The United Nations brands it torture and an abuse of human rights. The National Mental Health Commission wants it phased out entirely. The NSW Mental Health Commission wants to see its use radically curtailed or even eliminated. Ethical psychiatrists are repulsed by it.

If I had my way, it would be made illegal and its perpetrators charged with criminal assault and de-registered by their respective professional bodies.

It is "seclusion" and while it sounds benign, it is anything but.

Seclusion, to me, is the act of restraining, sometimes aggressively, another human being before locking them in a tiny, bare cell, with nothing but a mattress on the floor, usually for hours on end. In the worst instances, not only are victims confined in these cage-like cells, but shackled there as well, like animals.

The shackling is called "restraint", another Orwellian term that our public mental health system is so adept at inventing, like "primary carer" in place of next-of-kin and "consumer" for those with a mental illness.