‘The facility felt like a jail’: How my girl was crushed by a medical system meant to assist her
It was revealed to me in that defining moment that the mental health unit where my daughter was staying had all the trappings of a secure institution.
Our child had placed her trust in the medical establishment. We had done the same. That trust shattered when she was moved from our local medical facility to the locked facility at the private hospital.
As we prepared to leave, she stepped quietly toward the medical vehicle alongside me and her therapist, who held her close before watching us leave.
When the transport door opened at the new location, the stark building dominated the view. We were received and guided up a set of steps and through the locked portals, one shutting firmly behind us, the attendant waiting for the first lock to click before accessing the following entry.
We entered a totally secured environment that was devoid of daylight, with my eyes quickly hurting from the intense artificial light. They guided us to a interior space that was fully windowed – what staff called the “observation room”.
The Heartbreaking Separation
Her small hand clutched my hand as they stated that I had to leave. When I objected that I hadn’t helped her settle, they answered that “parents are not permitted on the ward.”
After pushing further, they granted me a momentary visit to her room, but demanded I exit promptly afterward, citing hospital regulations.
I still wake at night, heart pounding as I revisit those steps through the communal area, to Ruth’s designated area. A individual bed, a plastic side table. Windows that did not open.
The voices became distant as they explained there would be a different staff member every hour through the day and night who would “watch her constantly”. I put her belongings on the floor. Ruth sat, frightened, on the bed and then I was escorted out.
In an instant, I was confined outside the double-locked doors, clutching a document that restricted my visitation with my daughter to just one hour, twice weekly.
How could I have consented to this?
A Life Cut Short
{Our daughter, our girl, succumbed on February 14th, 2022 at 18.29 on the children’s ICU at the hospital in Oxford. She was taken immediately from the mental health facility, an government-contracted but commercially operated youth psychiatric facility, where she had been allowed to harm herself lethally two days earlier.|Our Ruth passed away on February 14, 2022 at 18:29 in the {pediatric intensive care unit|
