Ahad, 13 Oktober 2013

2007. Tidak gila tetapi dipaksa gila, untuk menjadi gila?.


بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ  , الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ , الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ ,  مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ , إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ , اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ المُسْتَقِيمَ  , صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ , غَيْرِ المَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلاَ الضَّالِّينَ.

Assalamualaikum w.b.t/السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُه
Meja www.peceq.blogspot.com .

Tidak gila tetapi dipaksa gila, untuk menjadi gila?. Maka belajarlah seseorang untuk menjadi gila dengan paksa sunti dengan keadaan tubuh kaki dan tangan terikat di katil pesakit mental. 

The Real Singapore.

http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/10/06/ex-patient-suggests-ways-to-improve-imh-patient-care/
http://therealsingapore.com/content/ex-patient-suggests-ways-improve-patient-care-imh

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Location: Tampines Street 34,Tampines,Singapore
Posted by     at   Sumber: (Ex-patient suggests ways to improve IMH patient care) .

Ex-patient suggests ways to improve IMH patient care. 

 The mentally ill in this society today is the most disadvantaged as one could say. Especially the in-patients in IMH. I am a 23 year old who has spent most of her blooming youth in the C Class ward of IMH. I have stayed in that ward since I was 19 in 2009. For 2010, 2011 and 2012 as well. Each for months. With the longest, a 6 months stay in 2012. And most of them it was not because I had an onset of mental illness, but because my parents did not want to bring me back home and the hospital still refused to let me go too.

It all started with a quarrel/fight with my parents in 2009. I was rather a delinquent. But that did not mean I had a mental illness and they shouldn’t just send me to IMH because they couldn’t handle me. They wanted me to be confirmed with mental illness so as to justify my rebelliousness. At my first visit, the doctor (male) at IMH, after assessing me, told my mother that I was mentally sound. But my mother refused to bring me home. That made me anxious and when I tried escaping from the observation room, they tied me up, injected me and admitted me in the ward.

Another doctor (female) came and wrongly diagnosed me as ‘Schizophrenic’ because the EPIP (Early Psychosis Intervention Program) team took over and found out it was a wrong diagnosis. I experienced trauma in my first experience with IMH. I was admitted to 34B and the nurses were nasty. The haloperidol injection made my eyes roll up terribly and the tying of my body ached me badly. I was tied for what seemed like 4 hours of eternity. I was so scared of injections but they forcefully pushed me down on the bed, tied me and unmercifully poked the needle into me. I was hailing, screaming inside.

That first psychiatric injection traumatised me. I was already traumatised because CISCO guards were called and with 6 nurses, they pushed me on a mobile bed and used white ‘ropes’ to tie my hands to the side of the bed, my legs at the end, and my torso to the bed. For 4 hours my body ached a lot because I stayed in that position for too long. I experienced an out-of-the-world experience with haloperidol – something that I’m allergic to. The feeling I had when my eyes rolled up was one that can’t be explained. My eyes kept looking upwards and I couldn’t control it. It’s like the black eye peas rolled into the brain. And I couldn’t walk properly. Because my whole body felt that I was someone else. Possessed.

I understand the violent ones need to be restrained. But I was trying to escape from IMH! I didn’t want to be and wasn’t violent! And I was already told I was well by the doctor! Did it give you the right to stop me? Since I was already well! I hated to stay in the hospital. And that warranted tying me up, injecting me, and admitting me into the ward? I think it’s pretty normal to get fed up with being enclosed! I told no one what had happened to me. And I eventually went home with a traumatised spirit.

But in 2010, we quarreled and fought again. This time, after they sent me to IMH again, they refused to bring me home, resulting in a transfer from IMH to Simei Care Centre. Again, in the ward, I was tied mercilessly. Because they thought that I was disruptive. But I was just being myself. I was tied more than 2 times. Hands, legs and body. When I got tied up, I cried. My hair stuck to the front of my face, but no nurse bothered to sweep it away nor wipe my tears and mucus. I was a total wreck because as my hands were tied, I couldn’t reach my face to wipe my sweat, tears or sweep my hair. I kept begging and shouting for the nurses to untie me, all of them walking past me like they heck care, and ignored me. Again, adding on to my already bottled up emotions, I felt more traumatised.

SCC is a psychiatric rehabilitation residence but I was the only one not prescribed any medicines because again, the doctors certified that I was sane! I initially heavily protested that I wouldn’t accept any other place to stay, I didn’t want to stay in Simei Care Centre! But the doctors and case manager made it too easy for me to stay there without even much talk to advocate to my parents that they should take me home. After I went into Simei Care Centre, there were fights between me and my uncle, who thought he could take over. I was separated from my family. For months, I didn’t go to church, for months, my parents did not meet me, my sister did not keep in touch. For months, I lived alone. And remember, I was 19 then, still needing the love of my family.

Staying away from my parents and sister was a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching and heart-stopping situation. My heart felt very sunken, heavy with pain and sorrow. I wasn’t ready to stay out on my own. I felt absolutely lonely. With all the traumatisation from IMH and the trauma of living in a foreign place, separation from my parents, (mind you, I wasn’t able to even touch my bed, my room and my home) I developed a mental illness. My mood became an extreme swing. Simei Care Centre sent me to IMH and the doctor diagnosed me as suffering Bipolar Mania.

So with a diagnosis, my parents had all the more reason to think that I’m mentally ill. From IMH, I was sent again to Hougang Care Centre because my parents did not want to take me back home again. All this made my life an incapacitating one. The hospital – specifically my doctor – didn’t let me out on my own again and failed in having more family counselling to get my parents to take me back home. From Hougang Care Centre, I was yet again sent to IMH and was FORCED to have ECT – Electro-Convulsive Therapy, which is a treatment that I have written against fervently [Link].

I went home but in 2012 April I was sent to IMH by my parents again because I tried to enter the house through the window when they locked me out. Another trivial issue. I stayed there for the longest time in my life – 6 months. Not able to go out. With the same reason as with previous admissions. And I witnessed many mistreatments. Including a nurse taking photos of me when I got tied up. I also saw a foreign nurse actually scotchtaped a patient’s mouth in 2009 [Link].

That’s why I am taking this avenue to air my concerns at a deeper level. Here are my suggestions on how to improve healthcare in IMH:

1. There are various hospitals that offer gardening as therapy. But all of the patients in 34A or the C Class never stepped out of the ward, at all. Let us take a stroll downstairs, buy the food that we like, talk to people outside the ward and let us have fresh air!!!

2. Better food and leisure for the patients in C Class wards – we do nothing everyday and there’s a lack of entertainment that our brain wastes away!

3. The hospital should provide a layer of counselling services and mandatory family glue but instead I see the hospital being a give-medicine-and-injection-and-you-take hospital.

4. Patients need the most tender care, if they are behaving in an aggressive or violent fashion, then you should find out why they do such things. Counsel them, guide them and therapify them.

5. Other hospitals allow visitors to use the ward’s toilet, with that, they can understand and see for themselves the condition of the toilets, whereas IMH cordons these areas away from the public and they cannot see the dirtiness and low-class toilets that are available, especially in the C Class wards.

6. Renovate the C Class wards, include air conditioning. Like TTSH’s C Class wards which have spot cooling to cool the patients in the heat of 35 deg C. This produces calmer patients, and the nurses and doctors could be more caring too. I have written to The Straits Times and my letter on getting air conditioning for IMH C Class was published on The Straits Times Forum Online [Link].

I know we have to go to the hospital if we are seriously ill. But my experience was more a traumatic than a healing experience. This is what matters:

1. The hospital has to sack staff that mistreat their patients.

2. The hospital CANNOT bully patients and keep patients in the hospital if they do not want to. And if they are not under the Mental Care and Treatment Act.

3. The hospital CANNOT make our stay as uncomfortable as possible, which I see the nurses trying their best to do.

4. The hospital CANNOT force us to eat medicine if we don’t want to.

5. And lastly, NOT forcing us to have injections when we are terrified of it.


6. We are given ECT because it is thought to be the last resort, definitive cure-all to our mental problems. But healing a patient goes beyond just making us lose our memories or causing a brain electrico. It is counselling, understanding and psychotherapy that can eventually pull us through our ordeals. And maybe, the last resort is – God.

7. There are TOO MANY foreign nurses in IMH that don’t understand Singaporeans and bully them. Even Singaporeans as well.

It’s not injections and medicines that we need to achieve sanity. Care, concern and proper counselling/therapy count towards sanity too. You see, if a normal and sane person goes through these treatments, they would become MAD with illness!

I urge the members of the public to empathise and give some understanding to the mentally ill. We appeal to IMH to improve its service to provide us with a better experience during our stay there. I would like to encourage more young Singaporeans to come forward to be involved with IMH, and help.

Genevieve Tan Wei Min (Ms)

Editor’s note: This article has been forwarded to IMH’s CEO for comments. (http://therealsingapore.com/content/ex-patient-suggests-ways-improve-patient-care-imh) (http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/10/06/ex-patient-suggests-ways-to-improve-imh-patient-care/)

Comments: 12 comments

 


وَتِلْكَ الْقُرَى أَهْلَكْنَاهُمْ لَمَّا ظَلَمُوا وَجَعَلْنَا لِمَهْلِكِهِم مَّوْعِداً 
Dan penduduk negeri-negeri (yang derhaka) itu Kami telah binasakan ketika mereka melakukan kezaliman, dan Kami telah tetapkan satu masa yang tertentu bagi kebinasaan mereka.
(Surah Al-Kahf ayat 59) 
                              Tiada ada daya dan kekuatan kecuali dengan pertolongan Allah (SWT).
Perhatian: Pemaparan tajuk-tajuk, gambar-gambar dan segala bagai, adalah pandangan dan pendapat peribadi yang lebih menjurus kepada sikap dan sifat untuk menjadi lebih baik dengan mengamalkan gaya hidup menurut perentah dan larangan Allah S.W.T., antaranya bersikap dengan tiada prasangka, tidak bertujuan untuk kebencian, tidak berkeperluan untuk bersubahat dengan perkara bohong dan tiada kaitan dan berkepentingan dengan mana-mana individu. Jujur., aku hanyalah hamba Allah S.W.T., yang hina dina. BERSANGKA BAIK KERANA ALLAH S.W.T.. 
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