Lived Experience Forum

[Eden1919]

Warning this topic may be triggering but I haven’t gone into any specific detail in my post. 

So I am always interested in mental health reports but this one left me feeling a little weird.... it basically made it seem like anyone with a mental illness especially schizophrenia who goes off their medication or even just gets a bit unwell is going to become violent or is a risk to the community. The whole report left me feeling super uncomfortable because not only did they continuously link mental illness to violence but they didn’t even once interview an actual person with lived experiences about the issues they were covering. It just made me feel like people only want to control the mentally ill not help them or understand them in anyway. I mean I do agree that there services are seriously lacking across the country but the report just felt really awful to watch especially as someone with a diagnosis that kept being linked to violent acts.  

[Jynx]

Hey @Eden1919  - That's super awful, and definitely not something that anyone should have to sit through. If you want to, you can report this to SANE's StigmaWatch, there's a form you can fill out and everything. It has a space where you can talk about how it impacts the community, including yourself as someone with lived experience! 

---

[Millieme]

There was an ABC article that i think preceded the four corners episode. But it focussed more on how the Mental Health system is letting down unwell people but still made me feel awful. Truth is that there is no support when you need it from mh services until you are past crisis point.

[chibam]

@Eden1919  No, I'm not much of an ABC viewer these days; but sad to say, I'm not surprised with what your saying. Lack of lived experiance input to media coverage and policy formation is a major issue in the realm of mental health.

The government inquiries that are going on ATM into mental health both make significant mention of this and propose steps to increase the involvement of lived-experiance contributors. But you know how fast things move in government circles. Maybe by 2070 we might start seeing some culture change in this regard.

[chibam]

@Millieme  I hear that. I was a victim of the system myself. I must say though, that I find it refreshing to see just how much awareness I'm starting to see these days about the shoddy standard of "care" the system offers. Just a couple years ago, it seemed like it was virtually impossible to say anything negative about the mental health system without being shouted down for making "unhelpful" comments. But now, I'm seeing the truth being acknowledged all the time.

If there is any hope whatsoever of fixing the system, this has to be the first stage.

[Zoe7]

@Eden1919 Jack Heath (CEO of SANE) released a response to this saying much the same as you have. I can't find the link to it at the moment but he basically said the same - services are underfunded and it is stigmatising to categorise all areas of mi as similar or equate it to violence in any way.

[Zoe7]

@Eden1919 SANE's response to this program can be found here 

[Eden1919]

Thanks for the replies all, @Jynx  thanks I might try and write something to StigmaWatch later

@Zoe7  I am glad sane has responded, like I get that there is a major problem with people and families accessing services but there wasn’t a need to make it all about how violent mentally ill people “are”. 

There was one comment I agreed with in the show that was that there have been a small number of cases involving violence and they still need to be talked about but that there needs to be a balance and that it can’t be at the expense of further stigmatizing the rest of the mentally ill community. But most of it was just uncomfortable. It also made me scared that people would want to make it easier to force treatment on people with mental illness which is something I have had very traumatic experiences with so the whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth really. 

[Zoe7]

I totally agree @Eden1919 

[greenpea]

@Eden1919 @Zoe7 @chibam @Millieme @Jynx  and everyone can I play devil's advocate and say that my son2 was violent for 6 years. It broke up my marriage, contributed greatly to my own mi and caused huge damage to his siblings. All we had was the police and hospital stays overnight to give our family a break. Even now my son2 has violence which lurks beneath the surface due to his voices so please consider families like mine who have no where to go when a son or daughter becomes dangerous before comments like those with mental illnesses are more at danger from others than they are dangerous because it swings both ways and is inaccurate.

I hope my words have not offended anyone but this topic gets me so angry. pea