‘The unit appeared as a jail’: The way my child was crushed by a health service intended to support her
I recollect vividly the point it dawned on me that the mental health ward where my adolescent child was being cared for felt like barely more than a secure facility.
Ruth had been deeply trusting. So had we. That the situation transformed the day she was transferred from our nearby medical center to the psychiatric unit at the private facility in Berkshire.
When we departed, she walked so easily down to the patient transport with me and the therapeutic specialist – who embraced her warmly and waved goodbye.
The moment the van portal opened at the treatment center, the grim building loomed large. We were received by staff who escorted us up stairs through series of locked doors, with each door closing firmly behind us as the key holder waited for confirmation of locking before unlocking the next.
This was a secured facility, devoid of natural light, my eyes hurting immediately from the harsh glare overhead. We were taken to an interior space, lined with windows. The observation area, they called it.
The Painful Separation
Ruth’s hand found my hand, head down as they told me it was time for me to go. “But I didn’t get her comfortable into her room or greeted the team yet,” was met with: “Parents must leave on the ward.”
When I pressed further, they reluctantly consented a short look at her room but stressed that I must leave immediately after, as per hospital protocol.
I still wake at night, heart racing as I remember those footsteps through the communal area, to Ruth’s assigned space. A single bed, a plastic table. Windows that couldn’t be opened.
The voices became distant as they explained there would be a changing attendant every hour through the day and night who would “monitor our daughter”. I set down her luggage on the floor. Ruth sat, terrified, on the bed and then I was led away.
Abruptly, I was sealed outside the secured doors, grasping a form that informed I could visit my daughter for just sixty minutes, only on two occasions each week.
How could I have consented to this?
A Tragic Loss
{Our daughter, Ruth Szymankiewicz, succumbed on 14 February 2022 at evening on the children’s ICU at the medical facility in the location. She was rushed there from the treatment center, an publicly funded but commercially operated youth psychiatric facility, where she had been not prevented from fatal self-injury 48 hours before.|Our Ruth died on the 14th of February, 2022 at evening in the {pediatric intensive care unit|
