BBC Disclosure: Kids on the Psychiatric Ward - A Reflection
BBC Scotland’s Disclosure ‘Kids on the Psychiatric Ward’ tells the stories of young adults who were patients at Skye House, a children’s mental health unit in Glasgow, between 2017 and 2024. I have just watched the programme and found it incredibly emotional and distressing, so a word of warning to anyone who may find it triggering.
BBC Disclosure spoke to 28 former patients and reported the following:
a culture of cruelty amongst staff
staff quickly resorting to force including physical restraint and “dragging patients down corridors, leaving them bruised and traumatised”
over-use of medication and sedative/IM injections
patients being made to clean up their own blood or sick
Heather said “We were just kids and we were just unwell”. Anna’s mum said, “She was utterly, utterly traumatised by it. It led to nightmares and things for months, even years.” Cara was restrained more than 400 times in 18 months. She said that she “thinks quite a lot of them could have been avoided. By speaking to me. Not using restraints as first port of call.” Abby said “they would be having conversations with each other as if they weren’t pinning down this child against their will”. None of these young people should have had these experiences. They deserved better.
“Just because you’re a child and just because you’ve been admitted to hospital or a psychiatric ward doesn’t mean you lose all your rights. There are certain absolute rights that you retain. One is your dignity. And the other is to be free from cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment.”
When I was 16, I was admitted to a children’s mental health unit for three months, where I was detained under the Mental Health Act. I was readmitted in 2019 for a short crisis admission. My time in hospital was nowhere near the length of many of these young people’s admissions - I am one of the lucky ones. I could very easily have been caught in that cycle. Additionally, the majority of the care I was received was decent and compassionate. But even then, there were experiences that left me traumatised, treatment that should not have happened, and a whole lot of trauma to unpack once I was discharged. I talk about this in my book Girl Unmasked.
“There is a lot about being on that unit that I can’t share or talk about. It is impossible to convey the fear and the trauma that I experienced there. Some of the stories that I am going to share in the next few pages might not seem too bad - because, yes, I made friendships there; and, yes, there were some nice staff who really did help me. It may have saved my life. But I would ultimately leave the unit with more trauma and more nightmares than I went in with.”
As the BBC Disclosure highlights, often the young people ending up in mental health units are autistic. Abby said “I was just a scared undiagnosed autistic fourteen-year-old that didn’t know what was up ahead…I’d got bullied in high school and from there my mental health just deteriorated…I spent the next two and a half years of my life in there.” This is something that makes me feel really angry, because so often our needs aren’t understood or recognised, and we become more distressed. It is then really hard to get out of the cycle of crisis and out of hospital.
Anna said that at one point, 7 out of 8 of them on the ward were autistic, but she felt staff didn’t think about this or consider it to be a reason for any of their behaviours. I experienced this too - where in my first admission my autism wasn’t recognised and my notes say that ‘Emily has hysteric attacks when she doesn’t get her own way’. My doctor said I wasn’t autistic, I just had high social anxiety.
It is imperative that autistic young people admitted to CAMHS wards have their autism taken into account and understood. The environment of a mental health ward is difficult for anyone - for autistic people, it is even more so. In 2020, I participated in this research study by NDTi titled ‘“It’s Not Rocket Science” Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic children and young people in CAMHS inpatient services’. The study makes some helpful recommendations including:
creating a predictable environment
involving autistic people with relevant expertise in reviewing the sensory environment
ensuring all staff have training from autistic experts and allies that understand autism and sensory needs
assessing everyone’s sensory needs on admission and considering how sensory need will be accommodated and supported in care plans
personalising risk management and decision making, supporting people to have choice and control
swapping alarms for ‘silent’ alarms
reducing noise and echo, ensuring there is quiet space and outdoor space that people can access at any time
changing fluorescent lighting for alternatives
considering the impact of smells
considering the impact of touch and texture, including during use of restraint
“We are putting autistic people through hell - and when they break, if they survive, we put them in hell to try to manage their brokenness. The system is unfit for purpose...You see, psychiatric wards are not built for autistic people. You could hardly design a better environment to enhance our stress - and yet we are placed there at our most vulnerable.”
Being on a CAMHS ward as a teenager is a really difficult experience. One of the girls said “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that lonely in my whole life” and I would echo that. I felt so distant from my friends at home/school, who I felt could never understand what I was experiencing. I was away from my family and felt incredibly guilty for what I believed I was putting my parents through. I felt so much anger - at the system, at professionals who I felt didn’t understand, but mainly at myself.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing professionals out there and some brilliant care - I wrote this blog about the good within the broken system. But we have to talk about experiences like those shown in this BBC Disclosure, because unfortunately they are not just a one-off. Why are young people receiving 37 IMs in a month? Why are young people being restrained and injected hundreds of times, so much so they have to find alternative injection sites? Why are they feeling “like walking zombies…sedated to the point personalities were dimmed”? Why do so many young people feel that “staff just want to drug me up constantly”? Why do so many of end up traumatised from our hospital experiences? And how on earth do we stop this happening?
There has been a strong push towards community care in recent years, with more mental health trusts opening Home Treatment Teams and intensive therapy teams in the community, reducing the need for hospital admissions which we know can do more harm than good. Unfortunately, access to care remains a postcode lottery and there are still young people who require hospital admission who deserve compassionate care and treatment, and to feel confident that they will receive this.
I think the young people who spoke out in this BBC Disclosure are incredibly brave and I so hope that they are managing to move forwards with the support that they deserve.
The BBC Scotland Disclosure is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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