Jul 19, 2009, 02:07 pm
Hi Mandy,
For topic one, and this obviously flows into topic two, a large area that has been targeted by the media is violence and aggression in hospitals and the "zero tolerance" policy. For example, take the case of Debbie Freeman - the nurse who was injured by a psychiatric patient at Swan Valley Centre (WA) in 2004. The media portray the mentally ill as people who are always violent and almost evil in a way. I have a friend who works at SVC and one of the things they did not tell you in the media was that the nurses did not follow hospital protocol, which was, in a large part, why this incident occured. The way the media have portrayed the situation, a large portion of nurses fear working in the mental health area. A few nights ago at work, a nurse was telling me that not so long ago, the Accident and Emergency department was offering incentives for nurses to work in A&E because no one wanted to work there (especially following the outbreak of the drug ice).
I believe the way the media has portrayed the situation, the general population tend to stigmatise the mentally ill. I think what the general population don't realise, is that the patients who are admitted to psychiatric wards are people - ordinary people. They are often intelligent people with degrees and PHDs who have just, somewhere along their journey, caved into the stresses of life. They are people with family and friends who work. And for a large part of psychiatric patients, they are simply in hospital because they have depression. Unfortunately mental illness does not pick and choose who it attacks, it targets at random and will take down anyone it can. A lot more people have mental illness than we even realise. I have a friend in 3rd year medicine who has BPD, another in 1st year medicine who has a personality disorder - yet the only way people would know this was if they told them. The way the media portrays mental illness, the population forget that we are dealing with ordinary PEOPLE!
LOL! I could go on and on. Hope this is of some help. Good luck.
