Lacking Insight - Community Law

Part 3 > The Involuntary Patient ExperienceConsumers envision the role of the communitymember, then, as one of contextualising the personappearing at the Board – as a member of thecommunity, with diverse interests and needs - andproviding individual specific advice.I believe the community member on the ReviewBoard should have a lot more to say and havea lot more input [such as] advising people aboutrecreational groups and helpful groups andsupport groups in the community, I think that’s afantastic idea.PF - ConsumerAre there ways they could ensure that theindividual feels that they have been listened to?Like I know one fellow who is on the review boardquite often. I can’t think of his name. . . . Healways asks you what you do that you enjoy.He does this so as to get some broader focus,[because] he is a community rep on the reviewboard. ... So that the person can say if they aredoing something with their life that they enjoy, thatit might help them, I mean it is not necessarilygoing to change the illness but it might help themdeal with what they are going through and itmake sense of it and move towards recovery. . .. it gives something to build on so that the personhopefully won’t need the review board in thefuture. I like that approach.NM - ConsumerMany consumers suggested that the communitymember ought to be a person who has a livedexperience of mental illness. The role of thecommunity member then becomes an ongoingeducative one in regard to peers on the Board.Consumers believe that the community member hasa role in teaching the Board about service options.Obtaining a second opinionConsumers were keenly aware of the difficultychallenging their psychiatrist’s evidence and saw thevalue of independent second opinions.It could have been different if I had been allowedto get a second opinion, if I had been allowedto get a psychiatrist to do what I thought wasthe correct psychiatric management, or just sortme out physically. The matter would have beenresolved a lot earlier. I was ill, I will not deny that.I was crazy as a cut snake by the time they tookme out a second time.GF - ConsumerThere should not be a psychiatrist on the ReviewBoard because you’ve got a psychiatrist checkingon a psychiatrist and they’re not going to goagainst one another. They won’t go against oneanother.PM - ConsumerRM was exasperated by the difficulty in getting anindependent assessment:... I’ve tried getting second opinions. No matterhow hard you try, and in all my hearings, I’ve neverhad one psychiatrist go against the other.To challenge the opinion of the treating psychiatrist itis necessary to obtain an independent assessmentfrom an equivalently experienced practitioner.Although the right to a second opinion is wellarticulated in information provided to patients in theMental Health Regulations 1986, Chief PsychiatristGuidelines (2005) a second opinion is immenselydifficult to organise. There are various impediments:• Cost: consumers subject to orders are publicpatients and do not have the ability to pay.59