Rights of Passage

Rights may be legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement. They are what is allowed or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.

Legal rights are based on a society’s customs, laws, statutes or actions by legislatures. They are sometimes called civil rights or statutory rights and are culturally and politically relative since they depend on a specific societal context to have meaning.

For Kate, it must feel like running the gauntlet. She is presently, in my opinion, “improperly detained” at Rangipapa, an inpatient service that caters mainly for the needs of women in treatment programmes aimed at rehabilitation.

Running the Gauntlet

The gauntlet Kate is compelled to run between is that of the Tidal Model used in Rangipapa and the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights that ‘supposedly’ affords her rights. Rights that appear to me, to have been negated by practices employed at Rangipapa.

“The Tidal Model uses the metaphor of water and describes how people in distress can become emotionally, physically and spiritually shipwrecked. It sees the experience of health and illness as a fluid, rather than a stable phenomenon, and life as a journey undertaken on an ocean of experience.

It proposes that in mental health, the factors associated with a psychiatric crisis, or its more enduring consequences, can be diverse as well as cumulative. It states that by appreciating this metaphor, nurses or other helpers will gain a greater understanding of the person’s current situation and the inevitability of change.

With this, the helper may, in time, be guided to care with the person beginning their journey from the state of being washed ashore, drowning or being otherwise marooned by their life problems. Following the rescue, exploration can then begin as to what caused the storm in the first place and what needs to be done immediately to set sail again.”

Rights

Conversely, the Mental Health Commission here in New Zealand say that ALL users of health services, including mental health services, have rights under the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights 1996. These include the right to:

• respect
• fair treatment
• dignity and independence
• proper standards of care
• effective communication
• information
• decide about treatment and care
• a support person of your choice
• decide about involvement in health teaching and research
• make complaints

Words! Meaningless words because I know these are not true in Kate’s case. The newest approaches to mental health care mean that a person’s family or support network is included in care and treatment. Her networks are being shut out in all our efforts to give Kate the support she needs. Why?

Experience using this approach shows that this can help a person get better quicker and help avoid relapse or repeated hospitalisation. I’m going to argue that none of those ten rights as prescribed in the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights 1996 have been afforded Kate. We should be outraged!

News as at Monday, 9 May 2011 Kate’s health is beginning to suffer now. Please spread the net of the Petition wider, Kate needs our help. Right wrongs because you can and because it matters. And thank you.

UPDATE

On 16 May 2011, I called Rangipapa to speak to Kate. I was advised that Kate was not allowed to receive calls as instructed by her Doctor, a Dr Jacqueline Short, a consultant forensic psychiatrist.

Dr Short “is a UK-trained general and psychiatric nurse. It was her experience whilst working in medium secure environments which made her particularly aware of the marginalisation of women in secure settings and the paucity (read scarcity) of gender-sensitive approaches to treatment and service provision.

Training in forensic psychotherapy at the Portman Clinic, London, provided further insight into the internal world of ‘disturbed women’ and the importance of the attachment theory. Dr Short and her team established the first purpose-built medium secure service for mentally disordered offenders in Wales, in 2001.

Studies in criminology and social policy provided further understanding of female offending and prompted her involvement with the Department of Health’s national for women’s mental health in 2002/3. Dr Short is working on the development of services for female mentally disordered offenders in New Zealand.

She has been working with women at the Central Regional Forensic Mental Health Service, Porirua, New Zealand since her arrival in 2004 and is the visiting psychiatrist Arohata Women’s Prison. She is currently researching the differences between women in secure mental health services in New Zealand and those in Wales.”

The instruction is an MDT (multi-disciplinary team) decision. I was advised that I could register a Complaint to:

Dennis Klue,
Manager, Rangipapa
P.O. Box 50233,
Upper Main Drive, Porirua
New Zealand

OR

Leave a message (04) 918-2557 though I was advised by the person who answered the phone he will probably tell you what I was told.

RELATED POSTS

1. Katherine 2. Ships in the Night 3. Alone Alone All All Alone 4. Systems that take the Kate 5. Model Citizen: A Piece of Kate 6. A Twist of Kate: The Castaway 7. Throwing Out the Lifelines 8. An Anchor in the Social World 9. Rights of Passage