal enough before, I sure feel like I am now’.”

Warwick residents claim they have repeatedly been turned away or given inadequate support for mental health concerns at Warwick Hospital. Picture: file

Left stranded at the Warwick hospital with no way home and still no sign of help, Ms Clark said she was distraught and briefly readmitted by staff before realising the attempt was “hopeless”.

“What did I learn from all this? I definitely should not have got drunk … and there is no mental help for me,” she said.

“I am doomed to suffer until I die. I am not feeling suicidal anymore, but I do just want the suffering to end.

“Hearing this story about that poor young man and seeing people’s comments just makes me feel angry, sad, and more hopeless.

“Why is mental health care so slack? Just because the damage is on the inside and you can’t see it, it doesn’t make it any less of a severe wound than a severed limb would be.”

The Darling Downs Health mental health service has remained firm under the renewed scrutiny that specialist and individualised mental health care was available at the Warwick Hospital for those in need, from children and adolescents through to the elderly.

“The local team is supported by staff specialist psychiatrists, a medical team, and other specialist staff who provide outreach services to Warwick,” a spokesman said.

“Additionally, the Warwick Hospital provides emergency mental health care and some overnight brief crisis admissions.

“People who require highly specialised mental health care are supported by the Acute Mental Health Unit at the Toowoomba Hospital, when necessary.”

After being treated through both systems when pushed to breaking point by decades of battling mental illnesses, Warwick mother Heidi Boundy says the town’s critical lack of services almost claimed her life in 2018.

Heidi Boundy is determined to be a voice for those in Warwick battling severe mental illness as a survivor herself. Picture: file

“I reached out for help and I was hospitalised in Warwick for almost a week, and then they kept pushing to send me home and come back as an outpatient,” she said.

“Then when I went home, it spiralled and it became a vicious cycle.

“When you are genuinely in that moment and at the hospital, you don’t have the words to say, ‘I’m going to kill myself’, so you use other things.

“When they asked me what was wrong, I could only say I had a headache and the nurse at the desk would tell me to take a paracetamol, and that’s the worst message to give somebody in that moment.”

Ms Boundy said she was admitted and quickly released from the Warwick hospital three times before a friend drove her to a Toowoomba mental health unit, demanding she be taken in and given thorough care.

The mother of three said she finally felt some hope only to be let down once again after being discharged from Toowoomba, as she had no means of transport to the town from Warwick to complete the recommended cognitive behavioural therapy.

“I really wanted to do the program, and I was desperate to do the program because I hadn’t done anything like that before,” she said.

“I said to them that I didn’t drive and couldn’t get to Toowoomba, and they said if I’m not willing to go to that program then I’m refusing treatment.

“I was seen as refusing treatment and discharged with no follow-up. You can see how people wind up falling through the cracks in the system.”

Battling through Warwick’s overstretched private sector to finally find a psychologist and GP able to adjust her medication and give her the longer-term support she needed, Ms Boundy said the town’s mental health system was still failing those who needed it most.

“It definitely wasn’t the mental health system that helped me, it was finding my church and community. When you’re like that, you have to have faith, because the system is not going to help us,” she said.

“We have to help ourselves, but if you’re really that sick, you can’t and it scares me.

“There’s a big, big lack of services, and with what is here, I definitely don’t think they’re trained enough or they just don’t take it as seriously as it needs to be.

“They’re professionals in mental health and these things aren’t black and white. I’m very, very lucky to be here today.”