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This presentation reviews how a sense of safety can be impacted by experiences of trauma, childhood adversity and toxic stress. An overview of the polyvagal theory is presented and how trauma can impact people's neuroception of safety, perceptions of threat and capacity to mentalise. A neuroception of safety is necessary for people to engage in psychotherapy (the primary treatment for most mental health problems). Most people who engage with mental health services do not receive effective treatment. The audience is challenged to consider how the extremely high rates of coercion and restrictive practices in public mental health care in Australia can be reconciled with trauma-informed care. Reducing coercion and restoring a sense of safety is promoted as the most pressing priority to improve outcomes of engagement with public mental health services.

Interventions aimed at reducing restrictive practices are also designed to enhance the service experience in acute mental health units. However, people with experience of coercive engagement with these services are seldom involved as active contributors in evaluative research on interventions to reduce restrictive practices. With the meaningful involvement of lived experience practitioners, this research was aimed at examining care recipients' service experiences and perspectives on nurses' therapeutic responses during the implementation of a de-escalation intervention in three adult inpatient units within New South Wales, Australia, from March 2024 to April 2025. Nested within a larger study employing a mixed concurrent control design, this research evaluated the effectiveness and process of the Safe Steps for De-escalation through comparisons of unmatched measures of empowerment, dehumanisation, and staff actions on violence prevention across three time points, as well as through a reflective thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews. Safe Steps is a structured approach for therapeutic responding, targeting nurses' relationship-promotion behaviours to increase focus on minimising the use of restrictive practices. Eighty-six inpatients completed the unmatched measures, with nine participating in interviews following discharge. No significant changes were noted in quantitative measures over time. Five themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (i) Clarity calms; confusion harms, (ii) Control cuts deep, (iii) Systems strain; people break, (iv) Connection is treatment in itself, and (v) Meaning-making outweighs medicine. These findings cast acute inpatient units in a light akin to a power circuit, elevating the need to make inpatient admissions more reflective of everyday life outside the units.

Objectives: De-escalation is widely endorsed as an intentional strategy to replace and reduce restrictive practices in acute mental health units. However, high-quality evidence for its effective implementation remains limited. In response, a pragmatic, complexity-informed evaluation was undertaken to generate empirical support for the impact of an intervention, Safe Steps for De-escalation, on restrictive practices. The intervention centres on a four-step framework for therapeutic responding, with implementation supported by co-designed training and restrictive practice reviews.

Methods: A mixed concurrent control study was conducted in three adult inpatient units in New South Wales, Australia, from March 2023 to April 2025. A priori weighted linear, linear mixed-effects, and generalised linear mixed-effects models were fitted between and within groups, to assess the impact of the intervention on restrictive practice events, including seclusion, physical restraint, as-needed intramuscular psychotropics, event duration, and physical injury. A priori hierarchical cluster analysis and between-cluster comparison were used to examine the most active de-escalation response components and any associated concurrent supplementary strategies contributing to the overall impact.

Results: Compared to three control sites, implementation sites had a lower total restrictive practice event rate (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.65, 95% CI [0.60, 0.69], p <.001) over a twelve-month intervention period. At a granular level, implementation sites had lower IRRs for seclusion and as-needed intramuscular psychotropics than controls; however, within-group rates fluctuated over the year. Two clusters of de-escalation responses and additional supplementary strategies (including stimulus reduction, music, and one-on-one staff time) were noted. The differential associations between clusters and the outcomes were insignificant.

Conclusion: Despite mixed results, the evaluation offers support that structured therapeutic responding helps minimise restrictive practices, without evidence suggesting a substitution of one form of coercion for another.

Understanding the drivers of seclusion and physical restraint supports the work towards minimising their use in acute mental health units. However, evidence on their most important drivers remains limited and is focused mainly on individual-level features. Employing 249 days of 917 contemporaneous records of nurse de-escalation events in one adult inpatient unit in regional Australia, from January 2019 to March 2020, twenty-three features other than individual demographic, dispositional, and diagnostic factors were extracted. Bivariate statistics and supervised machine learning algorithms for feature selection (i.e. Boruta algorithm) and predictive modelling (i.e. random forest) were applied. Emerging top drivers include incidents in high observation beds, the assessed level of situational aggression before de-escalation, incidents directed towards nurses, verbal de-escalation, and distraction and redirection. These findings elevate the predictive value of contextual and interventional, rather than individual-level, features in understanding the likelihood of restrictive practices.

There is a shared goal of organising reform efforts in mental health services to eliminate restrictive practices and improve therapeutic relationships. However, evidence on high-quality, culturally safe, co-produced, and strengths-based interventions and evaluations is limited, especially for complex interventions centred on therapeutic responding. In response, a multi-centre, mixed concurrent control study is underway to evaluate the Safe Steps for De-escalation, a multi-component intervention focused on a structured framework for mental health nurses’ therapeutic responses to emotional distress and interpersonal conflict in acute adult mental health inpatient units.

The aims of this evaluation were:
1) What is the effectiveness of Safe Steps in reducing restrictive practice events and duration and physical injuries?
2) Does Safe Steps improve people’s service experience, perceived staff action towards violence prevention, and nurses’ professional quality of life and emotionally intelligent workplace behaviours?
3) What factors influence the successful implementation of Safe Steps?

It is hypothesised that:
a) intervention sites will demonstrate more significant decreases in restrictive practice events and duration and physical injuries, compared to within-group baseline and control group, and
b) measures of people’s experiences and perceptions and nurses’ outcomes and behaviours will improve, compared to within-group baseline.

Safe Steps has three components:
i) a structured de-escalation framework,
ii) an in-person and online training programme, and iii)
a regular conduct of strengths-based, data-informed restrictive practice review meetings.

The control group will be usual care. Other outcomes include nursing intervention clusters, their associations with various outcomes, and factors influencing intervention implementation and restrictive practice use. There is no randomisation, but inverse probability weighting will be applied. The sample sizes were determined through power analyses and supporting evidence on saturation in qualitative research. Various quantitative and qualitative data treatments and measures will be undertaken to minimise research biases.

A structured process of reviewing incidents of seclusion and physical restraint supports nurses in managing the emotional and relational impact of restrictive practices. However, these reviews are not a routine feature of everyday acute care provision, and have historically been influenced by practices that reflect a managerial or disciplinary focus. A retrospective before-and-after study was conducted in an adult acute mental health inpatient unit in regional New South Wales, Australia. The goal was to determine the impact of strengths-based restrictive practice review meetings from January 2019 to March 2020, with an equivalent timeframe before its implementation (October 2017–December 2018). The events of seclusion, physical restraint, and Code Blacks (emergency codes requiring security personnel in response to personal safety threats) were compared before and after the implementation of review meetings, with covariate balancing applied to enhance comparability. The reduction in the rate of seclusion was statistically significant post-implementation (incidence rate ratios [IRR] = 0.37, 95% CI [0.24, 0.57], p < 0.001). At the same time, physical restraint showed a statistically insignificant reduction (IRR = 0.76, 95% CI [0.53, 1.09], p = 0.14). Code Black incidents remained stable (IRR = 1.02, 95% CI [0.70, 1.49], p = 0.91). These mixed results indicate that strengths-based reviews play a role in reducing coercion, although additional strategies may be needed to achieve significant reductions in restrictive practice outcomes. Intervention development requires broader service-level changes, with open and robust evaluations that enhance accountability and capture key influencing factors.

Aim
An analysis of mental health nursing de-escalation logs for 249 days from a regional adult inpatient unit in New South Wales, Australia, was completed to identify groups of cooccurring nursing therapeutic responses to aggression and examine their associations with reductions in restrictive practices and situational aggression.
Design
A single-centre retrospective study was undertaken.
Method
Hierarchical clustering of nursing interventions established groups of cooccurring nursing responses. Poisson mixed-effect models were then used to determine the associations of the intervention clusters with restrictive practices.
Results
Two intervention clusters emerged: Cluster 1 involved verbal de-escalation with active listening and rapport building, whereas Cluster 2 included additional limit setting and problem-solving, distraction, sensory modulation, environmental change and individual staff time. Cluster 1 was linked with a reduction in seclusion use by 83% [IRR = 0.17, 95% CI (0.07, 0.41), p < 0.001], physical restraint by 79% [IRR = 0.21, 95% CI (0.11, 0.40), p < 0.001] and average judged situational aggression by 1.56 [95% CI (0.86, 2.25), p < 0.001]. Cluster 2 was related to statistically insignificant increases in the three studied outcomes.
Conclusions
The intervention clusters prove the value of supplementary tools in surfacing nurses' therapeutic potential. The differences in restrictive practice use between intervention clusters signal the structure and progression of forming therapeutic relationships in aid of de-escalation and the possibility of assessing de-escalation components robustly.
Relevance to Clinical Practice
Acknowledging and supporting nurses' therapeutic work support the development of recovery-oriented care and a positive professional identity for nurses.

Aggression, conflict and restrictive practices present complexities in acute mental health services, as do implementing service changes to reduce them. Existing published literature needs to offer more high-level guidance on the effectiveness of these service changes and their associated implementation factors. As a result, an overview of systematic reviews was undertaken to identify (i) nonpharmacological interventions to reduce conflict, aggression and restrictive practices in acute mental health settings, and (ii) their effects across different clinical outcomes. A parallel re-extraction from primary studies was then utilised (iii) to identify factors influencing successful intervention implementation. Of 124 articles sourced from nine databases and registries, four reviews were retained for the final analysis, using the direction of effect and tabular and narrative summaries. These reviews included programmes or interventions focused on inpatient adolescent, adult and older adult populations. They reported on alternative containment strategies, risk assessments, Safewards, sensory rooms and equipment, Six Core Strategy–based interventions and staff training. The overview found that a combination of interventions intended to improve relationships and reduce interpersonal conflict may help reduce aggression, conflict and restrictive practices. At the same time, stand-alone staff training and sensory rooms and equipment may have mixed effects. The quality of the evidence linking these interventions to reductions in aggression, conflict and restrictive practices is limited. Successful implementation hinges on multiple factors: intervention characteristics, preparation and planning, evaluation and monitoring, outcome interpretation, stakeholder involvement/investment, staff-related factors and contextual factors. Any implementation initiative may benefit from using pragmatic and complexity-informed research methodologies, including integrating meaningful involvement with service users, peer workers and culturally diverse groups.

Trauma-informed care has emerged as a prominent strategy to eliminate coercive practices and improve experiences of care in mental health settings, with advocacy from international bodies for mental health reform. Despite this, there remains a significant gap in research understanding the integration of trauma-informed care in mental health nursing practice, particularly when applied to the acute mental health or hospital-based setting. The study aimed to explore the experiences of mental health nurses employed in acute hospital-based settings from a trauma-informed care perspective. The study design was qualitative, using a phenomenological approach to research. A total of 29 nurses employed in acute mental health or hospital-based environments participated. Three over-arching themes were uncovered: ‘Embodied Awareness’: highlighting mental health nursing emotional capabilities are deeply rooted in bodily awareness. ‘Navigating Safety’: signifying spatial elements of fear and how some mental health nurses' resort to coercive or restrictive practices for self-preservation. ‘Caring Amidst Uncertainty’: revealing the relational influences of security guards in mental health nursing. The study reveals a significant gap in trauma-informed care implementation when applied to the context of mental health nursing practice in this setting. Limited evidence on trauma-informed care for mental health nurses, coupled with inadequate workforce preparation and challenging work environments, hinder the effective integration of it. To genuinely embed TIC in acute mental health settings, the study emphasises the need for a thorough exploration of what this entails for mental health nurses.

The Queensland Government issued a policy directive to lock all acute adult public mental health inpatient wards in 2013. Despite criticism from professional bodies and advocacy for an alternative, the policy has been retained to this day. A blanket directive to treat all psychiatric inpatients in a locked environment without individualised consideration of safety is inconsistent with least restrictive recovery-oriented care. It is against the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Australia is a signatory. It is also contrary to the main objects of the Mental Health Act 2016 (Qld). Queensland Health has reported a reduction in ‘absences without permission’ from psychiatric inpatient wards after the introduction of the locked wards policy; however, no in-depth analysis of the consequences of this policy has been conducted. It has been argued that patients returning late or not returning from approved leave is a more common event than patients ‘escaping’ from mental health wards, yet all may be counted as ‘absent without permission’ events. A review of the international literature found little evidence of reduced absconding from locked wards. Disadvantages for inpatients of locked wards include lowered self-esteem and autonomy, and a sense of exclusion, confinement and stigma. Locked wards are also associated with lower satisfaction with services and higher rates of medication refusal. On the contrary, there is significant international evidence that models of care like Safewards and having open door policies can improve the environment on inpatient units and may lead to less need for containment and restrictive practices. We recommend a review of the locked wards policy in light of human rights principles and international evidence.

The Mental Health Nurse Incentive Program (MHNIP) is a Commonwealth Government funded scheme that supports people living with a mental illness. Despite its significance, the program has received little attention from researchers nor critical discussion within the published work. This paper first critically examines the MHNIP from the contexts of identities, autonomy, and capabilities of mental health nurses (MHN) and then reports on findings from a qualitative study that explored the experiences of staff working in the MHNIP. Key findings from this qualitative study include four main themes indicating that both the program and the nurses working within it are addressing the unmet needs of people living with a mental illness. They achieve these ends by adopting holistic and consumer-centred approaches and by providing a wide range of therapeutic interventions. As well, the MHN in this study valued the freedom and autonomy of their practice outside public health services and the respect received from colleagues working in other disciplines. Findings suggest that MHN within the study were experienced as having autonomous identities and roles that may be in contrast to the restrictive understandings of MHN capability within the program's funding rules.