Overview
Coercion is considered a violation of dignity and fundamental human rights. The use of coercive practices in mental health services contradicts the care and compassion upon which the healthcare system is built. It is dishonest that the health system continues to administer involuntary medication through physically holding patients and injecting them and is still explicitly excluded from the definition of chemical restraint. This allows for the omission of involuntary medication statistics from medical data, enabling it to proceed as undocumented coercion. Not only is this a domestic issue, but international as well. See full paper on Chemical Restraint.
Campaign
It is necessary to support the inclusion of involuntary medication in the definition of chemical restraint in order to increase accountability and transparency in the mental health system. The definition of chemical restraint would properly represent the negative effects of forceful and coercive practices in the data collection of chemical restraint allowing all chemical restraint practices to be monitored and properly controlled across services in Australia.
The lack of data surrounding chemical restraint makes it difficult to address coercion and forced treatment that are often normalised in routine intervention methods. The Chemical Restraint document addresses the harmful effects this has on consumers, societal impacts, and the expected changes for the definition of chemical restraint.
We are negotiating with four national government organisations and have received confirmation indicating the current definition does not properly encompass coercive practices in the health care system:
Dr. Alex Hains, Executive Director of the National Mental Health Commission (NMHC), stated “although chemical restraint is defined in some jurisdictional Mental Health Acts, it is our understanding that a practical definition that is useful for monitoring or collecting data has been an ongoing challenge and national data on this type of restraint is currently unavailable.”
The Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Data Governance Forum (MHSPDGF) said it will “raise the issue at a future meeting and try to identify options to develop more consistent national collection and reporting.”
Anne Duggan, Chief Executive Officer of Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) agreed that “multiple definitions of the term ‘chemical restraint’ makes national benchmarking difficult” directing the Commission’s focus on “work that supports health services to reduce the practice of inappropriate restrictive interventions.”
Dr. Sophie Davison, Chief Psychiatrist for the Department of Health and Aged Care of the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Senior Officials (MHSPSO) “continues to have discussions as to how to develop nationally consistent approaches to improving safety and quality of mental healt