Ex-patient suggests ways to improve IMH patient care
October 6th, 2013 | 
Author: 
The mentally ill in this society today is the most disadvantaged as one could say. Especially the in-patients in IMH. I am a 23 year old who has spent most of her blooming youth in the C Class ward of IMH. I have stayed in that ward since I was 19 in 2009. For 2010, 2011 and 2012 as well. Each for months. With the longest, a 6 months stay in 2012. And most of them it was not because I had an onset of mental illness, but because my parents did not want to bring me back home and the hospital still refused to let me go too.
It all started with a quarrel/fight with my parents in 2009. I was rather a delinquent. But that did not mean I had a mental illness and they shouldn’t just send me to IMH because they couldn’t handle me. They wanted me to be confirmed with mental illness so as to justify my rebelliousness. At my first visit, the doctor (male) at IMH, after assessing me, told my mother that I was mentally sound. But my mother refused to bring me home. That made me anxious and when I tried escaping from the observation room, they tied me up, injected me and admitted me in the ward.
Another doctor (female) came and wrongly diagnosed me as ‘Schizophrenic’ because the EPIP (Early Psychosis Intervention Program) team took over and found out it was a wrong diagnosis. I experienced trauma in my first experience with IMH. I was admitted to 34B and the nurses were nasty. The haloperidol injection made my eyes roll up terribly and the tying of my body ached me badly. I was tied for what seemed like 4 hours of eternity. I was so scared of injections but they forcefully pushed me down on the bed, tied me and unmercifully poked the needle into me. I was hailing, screaming inside.
That first psychiatric injection traumatised me. I was already traumatised because CISCO guards were called and with 6 nurses, they pushed me on a mobile bed and used white ‘ropes’ to tie my hands to the side of the bed, my legs at the end, and my torso to the bed. For 4 hours my body ached a lot because I stayed in that position for too long. I experienced an out-of-the-world experience with haloperidol – something that I’m allergic to. The feeling I had when my eyes rolled up was one that can’t be explained. My eyes kept looking upwards and I couldn’t control it. It’s like the black eye peas rolled into the brain. And I couldn’t walk properly. Because my whole body felt that I was someone else. Possessed.
I understand the violent ones need to be restrained. But I was trying to escape from IMH! I didn’t want to be and wasn’t violent! And I was already told I was well by the doctor! Did it give you the right to stop me? Since I was already well! I hated to stay in the hospital. And that warranted tying me up, injecting me, and admitting me into the ward? I think it’s pretty normal to get fed up with being enclosed! I told no one what had happened to me. And I eventually went home with a traumatised spirit.
But in 2010, we quarreled and fought again. This time, after they sent me to IMH again, they refused to bring me home, resulting in a transfer from IMH to Simei Care Centre. Again, in the ward, I was tied mercilessly. Because they thought that I was disruptive. But I was just being myself. I was tied more than 2 times. Hands, legs and body. When I got tied up, I cried. My hair stuck to the front of my face, but no nurse bothered to sweep it away nor wipe my tears and mucus. I was a total wreck because as my hands were tied, I couldn’t reach my face to wipe my sweat, tears or sweep my hair. I kept begging and shouting for the nurses to untie me, all of them walking past me like they heck care, and ignored me. Again, adding on to my already bottled up emotions, I felt more traumatised.
SCC is a psychiatric rehabilitation residence but I was the only one not prescribed any medicines because again, the doctors certified that I was sane! I initially heavily protested that I wouldn’t accept any other place to stay, I didn’t want to stay in Simei Care Centre! But the doctors and case manager made it too easy for me to stay there without even much talk to advocate to my parents that they should take me home. After I went into Simei Care Centre, there were fights between me and my uncle, who thought he could take over. I was separated from my family. For months, I didn’t go to church, for months, my parents did not meet me, my sister did not keep in touch. For months, I lived alone. And remember, I was 19 then, still needing the love of my family.
Staying away from my parents and sister was a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching and heart-stopping situation. My heart felt very sunken, heavy with pain and sorrow. I wasn’t ready to stay out on my own. I felt absolutely lonely. With all the traumatisation from IMH and the trauma of living in a foreign place, separation from my parents, (mind you, I wasn’t able to even touch my bed, my room and my home) I developed a mental illness. My mood became an extreme swing. Simei Care Centre sent me to IMH and the doctor diagnosed me as suffering Bipolar Mania.
So with a diagnosis, my parents had all the more reason to think that I’m mentally ill. From IMH, I was sent again to Hougang Care Centre because my parents did not want to take me back home again. All this made my life an incapacitating one. The hospital – specifically my doctor – didn’t let me out on my own again and failed in having more family counselling to get my parents to take me back home. From Hougang Care Centre, I was yet again sent to IMH and was FORCED to have ECT – Electro-Convulsive Therapy, which is a treatment that I have written against fervently [Link].
I went home but in 2012 April I was sent to IMH by my parents again because I tried to enter the house through the window when they locked me out. Another trivial issue. I stayed there for the longest time in my life – 6 months. Not able to go out. With the same reason as with previous admissions. And I witnessed many mistreatments. Including a nurse taking photos of me when I got tied up. I also saw a foreign nurse actually scotchtaped a patient’s mouth in 2009 [Link].
That’s why I am taking this avenue to air my concerns at a deeper level. Here are my suggestions on how to improve healthcare in IMH:
1. There are various hospitals that offer gardening as therapy. But all of the patients in 34A or the C Class never stepped out of the ward, at all. Let us take a stroll downstairs, buy the food that we like, talk to people outside the ward and let us have fresh air!!!2. Better food and leisure for the patients in C Class wards – we do nothing everyday and there’s a lack of entertainment that our brain wastes away!3. The hospital should provide a layer of counselling services and mandatory family glue but instead I see the hospital being a give-medicine-and-injection-and-you-take hospital.4. Patients need the most tender care, if they are behaving in an aggressive or violent fashion, then you should find out why they do such things. Counsel them, guide them and therapify them.5. Other hospitals allow visitors to use the ward’s toilet, with that, they can understand and see for themselves the condition of the toilets, whereas IMH cordons these areas away from the public and they cannot see the dirtiness and low-class toilets that are available, especially in the C Class wards.6. Renovate the C Class wards, include air conditioning. Like TTSH’s C Class wards which have spot cooling to cool the patients in the heat of 35 deg C. This produces calmer patients, and the nurses and doctors could be more caring too. I have written to The Straits Times and my letter on getting air conditioning for IMH C Class was published on The Straits Times Forum Online [Link].
I know we have to go to the hospital if we are seriously ill. But my experience was more a traumatic than a healing experience. This is what matters:
1. The hospital has to sack staff that mistreat their patients.2. The hospital CANNOT bully patients and keep patients in the hospital if they do not want to. And if they are not under the Mental Care and Treatment Act.3. The hospital CANNOT make our stay as uncomfortable as possible, which I see the nurses trying their best to do.4. The hospital CANNOT force us to eat medicine if we don’t want to.5. And lastly, NOT forcing us to have injections when we are terrified of it.6. We are given ECT because it is thought to be the last resort, definitive cure-all to our mental problems. But healing a patient goes beyond just making us lose our memories or causing a brain electrico. It is counselling, understanding and psychotherapy that can eventually pull us through our ordeals. And maybe, the last resort is – God.7. There are TOO MANY foreign nurses in IMH that don’t understand Singaporeans and bully them. Even Singaporeans as well.
It’s not injections and medicines that we need to achieve sanity. Care, concern and proper counselling/therapy count towards sanity too. You see, if a normal and sane person goes through these treatments, they would become MAD with illness!
I urge the members of the public to empathise and give some understanding to the mentally ill. We appeal to IMH to improve its service to provide us with a better experience during our stay there. I would like to encourage more young Singaporeans to come forward to be involved with IMH, and help.
Genevieve Tan Wei Min (Ms)
Editor’s note: This article has been forwarded to IMH’s CEO for comments.
Genevieve Tan Wei Min (Ms)
Editor’s note: This article has been forwarded to IMH’s CEO for comments.
Posted in 
All zee doctors, nurses and care-givers should be poked with long needles…forcefully and unmercifully injected with haloperidol and wat have you for experience … tis action is very appropriate to be applied to all those pap brain damaged evils…
Don’t take action now, wait till after 2016 before you file a complaint ( If you intend to )
NCC to be renamed “Lee Hsien Loong Cancer Centre”.
parents should be wary of sending their young children to IMH to stay.
besides, many parents themselves are usually at fault themselves.
beware, becareful and be patient with your child.
let them grow as naturally as possible.
mental aberrations are known to the best people.
the russian gulags and many north american and western mental hospitals are known to be the ‘homes’ of some geniuses.
remember, geniuses are known to be next door to mad men.
but who defines who is mad and who is a genius.
a well known church pastor in china was declared mad when he went against the teachings of some american missionaries in china.
alexander solzenitsyn was decaled a madman by the russian doctors.
examples proliferate.
just be aware.
看来医药部长必须亲自设立一个独立皇家调查庭彻彻底底调查此因，不好继续浪费无必要的开支!
医药部长请不要以为去富士山带几粒苹果种子回来栽种本地就会种出富士山苹果!
Don’t give your parents any cent when they are poor and old, don’t goto visit them when they are sick, if govt force you to do, you just say you got mental illness unable to work, no company want to employ u, so can not give parents any cent. And do not help them to do anything because serious mental illness patient not possible to help other pple
pap party majority in Parliament !
http://mindbloggingstuff.blogspot.sg/2006/12/chronology-of-authoritarian-rule-in.html
http://seapa.wordpress.com/category/singapore/
Keep in touch with me through whatsapp at 8•3•3•5•0•5•6• 4 , Facebook g e ldastrizhospital and Email me at g e ldastrizhospital @hotmail.com
*************@Why is THIS HAPPENING here ?
All I want to tell the world is that I have discovered that doctors and nurses bully patients in IMH, that the ward environment has made us very stressed that whoever gets admitted to the C Class ward of IMH would be subjected to untold abuse and suppression that makes any mentally sound man mad and ready to burst out.
I am spilling the beans and whistle-blowing and helping Singapore and, Singaporeans if ever they end up in IMH, they would have a better life. We live in a new age and things are to become new.
#benice #totallynotaustralianinsingapore
I believe very strongly that “Siao Kow” who posted on October 9, 2013 at 12:20 pm is my cousin, Joshua Tan Wei Rong. This isn’t the neighborhood bully mocking me—I could take that. This isn’t a foreign devil spitting invective—I could tune that out. It’s supposedly my cousin. Those long hours of leisure as we walked arm in arm, God a third party to our conversation. And this guy, betrayed his best friends; his life betrayed his word. All my life I’ve been charmed by his speech, never dreaming he’d turn on me. His words, which were music to my ears, turned to daggers in my heart. I am crushed, my heart hurts from the visits he made to IMH which had made me, not better, but even more suicidal. It is not a phenomenon that relatives and the family are supposed to help another.
You think you can condemn such people, but you who condemn were exactly like this before! And you have no excuse!
Also, the medicines they forced me to eat causes weight gain. I am able to look what I look today because I stopped these drugs.
joshuatanweironggen.blogspot.com
ruditansengkokgen.blogspot.com
But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites. IMH mistreat their patients, and wrongdoers will be repaid for the wrong things they do. I take everyday, ordinary life—my sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life in Him. Work does not have to be office-d.
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Readily recognize what I want and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. I find a burden in IMH. Tell these things to the people so that they will do the right thing in their extended family. Anyone who neglects to care for family members in need repudiates the faith. That’s worse than refusing to believe in the first place. I sign myself up for the ministry of offering assistance. They will in turn receive support from the church. Helping out with children, strangers, tired Christians, the hurt and troubled. And no one can be as hurt and troubled as people in IMH. Doctors and nurses are working, but their suffering brings about monetary compensation and medical benefits. They are drawing a steady regular income which can buy them holidays in (eg Bali) and drive around in their cars, whereas, speaking from personal experience, I spent days doing absolutely nothing everyday, my studies have to be repudiated, and everyday I am subjected to endless medicine or injections. Doctors and nurses do not know how it feels to be poked and tied. Their suffering does not compare to our suffering where even stigma comes in and makes people think we are to be avoided. One has to be recalcitrant to certain mistreats. Nurses scotchtaping patient’s mouth, nurses pushing you:http://www.whatnursesdoinIMHgen.blogspot.com. Because— I was homeless and you gave me no bed, Sick and in prison, and you never visited. Then those are going to say, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help? Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was Jesus—you failed to do it to Jesus. Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help. Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors! Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble.
Break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. Being availabl
Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. I believe in the innate worth of each individual. ‘We are all born and created special. There’s no one like you, ever, out there. So if you don’t speak up and share, and you end up just shutting down, the world is a poorer place because of that. ‘