Inquiry after video of mentally ill woman’s death

SYDNEY: Australia’s New South Wales government has announced an independent review and parliamentary inquiry into the death of a mentally ill woman after footage emerged of her, naked and covered in faeces, stumbling around a hospital corridor.

The incident took place in 2014 but the footage was made public only yesterday when The Daily Telegraph newspaper published it on its website, provoking condemnation on social media.

It shows how mother-oftwo Miriam Merten, aged 46, was shut naked in an isolation room for more than five hours before a nurse unlocked her room in the morning.

She was then left to stumble around the hallway where she fell over 24 times at the mental hospital in Lismore, a town in northern New South Wales, eventually collapsing in a corner. She died the next day.

The state’s health minister, Brad Hazzard, announced a parliamentary inquiry into “all aspects” of the state’s mental health system.

“We believe this should be open and transparent and we need to know on behalf of the people of NSW that the health officials are doing everything they can to improve this system,” he said.

Tania Davies, the state’s mental health minister, said the footage of Merten’s distress was “incredibly disturbing”.

“There were times where I was sick to the stomach and there was a moment where I actually closed my eyes because I felt I couldn’t actually take in anymore,” she said.

Until recently her daughter, Corina, believed she had died in the hospital after slipping in a shower and hitting her head.

But an inquest in September found the mentally ill woman had fallen at least 25 times in seven hours.

It said she died of “traumatic and hypoxic brain injury caused by numerous falls and the self-beating of her head on various surfaces, the latter not done with the intention of taking her own life”.

Coroner Jeff Linden said a senior nurse at the facility had been aware the patient had been sedated with psychotropic drugs and fallen on at least one occasion, but failed to take appropriate action.

“The lack of care and compassion showed to the deceased was monumentally disgraceful,” Linden said.

“While this appears not to be a system failure it is clearly a serious human failure.”

Another s i x - mo n t h independent review will also be conducted by the state’s chief psychiatrist assisted by international experts.

Chief psychiatrist Murray Wright said he was shocked by the footage. “Absolute dismay and distress that the system that is set up to try and help people in moments of great vulnerability so clearly failed this person,” he said.

The nurses failed “at almost every level”, but there was no evidence to suggest this is “systemic”.

The two nurses involved in the incident were both sacked. One has since died. – dpa