Lacking Insight - Community Law

Lacking InsightEffects on consumers’ livesThe effects on a person’s life of attending a Boardhearing can continue long after the Board hasmade a decision regarding matters of status andtreatment. People tell of a process that has leftthem with a sense of powerlessness that hasaffected the way they view their life.A disempowering effectHow do you think it makes people feel?Powerless. You don’t have a hope in hell. All youcan do is go along with what they say so that youcan get out of the predicament that you’re in assoon as possible.RM - Consumer“[I felt] disempowered,absolutely disempowered,hijacked and totallywilfully misrepresented.”JM - ConsumerYou actually lose control of your own life.WM - ConsumerPeople emphasise that the sense of disempowermentis accentuated by a process that treatspeople more like an object than a person.Well I would describe the process as quiteintimidating and possibly alienating, and youneed to be very strong in your awareness of itto survive it because you may find that you willbe a pawn in some game, you might feel morepowerless than you actually are.GF - ConsumerLasting distress as a resultof a hearingConsumers spoke about the sense of powerlessnessevoked by the Board process. They also spokeabout the effect of a decision by the Board on theirprofessional and personal lives.It was so hard; my children were taken awayfrom me. Identity: my identity as a motherwas destroyed, identity as a professional wasdestroyed. I was living on pasta and cheese, hadno money, lost touch with contacts.GF - ConsumerAnother consumer, this time from rural Victoria,spoke about the distress that the Board hearingcaused her. Her distress was a product of theentire hearing process – before, during and after.It is important that all professionals involved in thehearing inform consumers of important informationregarding their treatment in a sensitive manner.I did not get off the CTO at the 3 month reviewboard, they kept me on it and I remember justbursting into tears in the middle of it and sodid my mum, we both just got really upset .. . After [the hearing] I got handed a sheet bymy case manager with my diagnosis, no-onehad mentioned the diagnosis to me since I hadbeen in hospital . . . it [the sheet of paper] hadon it ‘paranoid schizophrenia’. . . . No-one toldme [before that] they just handed me this bit ofpaper . . . [it was] really confronting and reallyimpersonal and really distressing actually, thewhole thing.LF - Consumer56