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.
There is no place for restrictive practices in the mental health system.
This is the third Seclusion Report by VMIAC. Our goal is to provide clear information to Victorian consumers about the safety or dangerousness of local mental health services, in relation to seclusion and restraint.
Seclusion and restraint are now well-recognised as traumatic and as human rights breaches. These practices also 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, but our position is that the 10-year elimination timeframe is far too long.
This report is 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 producing this report should rest with the sector, government and regulatory bodies, and we hope to see them take this up. But to date there is very little transparency or accountability for the mental health sector, and public data is often inaccessible.
Download the Report
“…you go in there seeking help and surviving the traumas in your life, but you end up having to cope with even more trauma. It’s pointless.”
This report was updated to Version 2.2 on 4 July 2022 with changes including: correcting the managing organisation name on graphs for the Royal Melbourne Hospital (pp29 and 32), changing the Y-axis on a Latrobe Regional Hospital graph for consistency (p32) and removing an incorrect managing organisation name under the Royal Children’s Hospital (p56).
Excerpts and Summaries
Additional Materials
Media Inquiries
For all media Inquiries please contact the following individuals.
Craig Wallace – VMIAC CEO
craig.wallace@vmiac.org.au
James Horton – VMIAC Chair: Committee of Management
chair@vmiac.org.au
Indigo Daya – Report Author/Survivor Advocate
Twitter – @IndigoDaya
IndigoDaya@gmail.com
Additional Media contacts, such as academic and legal experts on seclusion, and lived experience consumers, available on request.
Correction notice:
This report was updated to Version 2.2 on 4 July 2022 with changes including: correcting the managing organisation name on graphs for the Royal Melbourne Hospital (pp29 and 32), changing the Y-axis on a Latrobe Regional Hospital graph for consistency (p32) and removing an incorrect managing organisation name under the Royal Children’s Hospital (p56).