IMPATIENT! IS A STORY OF WOMENS RIGHTS, OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RIGHTS OF OUR MOST FRAGILE- PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES.
In a world where personal safety and security is critical for a successful recovery, it is in fact the least considered element in the mental health care sector.
Made with spirit and humour, Impatient! is a longitudinal cinema verite documentary that follows award winning fine artist, filmmaker, female peer advocate, mental health consumer and advocate, Sue Armstrong over a 10 year period, as she pounds the pavement, knocks on doors and meets with Lawyers, Professors, lunches with Mental health care consumers and picnics with sector professionals as she uses her genetically radical talents to present us with a unique, insider’s perspective on the psychiatric system, raising critical questions about its ability to safely and respectfully treat women at their most vulnerable.
Utter shock is the first reaction from the general public when they learn that wards in hospitals are mixed sex- especially when they realise that girls and women of all ages are admitted into these wards with a wide range of complete strangers.
But it is the innocent young daughters, the exhausted middle aged mothers, the vulnerable elderly grandmothers and the females of all cultures and religions that have been previously traumatised that are truly horrified when they are admitted into hospital for their mental health care and instead are left, completely exposed to men of all ages, ailments, illnesses, alcohol and drug induced psychosis and intoxications with virtually no support, usually no choice and absolutely no privacy whatsoever.
With her own lived experience of mental illness, Sue calls herself the IMPATIENT inpatient, as she has been campaigning for fundamental changes in the treatment of women’s mental health for over three decades to educate those on the outside, while campaigning for those vulnerable women and girls on the inside to have access to a safe and secure environment whilst enduring the most traumatic experiences of their lives.
It has certainly been an eye-opening journey into the mental health care sector, hearing the stories about the repeated trauma and readmissions that so many of these young girls and women of all ages, cultures, religions and gender identity go through- that’s if they make it that far and don’t become a name on another death certificate instead.
I have have heard such a wide variety of perspectives about the reasons why wards in hospitals should not be mixed sex, which has bought up even more questions along the way about just how the medical professionals make the decisions that they do and it can only be called a horror show.
The simple fact that the policy makers back in the 1960’s decided to combine the wards because they ‘thought that the women would civilise the men’ was incredibly shortsighted of them.
However the biggest injustice is the fact that in the 5 decades following, the successive policy makers commissioned report after report and despite each report containing an increasing number of cases of rape, sexual assault, bullying, sexual and religious discrimination among the many atrocities perpetrated by both staff and other inpatients, the policy makers continued to allow this behaviour to persist well on into the 21st century, making it even worse by combining the inpatients in the wards- those with traditional mental health illnesses with those much younger and physically stronger people intoxicated by alcohol and suffering psychosis from other drugs- two extremely different groups of troubled people being treated the same and having to live with each other in a strange environment.
So this is a serious problem not only faced by females in Australia, but from many other countries around the world and this film has been made to create the awareness about this situation- one in which your own grandmothers or daughters may one day find themselves in- unless your scrutiny and dissatisfaction- can convince the policy makers to do the right thing and separate the genders in hospitals for the safety of all identifying females- where ever they may be.
This is infact a problem for girls and women on a global scale and this film can be used to educate and empower everyone to speak up for their rights and remind the policy makers and the entire mental health sector in hospitals about their duty of care that they are supposed to uphold for each inpatient.
This topic will get everyone thinking about how your mentally ill people- females are treated- that's if they are even recognised as having a mental illness at all as we know that many countries don't admit that mental health illness exist and some that do, consider it to be a western illness only.
This film should motivate you to consider the best practice and wellbeing for your family and friends when one day through injury, illness, trauma- no fault of their own, they become the next re-traumatised and re-admitted inpatient, so please have this discussion with your family members, friends and colleagues to find out how to keep them safe during their recovery.
For more information and how to help have these incredibly important conversations to change the status quo, click on this link to find out how. https://www.impatient.org.au/
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