![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/58f927e2-cf2e-4f9f-bdcf-35166e9b80f2.jpeg\")
Giaan Ramsay and her mum Lizel. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Giaan Ramsay took her own life in July this year – 10 days after being discharged from the Wattle Ward at Robina Hospital’s mental health unit.<\/p>\n
She had been receiving ongoing treatment for anorexia, self-harm and suicide attempts.<\/p>\n
Her death followed her fifth admission to the unit, one that lasted almost nine months, where a range of antidepressants were trialled against her parents’ wishes due to the severity of the side effects.<\/p>\n
Steve and Lizel Ramsay said they had no say over how their daughter was treated or her admission because she was under an involuntary order – known in Queensland as a “treatment authority”.<\/p>\n
“I walk into the room and Giaan is pacing from one wall to the other. It’s a little room – it’s three metres by two metres,” Steve told A Current Affair.<\/p>\n
“Up and down, up and down, up and down, scratching herself, up and down. I’m going, ‘who is this, who are you?’ And the only thing that changed is they put her on the antidepressant.”<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Parents’ grief as driver jailed for killing ‘the most beautiful young person’\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n Clinicians changed Giaan from the drug Sertraline to another antidepressant, Venlafaxine, with a side effect of appetite suppression.<\/p>\n “You’re giving my daughter, who’s a diagnosed anorexic, a drug that causes anorexia, and she hasn’t eaten solid foods in nine months. Can you connect the dots?” Steve said, replaying the conversation he had with clinicians.<\/p>\n During her admission, Giaan was kept at times in isolation for days on end, in a room designed for low stimulation.<\/p>\n Her parents say it was to her detriment.<\/p>\n “She tried to take her life three times in their care,” Lizel said.<\/p>\n Giaan’s parents say their daughter was subjected to a trial of ketamine and given no regular access to therapy with a consistent group of clinicians.<\/p>\n “(There was) no plan. The revolving door of clinicians would come and go – Giaan had to repeat her story at least 12, 13, 14, 15 times,” Steve said.<\/p>\n READ MORE: \ufeffDedicated Alva has sold poppies for Remembrance Day for 15 years<\/a><\/p>\n READ MORE: Boy expelled from prestigious Sydney school after national tennis competition\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n They reflected on her previous admissions leading up to that final stay, saying the treatment order took away all of Giaan’s hope.<\/p>\n “The problem with her at that weight, she is so unwell, and it takes them so long to get well,” Steve said.<\/p>\n “They wanted to put in a gastric tube and they get four burly security guards to pin her down,” he said.<\/p>\n “Over 100 times was my girl pinned down, on the shoulders and on the legs – they’d hold her down to get the tube in,” Lizel added.<\/p>\n “I remember sitting in the room and hearing her scream – scream – because she’s getting pinned down to get a nasal tube in. That’s just wrong.”<\/p>\n Giaan’s sisters Kristin and Justine also want answers.<\/p>\n “We could always tell how much it, like, broke her to be stripped of all of these human rights,” Kristin said.<\/p>\n “For four years, she fought so hard in a system that just constantly broke her down and constantly just ultimately just made her worse – and she kept fighting and kept fighting, but in the end, knew that she couldn’t beat it,” Justine added.<\/p>\n READ MORE: ‘No way in hell’: Meet the devoted dad waging a war on e-bikes\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n Apart from the Northern Territory, no other state or territory in Australia issues the amount of treatment orders that Queensland clinicians do.<\/p>\n Simon Katterl from Mental Health Lived Experience Peak Queensland told A Current Affair one in every two hospital admissions was involuntary.<\/p>\n He’s calling for an independent watchdog to be established in Queensland and is optimistic the new state government is open to change.<\/p>\n “There’s just trauma if you are strapped to a bed, if you are detained by security guards, if you have forced medication put down into you or injected into you,” he said.<\/p>\n “Those are lifelong traumatic events that sometimes might be worse than the actual event that brought you into the hospital in the first place.”<\/p>\n Psychiatrist and former Australian of the Year Professor Pat McGorry told A Current Affair the public mental health system was broken, but treatment orders have a place.<\/p>\n “Whether it gets overused or not is the question – and the problem is the public system is so underfunded across Australia,” McGorry said.<\/p>\n He said clinicians are not to blame for the state of the system, believing their hands were tied and could only use the treatment options they are provided.<\/p>\n “They’ve got no power to offer the sort of care that should be provided to patients and this is just a feature of the neglect of the public health system right around the country,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s just retreated into the management of risk and that’s an admission of defeat.”<\/p>\n Queensland has a mental health commissioner who is on the record saying treatment orders should only be used as a last resort – and yet, he said in a statement to A Current Affair, their use has been on the increase and we need to understand why.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/f49719ac-6eec-4e63-804a-61fcbb284bda.jpeg\")
Parents Steve and Lizel Ramsay just want everyone to know Giaan’s story and name. (Supplied)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/e4cf2f5f-c13c-4715-ae87-3846a2146e8e.jpeg\")
During her admission, Giaan was kept at times in isolation for days on end, in a room designed for low stimulation. (Supplied)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/b56cd837-f9a4-40f8-84d3-ee23d2e2b27c.jpeg\")
Steve and Lizel Ramsay said they had no say over how their daughter was treated or her admission because she was under an involuntary order. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/745c5903-ac87-4102-b449-7358e4740a6d.jpeg\")
Steve and Lizel Ramsay reflected on Giaan’s previous admissions leading up to that final stay, saying the treatment order took away all of her hope. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/04bbe38b-860d-44d4-916f-534a7ab62a72.jpeg\")
Experts are calling for an independent watchdog to be established in Queensland. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n