Mental health patient stripped naked at NT mental health facility

A woman was stripped naked and told to urinate in the corner of a room after being “thrown in” an NT mental health unit. Read her courageous story of survival.

The woman, who wished to be referred to as “a survivor”, said her experience of the Territory’s mental health facility was “nothing short of barbarism” . Picture: Supplied

A woman was stripped naked and forced to urinate in the corner of a seclusion room at a Territory mental health facility.

The woman, who wished to be referred to as “a survivor”, said her experience was “nothing short of barbarism”.

“People think you go in there to get help, but every human right you have is violated,” she said.

After 19 years of accessing Top End Mental Health Services, the survivor now funds her own private psychiatry because she said the system only further traumatised and antagonised her psychiatric condition.

“’When I’m in that distressed, highly distressed state, I get thrown in there, and it’s sort of entering the dark ages in some way,” she said.

Solitary rooms are often padded all over with a mattress on the floor, they are used for patients to regulate and usually for very short periods of time. Picture: Supplied

“I remember probably about 15 years ago being put into solitary, stripped naked, injected with barbiturates and left without anywhere to urinate.”

The survivor said after complaining about her treatment, some changes were made across the unit but it wasn’t until May last year NT Health created a three-bed women’s only wing in the high-dependency ward at Royal Darwin Hospital.

The survivor’s last admission was in 2021 and she said little had changed in the almost two decades she had been accessing the service.

“They perceive me as dangerous but all I want is someone to make some f–king sense to me and treat me like a human being and the fact that I’m not outrages me,” she said.

She also said she was “fly-kicked” by another patient during one admission.

The woman recounts sitting in the TV room and being stared at by up to four uniformed corrections officers who were guarding other patients.

“Very often there’s three to four men dressed in uniforms, it’s like a sort of a gladiatorial vibe where they just kind of stand there staring at the patients and observing patients,” she said.

“It’s horrific.”

The behaviours of prison guards while supervising inmates in mental health units is at the centre of an agreement between NT Health and Corrections, which has remained unsigned for almost a year.

Negotiations between NT Health and Corrections regarding both inmates at Joan Ridley Unit and the funding of the Complex Behaviour Unit continue to be unresolved. Picture: Che Chorley

Last year, the survivor approached the community mental health team, run by NT Health, to wean off an antipsychotic that was impacting her quality of life.

“It was interacting with my driving … and I was ready to come off it,” she said.

“It’s not something I was meant to be on for a long time.”

However, the community team took her to tribunal to have her court ordered to remain on the drug.

“They say that because I don’t agree with them. I lack insight into my illness, you know, and this is the circular thinking that they have,” she said.

“Thank god the magistrates saw through it, and saw them for how nonsensical they were.”

Now with secure employment, the survivor said her “recovery is continuing” and has vowed to fund her own psychiatry and psychological services.

“I’m very privileged in terms of my financial situation … I’ve been able to slowly extract myself from the public system,” she said.

“I’ve now got a private psychiatrist that I see through telehealth and she just is appalled by how I’ve been treated.”

The survivor said her experience was marred by the system’s reluctance to use best practice and truly implement a model of care that supports people to recover from mental illness.