Eliminating Coercive Practices

The leadership of people who have lived experience working to end the use of seclusion and restraint in breach of consumers’ human rights in Victoria’s public mental health system.

We acknowledge the trauma, indignity, breached rights, and loss of trust caused by seclusion and restraint to thousands of people who were already in distress.

WHAT ARE COERCIVE PRACTICES?

  • Seclusion: the sole confinement of a person to a room or any other enclosed space from which the person cannot leave.
  • Physical restraint: the use by a person of their body to prevent or restrict another person’s movement.
  • Mechanical restraint: the use of a device to prevent or restrict a person’s movement.
  • Chemical restraint: the giving of a drug to a person for the primary purpose of controlling the person’s behaviour by restricting their freedom of movement.
  • Psychological restraint: any kind of communication strategy or intervention that pressures or coerces a person to change their behaviour against their will. It is a form of control that can be subtle and difficult to detect, including behaviours like manipulation or intimidation, and can manifest as limiting choices or creating a sense of obligation through emotional pressure to force compliance.

WHERE ARE COERCIVE PRACTICES USED?

These practices may be experienced across a range of settings including:

  • Victorian public mental health system
  • Police
  • Ambulance services
  • Hospital emergency departments
  • Inpatient services

There is no place for restrictive practices in the mental health system.

Coercive practices such as seclusion and restraint are recognised to be traumatic human rights breaches. They carry the risk of serious physical injury, even death. They have no place in a safe, therapeutic, rights-based health system. Plans are underway to eliminate seclusion and restraint from Victoria’s mental health system by 2031, but our position is that the elimination timeframe is far too long.

2023 CONSUMER LEADERSHIP TO END SECLUSION & RESTRAINT

During the first half of 2023, VMIAC was funded by the Victorian Department of Health to gather perspectives for its Strategy for the Elimination of Seclusion and Restraint from consumers who had experienced, witnessed, or feared these practices while using Victorian public mental health services.

Summary of consumer recommendations

Recommendations in more detail

VMIAC made a public submission to the Department in response to their draft Strategy, opened for public comment in August 2023.

VMIAC SECLUSION REPORTS

The Seclusion Reports are also an advocacy tool that helps make more visible the serious issue of restrictive practices, and the relative performance of different public mental health services. Responsibility for regularly producing this kind of report should rest with the sector, government, and regulatory bodies, and we hope to see them take this up. But to date there is little transparency or accountability for the mental health sector, and public data is often inaccessible.

Seclusion and Restraint Report #3

Seclusion and Restraint Report #2

Seclusion and Restraint Report #1

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Communications
communications@vmiac.org.au 

Quick Exit
Skip to content