The immigration department has attempted to cover up statistics showing alarming rates of children’s mental health problems in detention, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s inquiry into children in detention has heard.
Doctors who worked on Christmas Island also recounted shocking details of medical neglect, including stripping asylum seekers of basic medication when they arrived.
Dr Peter Young, the former medical director for mental health for IHMS - the private healthcare provider in immigration detention – was compelled to attend the public hearing in Sydney, where he said a set of data presented to the department within the past two weeks had received a “negative” response and that the department “reacted with alarm”.
Young then said the department “asked us to withdraw the figures from our report”.
His evidence drew gasps from the gallery as a projected image of the statistics showed that 15% of children in detention on the mainland and on Christmas Island were scored three-four on the HoNOSCA (Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Child and Adolescent mental health) for symptoms of emotional distress – Young said a score of two was “clinically significant”.
The senior former official told the inquiry statistics compiled by IHMS showed a third of people held in detention in Australia had mental health problems. He told the inquiry it was “clearly established” that prolonged time in immigration detention caused mental health problems.
Young told the commission he was aware of self-harm incidents involving asylum seeker children, including poison attempts. He told the inquiry that there was no full-time child psychiatrist on Christmas Island or on Nauru, but that staff rotated the role.
Young said the immigration department often overrode medical advice for the treatment of asylum seekers in detention, which he described as “troubling”.
Asked if it was appropriate to hold asylum seeker children in prolonged detention, Young said: “Any prolonged detention is harmful, therefore it’s not recommended medically.”
Later in the afternoon three representatives from the department for immigration and border protection, department secretary Martin Bowles, deputy secretary Mark Cormack and assistant secretary Katie Constantinou, told the inquiry they were not aware of the request to withdraw the figures.
Bowles said he accepted that the HoNOSCA scale was a “national outcome scale” and it was “highly likely” it would be introduced into the system.
He said if any department staff had acted “inappropriately” he would “deal with that”.
The department conceded on a number of occasions that prolonged detention had adverse affects on asylum seekers’ mental health. Asked by counsel for the commission if prolonged detention affected the rate of self harm among asylum seekers, Cormack said the department was “not contesting” the body of research that found prolonged detention produced a “whole range” of effects.
Bowles was also quizzed about the fate of the 157 Tamil asylum seekers now held at Curtin detention centre. He was asked how many were children and how many were babies but said he could not respond as the department was still addressing the “biodata”.
The response drew derisive laughs from the gallery.
Bowles was asked if detention conditions were designed to “break people”
Visibly frustrated, he said: “I’m actually quite offended by these statements.”
He suggested they prevented detention centre staff doing their jobs properly.
Earlier, two doctors who worked in detention on Christmas Island gave evidence. Dr John-Paul Sanggaran and Dr Grant Ferguson both signed the Christmas Island doctors letter of concern, reported by Guardian Australia in December.
Sanggaran and Ferguson relayed a number of details documented in the letter, including substantial delays for medical treatment on the island, shocking facilities and medical neglect.
A policy of stripping asylum seekers of basic medications when they arrived at off-shore detention centres caused a three-year-old girl to suffer repeated seizures, Sanggaran said.
Another asylum seeker had parts of a prosthetic leg removed, while glasses and hearing aids were also seized and could not be reclaimed without considerable efforts by medical staff, the inquiry heard.
“This was a major problem,” said Sanggaran, who worked at Christmas Island detention centre in 2013.
“One of the more concerning, systematic things I saw was a couple of nurses standing around a garbage bin popping pills from a boat of new arrivals straight into the bin, with no records being taken of whose medication they were.”
Ferguson, who worked at the centre about the same time, said a three-year-old girl had medications stripped from her when she arrived and began to have fits shortly afterwards.
Health services on Christmas Island subsequently were able to provide her with only one of the two medications she needed.
“She started having seizures,” Ferguson said. “She was left on that one medication.
“We eventually got supply of that medication she arrived with, but they only ordered a month’s worth, so in a few weeks’ time they ran out and she was back to one [medication] again, and this whole time she was having seizures.”
He said a third medication was tried and the girl was eventually transferred off the island after a long wait and repeated requests by medical staff.
The doctor also described intense time pressures in making medical assessments of asylum seekers.
“There was one doctor who somewhat braggingly mentioned that in an eight-hour shift he had gone through 90 people,” he said.
Outside the inquiry, the president of the Human Rights Commission said the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, needed to come clean about the conditions in off-shore detention.
“The inhumanity, the cruelty of these processes is very apparent and when it’s repeated without any conditions attached by all of these medical experts, as Australians we have to ask have we gone too far?” Gillian Triggs told journalists.
“The minister has a responsibility to be much more transparent about what is happening.
“We’re trying to get facts right when frankly it would be much simpler for the minister to provide the Australian public with this information in the first instance.”
Tony Abbott told reporters in Hobart no one wanted children to be held in detention, but the best thing the government could do was stop the people-smuggling business.
“What could be more horrific than the idea of children perishing at sea because their parents have fallen for the false promises of the people smugglers?” the prime minister said.
The Greens criticised his reasoning as immoral.
“The best way to ensure the suffering of children comes to an end is to release them from detention,” immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said.
The hearings continue.