Why we’re making this statement
People should feel safe when they seek mental health support. Yet services still control people by holding or tying them down, locking them in rooms, or using threats and pressure. This can cause lasting harm.
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System called for an end to seclusion and restraint, but change has been too slow.
VMIAC is led by consumers with lived experience of mental distress. We work to protect our rights and end the use of force, threats, and pressure in mental health services. This statement sets out what we expect government and services to do to make this happen.
Our position
We want a mental health system where people choose their support and have control over their own bodies and lives.
We reject seclusion, restraint, and forced treatment. These are forms of violence, not care. Ending them means changing how the whole system works, without replacing them with other forms of control. Consumers must have real power to lead this change.
The problem
These practices breach people’s human rights, including the right to make choices about their own bodies and be safe from harm. They can hurt people physically and emotionally, leaving them afraid to seek help again.
Threats and pressure often go unreported, so the harm stays hidden. People can find it hard to speak up or have their complaints taken seriously. Services face few consequences when they breach people’s rights.
There is still no clear, funded plan to end these practices. Without enough staff, better buildings, and more support options, services keep relying on control.
The solution
The Victorian Government must:
- Fund a plan to end all coercive practices by 2031, including threats and pressure.
- Improve staffing and buildings and offer support without force.
- Report where these practices happen and hold services responsible for harm.
- Pay and support consumers to lead change.
- Recognise past harm and offer apologies, support, and compensation where appropriate.
Glossary
- Chemical restraint: Giving medication to control someone’s behaviour or movement.
- Coercive practices: Actions that take away someone’s choice and use of power to make them do something, control them, or frighten them into agreeing.
- Compensation: A payment to someone for harm they have experienced.
- Consumer: A person with lived experience of mental distress who uses, or may use, mental health services.
- Human rights: Basic rights everyone has, including the right to be treated with dignity, make choices about their own life, and be free from violence and abuse.
- Mechanical restraint: Using equipment, such as straps or cuffs, to hold someone down or stop them moving freely.
- Physical restraint: When a person holds someone down or uses physical force to stop them moving freely.
- Psychological restraint / informal coercion: Using threats, pressure, or offers of help with conditions attached to control someone’s choices.
- Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System: An independent inquiry held from 2019 to 2021 that looked at problems in Victoria’s mental health system and recommended changes to improve it.
- Seclusion: Keeping someone alone in a room or space they cannot freely leave.