When we consider the world of inpatient psychiatric care, we often think about types of neurodiversity like schizophrenia and bipolar. While it is true that these individuals represent a considerable number of admissions, there is a darker side to admission to hospital. Detainment and admission is not solely the realm of traditional psychiatric “conditions”; Autistic people are being locked away for months or even years.
According to the National Autistic Society, as of January 2022 there were 1,185 Autistic people held within the inpatient psychiatric system. Of this, around 1 in 7 (165) were under 18 years of age. It’s not just Autistic adults being detained, it’s our children too. This represents a stark departure from the so-called schemes of “care in the community” that promised to empty asylums and create a community culture of caring for our most vulnerable.
Instead what has happened is the systematic incarceration of Autistic adults and young people for no other reason than not having the correct services in place to support them in their independence. This becomes even more concerning when you consider the current rate at which care home and inpatient units are experiencing scandals around the mistreatment and abuse of those they are supposed to care for.
Autistic people are being abused daily in these settings, despite evidence to suggest that inpatient units are inappropriate settings for Autistic people. What we are seeing is the systematic practice of locking away people because our society is unwilling and unable to give them meaningful support at home. To my mind this is against the Mental Capacity Act (2005), in particular principles 4 and 5 of the Code of Practice:
“An act done, or decision made, under this Act for or on behalf of a person who lacks capacity must be done, or made, in his best interests”
Principle 4, Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice
“Before the act is done, or the decision is made, regard must be had to whether the purpose for which it is needed can be as effectively achieved in a way that is less restrictive of the person’s rights and freedom of action.”
Principle 5, Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice
Given that inpatient treatment does not improve outcomes for purely being Autistic, there is a significant and unresolved risk of abuse, and the overt removal of a person’s freedom, I would argue that both principles 4 and 5 have been failed. One might argue that the Mental Health Act (1983) should take precedence which allows for the detention of people who are at risk to themselves or others.
First I would bring your attention to this section of the Code of Practice:
“The MCA should be central to the approach professionals take to patients who lack capacity in all health and care settings (including psychiatric and general hospitals). The starting point should always be that the MCA should be applied wherever possible to individuals who lack capacity and are detained under the Act.”
Section 13.11, Mental Health Act Code of Practice
We have to consider what is being classed as risk, and whether the deprivation of a person’s liberty is necessary. I posit that in most cases, Autistic people remain in inpatient settings because services have no resources to appropriately address their dysregulation in the community.
An Autistic person’s freedom should not be decided by government funding.
To boot, the prinicples of the act itself state that professionals should use the:
“Least restrictive option and maximising independence”
In what world is indefinite detention in an institution the least restrictive option? Since when does detention be decided by community resources? This is a dangerous precedent to set, it opens up the entire neurodivergent community to facing detention.
When we consider the Royal College of Psychiatrists disturbing statistic that Autistic people are nine times more likely to die by suicide, and combine that with the fact that according to The Nuffield Trust there were 1,357 suicdes in 2019 amongst people who had been in contact with mental health services. Something is going very wrong, and I suspect that, in part, it is the number of Autistic people being detained wrongfully under The Mental Health Act.
It is clear that this situation is out of control. Autistic people should be supported to freely live their lives, not spend years locked in seclusion rooms suffering chemical and physical restraint as a daily practice. Sadly, until such time that our government supplies appropriate funding and resources to services, we are going to continue to witness the systemic mistreatment and killing of Autistic people.
We are Autistic, not monsters to be hidden away from society.
There is a growing belief in the world that the use of corporal punishment, ranging from smacking a child through to more archaic forms of punishment, are unacceptable. While this is a good thing, to me it shines a light on the hypocrisy that is currently at play.
While remaining a global phenomenon, restrictive practice is still widely used, and in particular it can be found in specialist settings where people work with disabled students who more likely than not have experienced a great deal of trauma. Autistic people in particular are likely to be traumatised, this is because of the way that the world is designed. There are myriad ways that the world does harm to us.
This becomes deeply problematic when we consider the way that restrictive practice takes place. While used as an intervention for perceived “challenging behaviour”, it would be more accurate to view restrictive practice as an intensive intervention for dysregulation.
Allow me to take a step back and consider the nature of such practice. Restraint is the use of techniques that restrict a person’s ability to act freely. Often when we consider such techniques, we imagine people being held to the floor, but we can see not just the use of mechanical restraints, but also chemical restraints in healthcare settings. Such restraints are employed by the use of drugs that inhibit a person’s ability to act freely.
As you can see from the off set, restrictive practice represents a significant issue in the human rights and ethics of working with disabled people. The hypocrisy lies with the people who speak out against corporal punishments while employing the use of restraint. While such practices are supposed to be “last resort”, 78% of those included in the ICARS report reported that their child had been a victim of restraint prior to the age of 10 years old.
Another concerning statistic is the number of children who were harmed by restraint. The ICARS report found that 97% of respondents were harmed, while restraint was only recorded 59% of the time (breakdown of statistics below). My interpretation of this data is that restraint is being performed dangerously, in a punitive context, and improperly recorded.
Taken from The ICARS Report into the use of restraint in English schools
The implication of children experiencing punitive restraint flies in the face of a society that is trying to move away from corporal punishment. Such brazen abuse of the position of trust and power that schools are privileged to have is simply unacceptable. Children have died and been significantly traumatised by restraint. This is, quite simply, not a practice that should be occurring in this day and age.
We must also consider the fact that restrictive practice feeds into a self-perpetuating loop, in which the child is constantly being exposed and re-exposed to the trauma of restraint. Dysregulation creates challenges, which are approached with restraint, causing trauma that once again results in dysregulation. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts that is fueled by societies pervasive desire to assimilate children’s behaviour into an “acceptable” standard.
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the UK has made a commitment to create an inclusive education environment and protect disabled people from all forms of violence and abuse. I would challenge our governments commitment to this convention on the grounds that the punitive and improper use of restraint is a direct violation of both of these commitments.
According to a report made in 2018 for the UNCRPD, 75% of Autistic students, and 70% of those with a physical disability reported bullying in school, compared with 50% of those with no disability. How can we reduce interpersonal bullying among students peers in an environment where adults are actively harming children with restrictive practice? We have, in effect, normalised the mistreatment of disabled children on the grounds that disabled embodiment is a challenge to be intervened on rather than addressing issues with the wider environment that are creating traumatised and dysregulated children.
The Universal Human Rights Index specifically mentions concerns over the UK’s use of restraint on children, stating;
“The Committee is concerned that the State party is still using techniques of restraint that aim to inflict deliberate pain on children in young offender institutions, including to maintain good order and discipline“
UHRI (Accessed May 3rd, 2023)
This indicates that the UK government is failing in it’s duty to prevent torture and ill-treatment of it’s citizens. This raises further questions about the fact that this failure specifically pertains to disabled children, a notably marginalised group in our current society.
The truth of the matter is that children’s lives are being endangered, if not by the restraint itself, then quite possibly due to it’s correlation with the 9x increase in suicide risk seen amongst Autistic people (RCPSYCH, 2018) and the significant over-representation of Autistic people in demographics that have been victims of restraint.
Disabled people deserve compassion and equal access to the world. All of the time that we are holding the threat of dangerous restrictive practice over their heads, this has not been achieved. we need to create a world in which disabled people thrive, are not met with the threat of pain and violence. Restrictive practice needs to be seen for the toruturous practice that it is, and not normalised as a means of forcing the behaviour that institutions arbitrarily believe is acceptable.
Before you go, don’t forget to check out my books!
Challenging behaviour. It’s a term we have likely all heard. It projects images of violent children, unruly and disruptive to the children who behave in the way expected of them. However, this particular term has been used to frame Autistic experience as an abberation of human expression and justified the use of abusive interventions and use of restrictive practice.
When we consider scales that measure challenging behaviour, you might be surprised to learn that many of the behaviours they target are normal Autistic behaviours. It seems as though merely existing in a way natural to ourselves has been positioned as challenging in its own right. They’re not entirely wrong, of course; Autistic culture is a counterculture, one that stands in opposition to the multi-million dollar behaviour industry that exploits the fear of vulnerable parents.
The issue is that interventions such as ABA and PBS do not effectively target the behaviours one might assume. They target Autistic existence, seeking to normalise and assimilate us into a neuronormative society. It’s unlikely they will reduce violence or aggression, but it is very likely that they will leave the victim with an unhealthy relationship with themselves.
Here is a Tweet thread from Ann Memmott, PgC MA
Anti-autistic teams claim their Behaviourism/Drugs 'work'. I want to talk about how they manage to get their evidence. You may be more than surprised.
In the last year, there have been hundreds of papers about autistic people, using the ABC checklist to prove we 'behave' badly/
— Ann Memmott PgC MA (She/They) (@AnnMemmott) April 29, 2023
In my opinion, the existence of such therapies play a role in the staggeringly high suicide rate amongst Autistic people (see this PDF from the Royal College of Psychiatrists). We are teaching Autistic people that who they are is wrong, that they need correcting. We refer to Autistic behaviour as aberrant behaviour.
In this way, the autism industrial complex has turned our existence into a profit margin, with our wellbeing as an acceptable loss in the fight for bigger bonuses. We have created an industry that sacrifices Autistic people for cash rewards. They don’t care for our humanity.
When behaviourists feel uncomfortable with us speaking out against them, it’s a good thing. To not feel uncomfortable would be an inhumane act. We want them to realise the pain they have been complicit in. They have taken our natural state and wielded it as a tool to remove our agency.
Autistic people deserve to exist as they are.
We are not abberations of normality. We are not a product. Our bodyminds are not consumable. We do not exist to be moulded to the will of others in the name of profit. I do not desire assimilation anymore than than a plant desires herbicide. I have never wanted to be “indistinguishable from my peers”. I have a right to be more than an invisible component in a faceless machine.
When ABA supporters seek to silence Autistic voices, they seek to uphold the imbalance of power in a violently oppressive society.
The International Coalition Against Restraint and Seclusion have just published their report into the use of restraint and seclusion in English schools and the results are terrifying. With Autistic children being the most likely to be the victims of inappropriate restrictive practice, it is clear that normative violence is taking far more overt forms than the micro-aggressions we are used to. For this reason, I am going to explore the findings of the report, using screen shots taken directly from the summary deck.
Ask this question to the layperson and you will receive different takes depending on the person’s career and privilege. I however feel it’s necessary to highlight the definition within the report, which itself is quoted from the Equality & Human Rights Commission 2019.
So, restraint is an act carried out with the purpose of restricting and individual’s movement, liberty and/or freedom to act independently.
This can be done in a number of ways. Most common is the use of holds and mechanical restraints that physically restrict movement of the body. One can also be chemically restrained. Most common in hospital inpatient settings, this involves administering sedative and/or tranquiliser drugs with the purpose of subduing a person into a state where they can no longer exhibit the behaviour that is being modified.
That is what restraint is. It is behaviour modification through the use of force. Where the more insidious behavioural interventions are not successful, the use of restraint gives a person no choice but to comply in order to have some semblance of liberty. Something I find most concerning is that legislation such as The Mental Health Act (1983) and The Mental Capacity Act (2005) incorporate the use of “least restrictive options” in their code of practice, and yet in the schools of England, children are being exposed to unnecessary and traumatic uses of physical restraint that are far from being “the last resort”.
Statistics found by the report
This report had a sample size of 560 respondents. The following are the statistics arising from the experiences of the participants.
81% of those experiencing restraint were Autistic
34% were ADHD
17% had a diagnoses of Sensory Processing Disorder
15% had anxiety
13% were PDA
13% had a Specific Learning Difficulty
47% of children were psychologically harmed by the use of restrictive practice.
43% were physically and psychologically harmed.
5% were physically harmed
2% of respondents disclosed harm of an unknown nature
3% did not note any harm
This means that of the respondents, 81% of children experiencing restraint were Autistic, and 97% of them experienced some kind of harm. This begins to raise questions around why Autistic people are over-represented in this sample, and why we feel it is okay to expose them to harm without good monitoring or reason.
On the topic of whether or not restraint was necessary in its use, we have the following statistics.
3% of respondents said that restraint was necessary
86% Said it was not necessary
8% were unsure if it was necessary
3% said it was sometimes necessary
Again, 97% of cases of restraint did not have a clear rationale or were a situation where restraint was not always necessary. 97% of the time, the hugely over-represented Autistic students were being exposed to restraint that could have been handled differently.
Restraint has a tendency of occurring in situations of dysregulation. The primary factor in Autistic dysregulation is an environment that does not meet the needs of the Autistic person. In the context of Children and Young People, this is very often a school environment that is under-resourced within it’s own SEN provision. In support of this, I give you this data from the ICARS report.
2% of respondents said that, Yes, their child’s needs were being met.
91% said that there child’s needs were not being met.
6% said their child’s needs were somewhat being met.
This means that in 98% of cases, the needs of the child were not being met appropriately enough for the parent/carer to give a solid “Yes” as a response. Where we have unmet needs, we have dysregulation, which in turn raises the risk of restrictive practices being used. Rather than adjust the environment to the child, the child is being forcibly coerced into “appropriate behaviour” through the deprivation of their physical liberty.
Where restraint is used on a child, caregivers should always be informed. This leads me onto the last couple of statistics I will share, these are perhaps the most troubling statistics in my opinion.
52% of respondents had not been notified about the use of restraint on their child.
20% were sometimes notified.
28% were notified.
72% of the time, schools could not be trusted to accurately report the use of restraint on children. This represents significant issues in accountability for schools and the scrutiny that they may face if all uses of restraint were made known to caregivers.
So perhaps you are wondering why parents don’t just withhold permission for the use of restraint?
6.3% of respondents were told that if they did not give permission, their child would not be afforded a place at the school. This is in direct conflict with a child’s right to education, and highlights a belief among staff that restraint is a necessary weapon of forced compliance.
Commentary
This statistics are horrifying. They represent a discourse around Autistic and learning disabled children that implies a lack of humanity, and the use of physical restraint to coerce them into normative standards of behaviour. I myself have written about neuroqueering education, and this report highlights to me the distinct importance of decentering normative values, and instead placing the rights of children centre place.
Children deserve space to work through difficult feelings and dysregulation without the fear of coming to physical harm. As you will see in the report, some of the restraint used has restricted children’s breathing and caused significant psychological harm. I am very much of the opinion the the use of restraint outside of preventing serious injury or death is child abuse. If it would be illegal to do it to an adult or romantic partner, then why is it okay to do to a child?
Children do not exist to serve pre-existing power structures and institutions. None of us were born to be boxed into idea’s of normality and acceptability. While I recognise that dysregulation can lead to a significant risk of harm, restraint needs to truly be a last resort. Where restraint has to be used, it needs to be documented in a way that allows for public scrutiny.
If having your use of restraint on public display makes you worry that people will not send their children to your school, the issue is not the child, it is the culture you have developed as an educational institute.
This article was co-authored between David Gray-Hammond and Tanya Adkin
Trigger Warning:Some of the research quoted in this article contains person-first language or references to aspergers. While the authors do not agree with the use of such language, we must access the research and statistics available to us.We are also aware that some of the research cites Simon Baron-Cohen, unfortunately it is almost impossible to avoid him when writing this kind of article.There are also detailed discussions of various traumatic experiences including mentions of suicide, addiction, and mental health issues.
This website houses extensive writing on the topic of Autistic people and addiction, poor mental health, and suicidality, but we are yet to answer one very important question; how do autistic people end up suffering? The truth is that it requires falling dominoes of extensive systemic failure and trauma. In this series of articles, we hope to explore some of the reasons behind the development of poor outcomes in the Autistic population. The reasons listed in this article are non-exhaustive, and we would like to highlight that Autistic people are failed repeatedly throughout their lives.
This is alarmingly evident in the suicide rate for Autistic people. In a large-scale clinical study of newly diagnosed adults, 66% self-reported reported that they had experienced suicidal ideation. This is significantly higher than suicide rates among the general population of the UK (17%) and those experiencing psychosis (59%); 35% of those involved in the study had planned or attempted suicide (Cassidy, S. et al; 2014).
Trauma
Trauma is a significant predictor of poor outcomes in all people, regardless of neurotype. Since the 1900’s research has indicated that there is a strong link between psychological stress in childhood and adult behaviour (Zarse, E. M. et al; 2019). What we can infer from this, is that childhood trauma plays a role in the development of poor mental health and addiction in adults. The question that arises from that statement is; what constitutes trauma for an Autistic person?
There is an consistent theme in the Autistic community that there is no such thing as an untraumatised Autistic. Kieran Rose (2021) has discussed previously how the diagnostic criteria is based on trauma behaviours, rather than Autistic experience. David Gray-Hammond (2020) has also discussed how current diagnostic criteria is based on Autistic people in distress, and as we move towards a world where Autistic people are better supported and accommodated, the criteria will need to change.
There are strong well evidenced links between autism and PTSD, and links between PTSD and addiction, yet for some reason no one seems to connect the dots. There is also significant evidence of a connection between autism and poor mental health and wellbeing, and connections between poor mental health and addiction. Again, no one seems interested in exploring that intersection.
So, what constitutes trauma in Autistic people?
First, we need to consider sensory trauma. Autistic people are subject to sensory trauma on a daily basis, it is not something that can be avoided in todays society, rather we are literally traumatised by living in a neurotypical world (Fulton, R. et al; 2020). Bearing in mind our sensory differences, this is something that is happening to us from birth.
We are experiencing trauma from birth. Some argue that this could possibly be from prior to birth.
We also experience significant sensory invalidation. Think about the number of times a child has said something is too loud, too hot, too busy; the amount of times that has been met with “don’t be silly”, “there’s nothing to be scared of”.
“Society invalidates the Autistic state of being, daily, hourly, minute by minute – every time one of those scenarios, plus a million more occur.”
Autistic people are also at risk of ‘Mate Crime’. Mate crime is a partcular subset of hate crime where vulnerable individuals are targeted by people posing as friends in order to take advantage of and abuse the individual (Pearson, A. and Forster, S.; 2019). Dr. Chloe Farahar and David Gray-Hammond (2021) had a livestream discussion about Autistic people and crime that included discussion of mate crime, the recording can be found here.
“In a 2015 survey, 80% of autistic people reported that they had been taken advantage of by someone they considered to be a friend. This was a colossal leap from the already significant 48% which had been previously recorded and it illustrated a problematic truth: Autistic people make easy targets.”
Unfortunately, mate crime is not just an experience of Autistic adults (Parry, H.; 2015).
A significant concern for Autistic people is bullying. Bullying can happen to anyone, but it is well known that it happens to Autistic people at a much higher rate.
“I really didn’t understand why kids chased me on the playground. All I know is that when they saw me, and they saw me talking to myself and rubbing my hands together and stimming, that I was all of a sudden “marked.””
Physical violence and hateful slurs from peers is a common experience for Autistic people of all ages. Society itself does not cope well with the existence of diversity. It starts young, but only increases in frequency and severity as we grow up, it can turn into things such as financial and sexual exploitation.
Of course, we can not discuss Autistic trauma without reference to behaviourism. For decades, “therapies” such as ABA and PBS have traumatised Autistic people. In fact, in the UK, SEND support is designed around making an Autistic person behave in a neurotypical manner. Considering this, is it any surprise that Autistic people walk away from these experiences with a great deal of trauma (Adkin, T.; 2021). We are literally being taught that who we are is wrong, and that our needs and wants don’t matter.
Often Autistic communication is invalidated because we do not communicate in the same way as non-autistic people. Many of us are non-speaking, communicating through AAC and similar. Many of us also have co-occurring conditions that make spoken communication a challenge. Autistic people communicate differently, we know this because it’s medically defined as a social communication “disorder”. What constitutes a disorder is defined by the medical model of disability and autism research. Difference is always assumed to be less, this is reflected in the systemic ableism and the insistence that different communication is some how less valid.
Many people have thought that they knew me, but see me in light of my mute mouth and wrongly understood that I think and feel nothing. People are too blind to see the person that I am behind my happy smile. I feel that I am loving and kind and also know that I am empathetic and thoughtful, with feelings that can overwhelm my mind and then they cause me to act like an utter fool.
We may not know how to communicate what is happening to us, we may have tried to communicate but it is misunderstood by the people around us, we may have experienced so much communication invalidation that we just stop trying. This can be particularly true of people who do not communicate using mouth words, especially because society has perpetuated a myth that non-speaking means non-thinking. What ever way you look at it, Autistic communication is considered less valid. Often, being Autistic can be used as a reason to cast us out.
All of this means that many Autistic people will isolate themselves from the world, and that isolation starts from a young age. Mazurek, M. O. (2014) stated that greater quantity and quality of friendships were associated with decreased loneliness in Autistic adults. Here’s the problem, Autistic people are in the minority. We do not have access to community as children, especially if we are pushed through a mainstream institution. Even if there are other Autistic people in that class, we do not know what it means to be Autistic.
The double empathy problem tells us that we have better interactions and quality of relationships with other Autistic people as opposed to neurotypicals. Autistic and non-autistic people exist in two different social contexts (Milton, D.; 2012).
“…double empathy problem’ refers to a breach in the ‘natural attitude’ (Garfinkel 1967) that occurs between people of different dispositional outlooks and personal conceptual understandings when attempts are made to communicate meaning”
Milton, D. (2012)
This disjuncture between Autistic and non-autistic communication can be traumatic for the Autistic person (Milton, D.; 2012).
Finally, we need to talk about restraint and seclusion. There are many different forms of restraint and seclusion, but each one of them teaches us from a young age that we do not have autonomy. It teaches us that our communication is not valid, that when we react to situations that we find overwhelming or distressing, we get punished.
An ABA practitioner physically holding our hands still, is a form of restraint.
But restraint has a darker side. As an example, we might look at the case of Max Benson, a 13 year old Autistic child who died as a result of being restrained for over two hours (Vance, T.; 2019). This isn’t just a problem in the USA though, it is happening in the UK also. A 12 year old Autistic child was restrained and handcuffed by police on his first day of secondary school, he was 5ft tall, and multiple police officers and staff used force to restrain him (Halle, M. and Cardy, P.; 2021). I think it is clear why this is traumatic for Autistic people.
Every school in the UK has a restraint policy. Sold as being for “everyone’s safety” while in fact it remains state sanctioned abuse. We have toddlers being restrained into preschool, into environments that cause them sensory trauma. Parents are told “they’re fine once they’re in” by people who have no understanding of masking. If you’re too big to be physically restrained, they use chemical restraint.
David Gray-Hammond (2020) writes of his experience as an undiagnosed Autistic person in a psychiatric ward. He discusses how, due to being a large man, staff chose to chemically restrain him with a heavy regime of antipsychotics and sedatives, rather than address the issues that were causing him distress.
It’s not just adults that are victims of chemical restraint, children under the age of 10 years old have been prescribed antipsychotic medications because it is cheaper and more convenient than meeting their needs.
Seclusion is a problem because it uses isolation as a form of coercion. Children and adults who do not conform to societies neuronormative ideals are secluded for long periods in isolation, seemingly as a punishment for not being “normal”. It’s inordinately unethical, and yet ethics don’t seem to apply when the victim is neurodivergent.
What does all this lead to?
Truthfully, it leads to suffering. Dr. Nick Walker put it best during her session with Aucademy.
Walker, N. (2021)
The next piece in this series will explore the systemic failings in identification and lack of accessibility.
As a late identified Autistic/ADHD adult, a parent to two children with multiple neurodivergence, and a professional working within the voluntary sector from a young age, I have unique insight from all perspectives.
I have worked within the voluntary sector, starting within the disabled children’sservice, progressing on to mental health, healthcare funding, youth services, domestic abuse, and much more.
For the last six years, I have developed a specific interest both personally and professionally in special educational needs and disabilities, particularly around neurodivergence and the challenges faced by families when trying to access support.
I am dedicating to educating in neurodivergent experience in order to help families thrive by providing insight, reframing, and perspective in an accessible and personable way.
With experience, passion, and an individualised approach in close collaboration withfamilies, I help them work towards holisticchild and family-centered solution
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