Aged care psychiatrist Duncan McKellar has shared his story of the life-changing impact of uncovering the neglect and dysfunction at Adelaide’s Oakden Older Person’s Mental Health Service, a key trigger for the aged care royal commission.

Dr McKellar’s new book, An Everyone Story – Finding our way back to compassion, hope and humanity, published by Wakefield Press, seeks to make sense of why things went so wrong at the state-run aged care home as well as learnings from the experience that would make a kinder world.

Dr McKellar, now with HammondCare's Dementia Centre, was part of the review team that produced the 2017 Oakden Report that caused community outrage and terminal political damage for the then SA Government.

The report led to real improvements in care for people living with dementia, including construction of SA’s first dementia village, HammondCare Daw Park.

Dr McKellar said what he witnessed at Oakden changed his life forever.

“It was an uncomfortable and traumatic time – but one that offered profound lessons in how people and systems function in relation to human diversity and vulnerability, as well as there being significant deficits in our responses to these challenges,” Dr McKellar said.

“I became increasingly aware of the importance of these lessons for other practitioners, politicians, leader and to people everywhere,” he said.

An Everyone Story focuses on the stories of the residents and their loved ones hurt by the failures at Oakden. It places these stories into the context of why cultures and services go wrong.

Among these stories was that of Barb Spriggs and her husband Bob, who was living with Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses.

After suspecting her husband was being physically and chemically restrained at Oakden, Barb blew the whistle on systemic problems at the service and found herself at the centre of the storm. In 2018, she was given the accolade of 2018 SA Senior Australian of the Year.

Then there was Ben, a patient who wrote a letter to people in authority of the local health service pleading to be released from Oakden. At the end of the letter, he included a simple drawn image of a bird escaping a cage.

Dr McKellar said the lessons of Oakden should prompt what he calls a “compassion revolution in healthcare and across our communities”.

“We should be aspiring to a better, kinder world for ourselves, for our children and their children. This kind of culture shift in healthcare and beyond will require belief, time, reflection, vulnerability and courageous effort,” he said.

The Oakden Report had a profound impact on Dr McKellar personally.

Dr McKellar had a lead role in the Oakden Response Oversight Committee and chaired the state-wide working groups for the development of new models of care, staffing profiles and reducing restrictive practices project.

After overseeing decommissioning of Oakden, he led the development and commissioning of Northgate House, as the relationship-centred prototype of the South Australian neurobehavioral unit, for people experiencing severe behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

In 2022 he moved to a new role with the Dementia Centre, HammondCare as a clinical specialist.

His experience at Oakden also played a part in co-creating with daughter Erin McKellar A Box of Memories, an acclaimed musical about living with dementia.

Professor Sue Kurrle, geriatrician and Research Fellow, The Dementia Centre, and contributor to ABC TV’s Old People’s Home for 4-year-olds, said the book had lessons for everyone in the aged care sector.

“A must-read for people in all caring professions, for politicians, those in the media, people touched by dementia and all causes of human struggle. It is a story for everyone,” Dr Kurrle said.