Australia's involuntary mental health patients are so desperate to defy smoking bans they are poking electricity sockets with paper clips to get a spark and light up, The (Perth) Sunday Times reported.
The revelation based on a new report is being used by Western Australia's mental health watchdog, the Council of Official Visitors, to bolster its call for designated smoking areas for involuntary patients.
In its latest annual report, the watchdog warned one patient was soaking nicotine patches in tea "to get more of a nicotine fix" and it was "cruel" to force mental health patients to give up their addiction on admission.
It also highlighted "reports of patients using straightened paper clips in electricity outlets to obtain a spark to light a cigarette."
"It is not the right time to be asking people to go through the terrible nicotine withdrawal symptoms," the council wrote in the report tabled in parliament.
"The ban is also a further erosion of consumers' rights and not in accordance with section five of the Act which requires that people with a mental illness must receive care and treatment with the least restriction of their freedom and least interference with their rights."
But Australian Council on Smoking and Health president Mike Daube said the council's call was "misguided, retrograde and exaggerated."
He said the smoking ban, introduced on all public hospital sites in 2008, was "being very well implemented and there will always be one or two exceptions."
"There doesn't seem to be any concern about the physical health of mental health patients and we shouldn't just be worried about their health from the neck up," he said.
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