@toothless and
@Warmheart, what you've both been through sounds terrible and I can't even begin to imagine the effect it's had on you.
From what I've seen on the advert for this program, the people they are following do get moved into supported living/care homes that are designed for people with autism and/or learning disabilities, and it shows the difference that this has on their lives.
thankyou for exlaining it xudo,i shall definitely be watching it,and if for some reason i forgot it i will get it on catch up.
i have PTSD from the mental and physical damage caused by the old manchester institution [it is now owned by creative support-the company who support me now], and it is used purely for respite for adults with learning disability, i went in the facility about two years ago to have a nosy and wow its changed,its no longer clinical like a hospital, they have H track hoists in all the rooms if i remember correctly which makes it more accessible for people like my uncle who have PMLD or other comorbid disabilities which have inability to move/walk.
they have a games room though i cant remember whats in it-there were plans to turn it into a sensory room with fundraising,i dont know how that got on.
i am very bitter towards a lot of the staff from both the institution and the NHS LD hospital because of the way they treated me,eg one staff at greenways told me 'your never getting out',whenever i requested a PRN or a staff noticed i needed a PRN [it was 1x5mg diazepam tablets,up to 3 times daily i think] it would take over an hour to recieve it because they said the guy with profound autism and profound learning disability needed more attention, to need a PRN i would be showing severe or extreme challenging behavior [caused by extreme anxiety and pyschosis] so they basically thought because of my label of mild learning disability; i dont have any need for medical support.
learning disability hospitals are very different to pyschiatric hospitals,in regular locked pysch wards people are not as challenging as those in learning disability hospitals,those of us in LD hospitals have been sectioned under the mental capacity act for having such extreme behavior and you hear the staff panic alarm going off constantly because there is ALWAYS someone kicking off.
i spent a bit of time in a very secure pysch unit before being found a place in greenways [most of us who are sent to a learning disability hospital have been permenently kicked out of our homes because of extreme challenging behavior so we end up taking our belongings with us,which requires an extra room each, so it uses all the rooms up].
in the pysch ward i was badly bullied by a lady with a severe personality disorder but a lovely lady sort of adopted me and looked after me,the staff had no idea how to look after me so they kept me in my room most of the time-i have complex classic autism, learning disability,unstable tonic clonic and sometimes status epilepsy-my epilepsy also caused a neurological disorder called todds paralysis which left me fully paralysed from the waist down for up to 24 hours after a seizure-but i was having seizures everyday so i was effectively paralysed 24/7 for a while, i was pacing up and down in my wheelchair because i was unable to get out and told to go back in the bedroom because the wheelchair was annoying the girl with severe personality disorder.
luckily i wasnt there for long when the call came through that a place had been found in greenways and i was been dragged there [miles and miles away] in a awful converted type transit van which was challenging behavior proofed, i was hand cuffed and leg cuffed and had one staff on both sides of me-holding my arms down and then another; driving.
i never got to communicate good bye to the lady who looked after me there-i really hope her mental health has gotten better.
another thing at greenways,its supposed to be very secure, but there was one other service user there who annoyed me incredibly-he was classic autistic but highly verbal and would have constant conversations with staff,he also loved it when the attention was on him so what he did really frustrated me and im sure it would for you guys-being autistic to,he would set the industrial strength fire alarms off and run around laughing while i would fall to the floor smashing my head off it and then end up having an epileptic seizure,i lived in hell thinking any moment the alarm was going to go off.
there was one time he set the alarms off around 10pm at night and i had watched him doing it and quickly put in my ear plugs and my ear defenders over the top,i then had the physical capacity to walk/stagger and i noticed that every time the alarms go off all the secure doors open,the staff were all stood around the main ward door and i thought 'i know this door is open' and i fought my way through it to get away from that hellish noise, the staff said to me, 'im not going to fight you,go if you want we dont care' so i thought to myself 'f- you' and i had ran through the reception and then out in my NFL jersey and my nappy [no trousers on] and bare feet.
it was pitch black and pissing it down with rain,i ran through the huge car park,through the gates that security had left open for some reason,down the hill to the outside world,i ran and ran and didnt know where i was going or what i was doing.
there was a hill and a row of houses on top,i went up it and sat inside someones hedge.i must have been there for hours when i saw police with sniffer dogs and one of the clinical support staff come up to the front of the hedge telling me not to move or the dogs will bite me.
i tried to pet the dog,they shouted at me,and then i tried to hold onto the police,and they shouted at me talking to me like i had some passable disease 'im not holding you,hold your staff' they all walked me back with jo; the staff holding me and the staff team shouted at me, i typed on my communicator that the noise was hell for me and they also told me to go,they ignored me and made me out to be a burden on all the service users.
i had a massive meltdown,cue rough restraint-being sat upon having every part of my body forced down,being picked off the floor roughly,having my head held down because i was biting staff,being thrown into the secure padded cell which stunk of poo because they let the profoundly autistic & learning disabled girl stay there all the time because she likes it-and she is a constant poo smearer, when i need the padded room because of safety from my behavior they tell me im a massive burden on the staff and the girl as they have to move her back to her bedroom.
oh yes,another one-the hospital denied that i had pyschosis and i was making it up,the residential home i had lived in said people with severe autism cannot have mental illnesses and denied my severe clinical depression and the resulting paranoid pyschosis [possibly schizophrenia,i was never assessed for it beyond the PANSS scale by an assistant shrink and then secretly diagnosed with generic personality disorder because they thought i had to much awareness,it stuck in my records and gave medical and non medical professionals everywhere the opinion i was putting on my pyschosis], i had been groomed and severely bullied online by a person with personality disorders on autism and disability forums-he used my experiences of autism to mimick himself so that i would relate to him/her and then he started the bullying,i was non verbal and unable to report it-i had no idea what to do,i was very frightened about reporting it to mods.
i was so severely depressed and untreated for such a long time that i developed pyschosis and one year,it had been world mental health day, i was practically comatose in bed,staring at the ceiling begging god to make me die and as luck may have it my sister [who worked in mental health at the time] was just down the road doing a display on addiction at a local world mental health day presentation,she visited me when it was quiet and couldnt believe the state she saw me in,the managers all ignored her when she asked, why the hell havent you took her to the doctors? she quickly got me an emergency appointment with my GP,my sister physically helped me out of bed and sorted all the personal care out while the managers all stared on,an hour or so later my sister drove me to the GP and she said because i had had such severe depression left alone for so long i had developed pyschosis,she prescribed cymbalta which was a life saver in terms of the depression,she also wanted me hospitalized but i fought it and my sister said she lives in residential care so she didnt get me sectioned, and my sister kicked off a stink at the residential home about my mental health and to make sure they got my shrink involved to sort the pyschosis out.
then later it came out about the bullying and one of the caring staff there wanted to take me to the police.
this breakdown in my mental health is what caused my challenging behavior to go totally extreme and end up in greenways,i had 2-1 support but despite that i was attacking everyone and trashing my room,i destroyed a triple glazed bedroom window with my head.
my pyschiatrist thinks my pyschosis is not real pyschosis and is just behaviors/thoughts that happen when i get very bad anxiety.
i think that is bull crap and i think i have suffered from complex paranoid pyschosis or paranoid schizophrenia,i still suffer from it today.
so you see i am rather damaged from my experience with awful non empathetic/sympathetic humans during my most vulnerable time and i would never, ever recommend living in one of these learning disability hospitals.
