I remember when it first hit me. A tender seventeen-year-old. I couldn’t concentrate in class. This really scared me. I’ve always loved school. Brought home excellent grades. Suddenly, my greatest strength was being attacked. My whole identity was at stake. And I didn’t understand what was happening. Nor did my family. We had just arrived in Canada. And we were continuing to live at home just as if we were still in Malaysia—where we had come from.

After about a week of this, I talked with one my teachers. My favourite teacher, Mr. J. I said, “I just can’t focus in class.”

“Why don’t you stay home for a week? Take the pressure off yourself?”

So I did. But I didn’t want to fall behind in school. There were still assignments to hand in. For one project, we had to pair up with a classmate. My partner, Wendy, came over to my home. We worked on the assignment together. When I returned to school, everything seemed fine.

But a few years later, I ran into the same problem. I was in my second year of university at McMaster. Only this time it was worse. I’d sit in class. Not absorb a thing. After every single lecture, I’d say to my roommate, “I’m depressed!”

I didn’t understand the full meaning of the word until many years later. But I couldn’t cope with school. So I just dropped out.

The first time I was admitted to a psychiatric ward was at the Mississauga Hospital, now known as the Trillium Health Centre. It became my ‘home’ many, many times. It was there that I experienced violence of a sort I never dreamed possible. Violence against people like me—people who struggle with mental illness. Violence against us while we’re going through one of the most vulnerable periods of our lives.

I hated being in the hospital. So I kept running out of the ward every chance I could. I wasn’t a danger to myself or anyone else. But the nurses couldn’t be bothered to keep chasing after me. So they placed me in a four-point restraint. Yes. Four-point. It means exactly what it says. They strapped my arms and legs tightly to the four posts of the bed. I can still remember one nurse, Jan, saying to her colleagues with such cruel relish, “Tie her—spread-eagle fashion.”

Every time I broke free of my restraints, they placed me in a straitjacket again. This happened at least four or five times.

Here is a painting I did—a self-portrait of that experience which took place about 35 years ago. Over the last 39 years, I can count at least 13 admissions to different psychiatric wards:

• the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital (now Lakeshore Hospital)
• Queen Street Mental Health Centre (now a part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
• the Clarke Institute (now also a part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
• North York General Hospital
• Mount Sinai Hospital

But the Lord was merciful to me. No one strapped me down in any other hospital.

I’ve been thinking… When is the use of restraints justified in the mental health system? Only in these two situations:

• when people are a danger to themselves; or
• when they’re a danger to others

These are the only two instances when using restraints in the mental health system can be justified.

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