Top End veteran denied mental health treatment at private Darwin Clinic

A Darwin veteran has been repeatedly denied admission to the Northern Territory’s only private mental health clinic. Read why she feels ‘abandoned’.

A Darwin veteran has been repeatedly denied admission to the Territory’s only private mental health clinic.

A gold card veteran in desperate need of mental health treatment has been forced to travel interstate after being repeatedly denied from a Darwin clinic.

Samantha*, who did not want to reveal her real name, has borderline personality disorder and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic insomnia and grief after a stint of less than two years in the Australian Defence Force.

The veteran, who’s in her 20s, has been denied twice from admission to the Darwin Clinic – the only private mental health clinic in the Territory.

The 18-bed clinic is the only private facility in the NT that offers complex treatments Samantha’s psychiatrist has been recommending she undertake for more than a year.

A third bid to be admitted to the clinic has been unanswered, leaving Samantha no choice but to leave her support network to seek treatment in Sydney on taxpayer money.

Samantha said on both attempts to get into the clinic this year, she only got a phone call to say she was denied with no other support offered.

The Darwin Clinic is the Northern Territory’s only private mental health and alcohol and drug withdrawal clinic. Picture Glenn Campbell

“Not even a reason why … they’ve got beds, because it’s the first thing I ask when I ring up to put my referral in,” she said.

“And they turn around and say ‘not everyone gets one though’.

“They just say, ‘you can go interstate or into the public system’, which you don’t really want to when you live up here and there’s a perfectly good clinic up here that I’m eligible for.

“I feel abandoned, like I’ve been pushed away.”

Samantha said she would never go back into the public system for mental health treatment as previous experiences “felt like being in jail”.

Questions put to Darwin Clinic about why Samantha was denied and what support was offered as an alternative could not be answered, a spokesman said.

“Patient confidentiality considerations prevent us from discussing any individual patient’s condition or treatment,” he said.

“However, in accepting patients for treatment at the Darwin Clinic, consideration is given to the complexity and severity of a patient’s condition and whether the patient can be safely cared for at the clinic, or whether an alternate facility is better able to provide the required treatment.”

The spokesman also did not address questions about how many of the clinic’s 18 beds were currently occupied or if there had been any time this year where they were all taken.

Samantha believes she’s been put in the “too hard basket” because she has a veteran gold card, which covers any medical treatment she requires.

Name has been changed to protect the person’s identity.