Psychiatry horror stories

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#36
They cont care about what's actually going on with your brain
These quacks will not stop at anything. Since there isn't any real accountability they dont even bother to cover up their 'malpractive'. They can diagnose you with anything and there isn't any way to show that it's clearly wrong since there isn't any objective test to be done that would verify or disprove it.

But you still have to deal with the horrific consequences when you find yourself in their claws, you will be powerless and trying to resist will only make it worse, you have more rights if you killed someone.

u/thedevilislonely wrote:

Got diagnosed with 'psychosis' (no psychotic symptoms), because "we can't prescribe meds for PTSD"
Obviously I knew the entire point of psych wards was to shove meds at you and pray you stabalize (or get sedated), but this blunt statment from a social worker still sent me reeling.

I was in a horribly toxic living situation I couldn't escape from, so I attempted suicide. I already had PTSD, but the current situation was the main catalyst for the attempt. At the ER, I told their psychiatrist what was going on, and he was 100% on the fact that I was just severely traumatized and in an awful situation. But of course, the law demands I be sent to the psych ward, so off I was sent. I told everyone there about my PTSD and my situation. Zero psychotic symptoms. After years of the PTSD part being dismissed, I thought maybe it was finally being acknowledged the main culprit of my issues.

And then when I got discharged, I saw my diagnosis: "depression with psychosis". Psychosis????? I never once displayed any psychotic symptoms, and never once answered yes to any of the "do you have hallucinations or hear voices" questions.
I demanded to speak to the psychiatrist and she refused. I demanded again and they sent a social worker. The conversation was this:
SW: Well, we just go by what the ER said.

Me: The ER explcitily said I have PTSD. In fact, he said that he would hesitate to even say I have depression or anxiety, since my symptoms are so clearly from trauma.

SW: W..... well........ we can't diagnose PTSD.
Me: I'm sorry, what? Why "can't" you?

SW: Because we can't give you meds for PTSD.

Straight up, "because we can't give meds for PTSD". The ER doctor, who actually evaluated me and LISTENED, backed me up that I have PTSD, that the issue I was there for was PTSD, and he sent that to the hospital..... and they changed it to "depression with psychosis" because there are no meds they could force on me for PTSD. Un fucking real.

Oh, and if you're wondering why psychosis specifically, I asked that too, since they had literally no basis to claim I'm psychotic. The higher ups and social workers refused to answer, but a tech sympathized and explained to me that it's probably because a) I'd already tried a million meds for JUST depression in the past, to no avail, and b) they wanted to medicate me for one of the "lesser symptoms" of psychosis..... irritability. That's right. Irritability.

They diagnosed me with 'psychosis' so they could have an excuse to prescribe me meds for Irritability. Considering I was, while still in there, grappling with both my horrific life situation outside AND the mental hospital bullshit....... huh, I wonder why I was so "irritable". Couldn't be that I had damn good reason, right? What a joke.

And guess what? I'm homeless now, and that little "psychosis" diagnosis can get me BARRED from a number of assisted living and housing programs. Yep.
 

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#37
They dont care about the consequences of you being locked up
When you are in a psych-jail times on the outside keep going, if you had a job you are very likely to lose that, you might end up homeless. You better have someone able to take care of your pets. If you have a partner he or she might simply leave you for someone else, once/if you finally get out often everything is lost.

AbdulazizUgas wrote:

I’Ve sat with fellow patients of the insane-asylum recounting their horror stories of abuse. One sweet lil old lady was thrown by a “security officer” to the ground, where she broke her nose. The worst part of her story (of many) is that her beloved cat was left to die alone, starvation. One of the worst possible ways to die, next to burning alive.
 

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#38
If you call the cops on someone suicidal in united states he/she is might get locked up, drugged against his/her will, losing his/her job in the process and getting a 5000$ bill.

How bad laws are differ in different areas.

One of the reason why it's a bad idea to attempt suicide is how bad the psychiatric system is and if the find out you tried to kill yourself you might be deemed "danger to your self or others" and thus 'lose' rights you were told you had.
So what should you actually do if you are suicidal?

I am afraid there isn't any universal cure here, it's a long process to improve your situation. In some cases a problem will go away by itself if you just wait it out, in other cases it will instead get worse if you doesn't do anything.

You need to be careful so you do not worsen a bad situation, you being depressed may actually be a protection in a way, if things you do lead to bad consequences a natural response is to take a step back and be more careful.

Drugs can help short term but then you will have to deal with side effects and tolerance buildup, many people end up with permanent sexual dysfunction due to antidepressants

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28778697

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007725/

It's important not to blame yourself when you wasn't the one at fault, often in life you will get problems because of actions by other people.
 

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#39
Gaslighting in Psychiatry 101
They will do everything they can to make you think you are defective and thus think you need their 'help' when in reality you are just fine without them and they are the ones ruining your life.

u/snowycato wrote:

Warning Signs of Gaslighting
  • They lie
    • Description: they tell you blatent lies
    • Personal example: I was told that my medication would have no side effects.
  • They tell you that everyone else is a liar
    • Description: they tell you that your family, friends, and the media are lying to you. This is meant to make you question your own reality and rely on them to know what's true
  • They use what you care about as ammunition
    • Description: They use your identity and the things you care about to attack you
    • Personal example: I was told that wanting to be able to study and read was rediculus and was making me sicker.
  • They wear you down over time
    • Description: They do the things on this list (perhaps subtly) over a long period of time
    • Personal example: I've been forced into outpatient therapy, so I get the following on a weekly basis
      • Reminders that my personality is a disorder
      • Mysogynistic jabs about how I'm emotional instead of logical because I'm a woman (Annoying thing about this is A. that I can't call her out on it because she'll deny it, and B. part of my 'personality disorder' is that I 'don't exhibit strong emotion')
  • Their actions do not match their words
    • Description: They do things they say you can't/shouldn't do. They say they don't/won't do something but they do. etc.
    • Personal example: In the psych ward the nurses all talked about how no emotions are bad. Multiple patients told me stories about how they had been meant to leave on a specific day, but were forced to stay because they had an emotion other than happy. (A couple said it was because they were sad. One said it was because she was angry.)
  • They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you
    • Description: They do something nice to make you think they aren't so bad (or feel guilty for thinking so)
    • Personal example: The nurses all said that part of my problem was that I’m a perfectionist (which I disagree with, but that’s beside the point). Throughout my stay in the psychward I got numerous talking-tos about how perfectionism is bad and stressful and we don’t need to worry ourselves about doing things poorly. This also occurred in a diagnostic interview they had me do: they started talking about you shouldn’t always try to be successful and failing can be a good thing, especially when you fail classes (this is literally something they brought up), etc. etc. failing classes is great. They then asked me how perfectionists do in the world, and I said something about ‘well its not great because they have a lot of stress’ to which they replied that ‘no, all the most successful people are perfectionists, they’re amazing’. (color me very confused)
  • They deny they ever said something, even if you have proof
    • Description: They lie in the described mannor in order to make you question you're own reality and adhere to theirs
  • They project
    • Description: They accuse you of doing their own bad behaviors.
    • To be fair, I didn’t know any of the psych ward staff well enough to know if they were projecting.
  • They allign people against you
    • Description: They use people against you so you'll turn to and trust them instead of anyone else.
    • Personal example: The psychward told my parents not to trust me
      • (One specific that I am particularly mad about is that they were told to hide the medicine box/put it in a safe I don’t know the combo to. I get headaches very frequently (always have) yet instead of being able to get ibuprofin on my own, I instead have to ask them to get it for me [which works very well when they’re not here]) (I have no history of abusing any kind of drug or medication)
  • They tell you or others that you are crazy
    • Description: They make you and others question your sanity so nobody will believe you when you say they are abusive/gaslighting
    • lol
Somewhat unrelated, but interesting article:
 

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#40
You pay money so they can make you worse
Many people pay large amount of money to psychiatrist only to later discover that they were not helped at all.

u/punkhaze wrote:

"Find another doctor"
So I paid a huge amount of money to a single meeting with a psych and was hoping it to be the best thing that I could do, he gave me Lexapro or Escitalopram. After reading everything about this medication being a huge problem for those with HPPD and even causing HPPD by itself, I started to message the clinic and the doctor was very rude with me.

He said "HPPD it's not your case. You have anxiety and if you want to stop benzodiazepine you need to be on Escitalopram."

I told him I had HPPD for 1 year already without any anxiety related, and then he said:

"If you don't stick with the treatment I gave you, you may need to go find another doctor."

300BRL FOR THIS BULLSHIT!!!! with this money I could buy a whole lot of supplements. A whole lot. Every single one.

Now I have to face my family arguing with me that I won't listen to the doctor and they are telling me to stop navigating on the internet. They almost turned my WiFi off so I could not research further.

I faked taking the med and told them it had made me worse, because I can't afford to worse my symptoms and simply ignore it.
I feel a piece of shit right now.

I am also hooked on Diazepam (after my last bad trip that led me to panic and shit) And all I wanted was to get off this med in a safe way, because I am worried about HPPD in the withdrawals too!!!
 

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#41
He killed himself due to psychiatry
This happens a lot of course

u/wowza1221 wrote:

The meds took my brother’s life
So my brother died by suicide 2 weeks ago, 3 days after he was discharged from the hospital. Basically he had an psychotic episode due to lots of extra stress from coronavirus and some stuff going on with my other sibling. Me and my dad thought it was best to take him to the hospital after his episode. Which in hindsight was the worst decision possible. Immediately after my dad went home after staying with him. They determined he couldn’t leave voluntarily and said they didn’t have enough beds and transferred him to another clinic hours away. There he stayed for 3 Fucking weeks getting fed numerous antidepressants/sleeping pills/and new antipsychotic medication while he was already on clozapine beforehand and they didn’t ween him off at all. They just put him on a new one. When he got discharged the day after he was not even the same person. I gave him hugs and told him I was so glad he was back but he just nodded. The following day he said he wanted to see my mom in the big city that was a 5 hour drive from our hometown where he was staying with my dad and me. I thought it was a good idea too and took him there to see his mother. Unfortunately after spending 2 days there he took his own life by falling off the balcony multiple stories high. I am completely devastated and miss him so so much. My anger at the physiatrist that prescribed him all these new medications without weaning off the cloziril wants me to do unspeakable things but I’m holding myself back and just trying to grieve. I love you so much big bro. Rest In Peace. I’m just waiting until I can join you on the otherside. The only silver lining were my last words to him was “I love you so much” and gave him the biggest bear hug. I hope everyone here in this sub stays positive and there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Much love. Please for me keep fighting. And fuck hospitals I wish I had never taken him there. He’s my guardian angel now.

Teawithfood wrote:

I’m sorry for your loss. Psychiatry killed one of my friends several years ago. I don’t know what will help you get through this but for me it helped to learn about the topic. I will post reviews of the research below.

This is psychiatries fault, they killed your brother. They will victim blame and gaslight you, him and everyone else.

Did your brother show any signs of weird movements, twitches, or posture? At times did it seem he was unable to sit still? Those are signs of a painful movement disorder caused by the drugs that causes suicide.

http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/NLPs/The-Case-Against-AntipsychoticsWhitaker2016.pdf https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/03/do-antidepressants-work-a-peoples-review-of-the-evidence/ https://www.madinamerica.com/adhd-info/ https://erenow.net/common/anatomy-of-an-epidemic/
 

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#42
Kafka traps
A kafka trap is situation where one is accused of something and any argument against the accusation is used as proof of the accusation. It creates an unfalsifiable logic loop.

Another example is trying to show you're not a danger to yourself:

"You have to be locked in a ward because you're a danger to yourself and others."

"No I'm not! You can't take away my rights!"

"Your aggressiveness and paranoia is proof you need to be locked up."

One case of this is psychosis. They diagnose you with psychosis and lock you down cause ur dangerous ofc. You say you dont struggle psychosis, however main sign of psychosis is that you dont think you struggle them, so basically you have no chance.

TREACHEROUSDEV wrote:

meh. Once other people say to lock you up, you're fucked. Then if you don't comply their friends sneak the meds on you. Then when you act out from being drugged, they lock you up again. The circle of bullshit never ends. It makes me want to kill myself. My family is gone, my career is trash, my college ruined.
 

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#43
Another life nearly destroyed
Of course psychiatric drugs make you worse, this becomes clear if you study the science, these people are very dangerous quacks and you need to put into effort avoiding them as much as possible. Even if you at some point realize that the drugs are making you worse serious damage have already been done to you and you will never be able to fully recover from that.

https://vintologi.com/threads/studies-on-psychiatric-drugs.591/

u/Heckbegone wrote:

Im starting to believe psych meds are what made my life spiral out of control
I have been on over a dozen psych meds, currently on two (wellbutrin and trazodone). The meds they keep pushing are not working and even if they did work they wouldnt be enough. All they'll do is the same thing the non prescription drugs did: make me okay with doing nothing. I refuse to be put back on antipsychotics even though they are pushing them on me. If the wellbutrin doesnt work within the next month or two (its been one month on it now) i am going to give up all meds for good. I did fine for years without them before i first started on them at 19, when i went to the doctor with depression and anxiety i had been dealing with for years. But that depression was nothing compared to how i am now. When i was first prescribed effexor, that was when my life started to go down the toilet. The effexor i was first on gave me mania, which is very unlike me. I would steal, use drugs i knew werent safe, slept around with randos for drugs, went on absurd spending sprees (how the spiral of neverending debt began), attempt to break into peoples houses and snoop through others medicine cabinets to find opioids mainly, or benzos or ambien anything "controlled" basically.
This was not me. At 18, i held three part time jobs along with attending college full time with all As and Bs. The new me couldnt handle one job and gave up on school. I didnt care about anything. I ruined a four year relationship by cheating and for my completely changed personality.

2 years later, i am stuck in the absolute worst depression i have ever dealt with. I was unemployed for a year, credit is demolished, recently just got a part time job where i barely work 15 hours a week just to get myself used to working again, i used kratom and alcohol for that year basically every day which probably had something to do with the depression, but when i really think about it, i was never this bad before i was put on that effexor.
The effexor led to a mania which landed me in a psych ward which led to me being prescribed a total of 7 meds that i was on for 8 months or so. I didnt even recognize myself anymore, and these days its even worse.

I have been trying to get myself off the couch and out of bed and go for walks every morning, write every day, take care of my chickens again, get out of the house every day, and take my vitamins again, but it is all just a distraction from the horrible depression that comes back nearly immediately after i come back to this basement, no matter how much i did or how long i was busy for.

I dont know what those meds did to me but i have a feeling the meds along with the other drugs i was taking have severely screwed with my serotonin and dopamine levels. I also had a relationship with a pedophile until i was 19 years old, which has been causing many negative feelings, so that might have something to do with it, but ultimately this began when i was first put on the effexor.

Ive gained 40 pounds, lost my sex drive nearly completely, lost my will to live, became a complete nihilist, saw no hope for my future, and have been confined to my basement.

I am trying to dig myself out of this because i am only 21, there is surely still plenty of time, but it gets so unbearable at times that the suicidal thoughts become plans which come very close to becoming actions. Even during these episodes i will not call the suicide hotline, crisis numbers, therapists, or go to the ER because i know ill just end up in the loony bin on 5-10 meds again. When i feel this way i will usually try to do something, go for a walk or go outside, leave the house, do SOMETHING but i am terrified to be in a psych ward again.

So that is my story of how i believe psych meds messed with me. Ill never know if thats the real reason i lost control of my life, but i have a pretty good idea that its a big part of it.
 

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#44
Powerlessness
A general theme with psychiatry is the difficulty in trying to successfully get away from this nightmare. Even if you take action to reduce the propability of you being harmed you will not be completely safe, especially if you are under 18.

u/BeijingTurkey wrote:

What do we do about something we can’t do anything about?
This pseudoscience of psychiatry, therapy and mental illness has infiltrated our culture. It’s here to stay. It’s encouraged and espoused by the masses, the police, the liberals, the “medical professionals”. I’m sick of being stressed by it

pigeonfaced wrote:

My feelings are too raw for me to publish anything publicly, but I intend to write about how I was treated and what I observed in the psych ward. It was nightmarish. I still haven't said aloud or even written some of the darkest stories from there because they were so emotionally charged and the thought of being disbelieved is crushing. Frankly, I was one of the most privileged people in my ward and one of the few patients to have a formal college education. So I feel a level of responsibility to inform the world about what actually happens in there.

I want to be a writer in general, and I'm really interested in the mind-body connection and believe that trauma impacts a person both physically and mentally. I would love if Western medicine weren't so dismissive of psychosomatic conditions (CFS, fibromyalgia)—I have no doubt that people with these conditions are truly suffering; however, I believe the cause is psychological. I've read arguments on the other side, and the insistence that there is a physical root seems doubtful. But the pain is still real. Unfortunately, I'm not about to go to med school so I'm not sure how much legitimacy I'd have, but I'm gonna try anyways. I am deeply motivated to speak out about the long-term impacts of trauma since I feel like society is so in denial.

On the smaller scale, I ended up clicking really well with my second outpatient psychiatrist. She actually listens to me and genuinely seems to want me to be the best version of myself, not an empty shell on multiple APs who bothers no one. I was able to get through to her some of the abuses I witnessed and faced in the hospital, which felt reassuring. There was one psych resident that I really clicked with in the hospital (unfortunately he was not on my treatment team; he just evaluated me in CPEP), and I sent him a LinkedIn message saying that I appreciated his kindness, but I have a lot of grievances about what happened in the psych ward, and he was receptive. I talk to my friends about this shit all the time; although it helps that many have had negative experiences with psychiatry themselves.

I agree completely that psychiatry has infiltrated our culture. The way people cling to the chemical imbalance theory is so frustrating. I'm just one voice, but I intend to speak out against psychiatry until the day I die. I understand your hopelessness, but despair never helps. The more we can talk about psychiatric abuse the better, and I won't be shut up.
 

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#45
Stockholm syndrome
Victims of psychiatry often tell themselves it was justified/neccessary for them to be deprived of rights and given brain-damaging drugs, instead they will often blame themselves when bad things happen. Often people will also gaslight victims and make them think that what happened to them was right even to it clearly wasn't.

http://archive.md/2m0yR

u/throwaway_LAOP_1994 wrote:

UPDATE: "My boyfriend(ish) called 911 on me and got me committed to a mental health institution against my will and I lost my job, lots of bills, didn't pay rent, . Can I sue him for damages and if so how? "
Hi all - last year I posted the above thread requesting legal advice after a MH inpatient stay. The thread was quickly locked, and I am ashamed to say that some of my comments were not me at my best. I doubt anyone remembers, but I just came across my throwaway login details and decided to share outcomes if anyone's interested, and I guess (now that I am in a better head space) give LA some tips on responding to similar questions from posters in the future. Plus, I now see there was a BOLA post about me that got a lot of responses so maybe they'd be interested in seeing it.
Some information that is not a "legal update" but is context relevant nonetheless, that I did not include in my original OP. The dx I received in November 2019 was (basically) bipolar disorder with borderline personality traits. I have a current psychiatrist and counselor and my dx is in review, so I no longer am sure now relevant those diagnoses are. Important thing is I am stable, medicated, housed, and gainfully employed once again.
No, I obviously didn't end up suing Alex. As the respondents to my original post (strongly) pointed out, that isn't really a thing and I never genuinely pursued it. I was probably trying to place a sense of anger in a more tangible place rather than genuinely seeking legal action. I have not spoken to him in seven months (as per the DV orders) and I have no intention of doing so.

As for the missing information in my original post: no, I still do not remember the offending phone call that led to my inpatient stay. I know that the commentators to my OP did not believe that I couldn't remember, but I just don't. I can't explain why; that's the nature of mental illness. My psychiatrist believes I disassociated for a long period of the evening in question. I am sure I did say or do some sily things and "Alex" was right to contact 911 (as I have now confirmed he did indeed do - I have more information on this later).

No, I no longer believe I was held unlawfully. The initial 72/48 hr hold was completely legal and I understand it's necessity. The following few weeks of voluntary inpatient stay were not as "involuntary" as I had believed them to be, on reflection - I was in a state of crisis and my doctor suggested I stay in the hospital and I was very suggestible at the time. I probably could have made more of an effort to contact my employer or attempt to access FLMA (more on that later)

Re: the weapon/gun allegations. In my last ever conversation with Alex (which I conducted without breaching my order), he acknowledged I never directly stated I had a gun nor made threats regarding a gun. I had previously (in normal, not-arguing conversation) mentioned to Alex that the neighbor in my duplex has a gun, and he (the neighbor) had joked to me about letting me borrow the gun if I "ever needed it" (the neighbor had heard Alex and I having some very intense arguments - it was a very inappropriate joke for the neighbor to make, which I shared with Alex not as a threat but as a "hey my neighbor is a wierdo" story). Alex then extrapolated that earlier conversation in his 911 call stating I had "access to a gun" (although my neighbor was joking and would have probably never let me use it, and, of course I just would never do that).

The HR manager to my original job got back to me (probably early Dec? cant remember) when they released I was eligible for FLMA and offered me re-employment (probably fearing lega action) but by that point I'd gotten a job through my cousin working as an aged care social worker which was more pay and less stressful.

So yeah - that's the update/clarity for you.

Reading over my original post and response to comments makes me cringe so bad and I can't believe I was ever that unwell, so sorry. But I also want to point out, that, having read the BOLA thread based on my thread, I received little useful response from this sub before the thread got locked. It's not reddit/LA's job to treat my mental health, but I probably would have benefitted from a reminder of FLMA at that point, or more focus on my job related and less insane questions, (even though everything worked out in the end) but the commentors were too busy calling me crazy (which I was and am, but that's not legal advice)

Anyway, thanks again

EDIT: just realized I didn't post any actual tips for responding to LA posts that are from people who are clearly unwell. I'm an MSW so I probably should do that. Here goes:
  1. Look beyond the crazy and see if there's any actual actionable legal content in the post. if there isn't, that's fine,
  2. It's fun to call out OPs who are clearly posting self-serving threads that are inconsistent/clearly not truthful. I'm an LA poster on my main account (not a lawyer) and I am guilty of this too. I guess the tip here is, you can point out that you believe an OP is lying/self-serving/withholding information and still point them in the right direction (again should there be any actual actionable legal content in their question)
  3. Re-direct OPs "like me" to mental health resources relevant to their geographic region. In my case, I absolutely would have disregarded this but it might help other people who are less acutely unwell.
  4. Try to avoid getting threads locked by not dogpiling OPs - it lessens the likelihood that they will recieve helpful comments in future. Having logged into my throway today I can see that there were some people who messae me privately with helpful responses and I thank them very much
That's all I can think of and I hope this doesn't come across pious at all - again, I understand my original post back in Nov was bonkers and I deserved some ridicule
 

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#46
Mother poisoned by polypharmacy
If you let these quacks have their way with you bad things will happen, there is no limit to the amount of drugs they can give you and of course this will not be good for you at all.

Laurie Uhler wrote:

Iatrogenic Domino: I Was Poisoned by Polypharmacy
My life should never have taken the catastrophic turns that it did. I was a minivan-driving soccer mom and a devoted wife. I enjoyed a successful career as a pediatric audiologist working in a variety of fast-paced medical settings. I was well-liked, a loyal friend to many, and an active member of my community. My very vibrant and blessed life was obliterated by a perverse cascade of errors via a broken medical system. This affected my loved ones’ lives as profoundly as it did mine. Had medical providers looked for and addressed the root causes of the ailments for which I was treated, I’d still be driving that minivan.

It has taken me a long time and an immense amount of research to piece together and understand what happened to me. I would like to share my story for whatever understanding can do to ease the pain, and for whatever help it can offer to prevent others from experiencing what our family did. First and foremost, however, I want my husband and children to understand the truth of what happened to me.

I did not suddenly develop some perverse form of mental illness out of thin air. I was a victim of repeated misdiagnoses, unrecognized adverse drug reactions/drug toxicity, and profound polypharmacy. What I experienced is described in the literature as “medication-induced iatrogenic chronic health syndrome, or iatrogenic injury.” It is more common than one would think, and as readers of Mad in America will recognize, it destroys lives.

The First Hit: Toxic Mold Effects Misdiagnosed as Depression
The circumstances that led to my catastrophic outcome are cumulative. It was no one thing, but several hits to my system.
In the late 1990s, my husband and I were a happy, newly married couple enjoying a carefree dual-income lifestyle. We had successful and fulfilling careers, great friends, and loved life; the world was our oyster. Despite all this, however, we both found ourselves incredibly tired all the time and experienced frequent brain fog. My husband also began having recurrent sinus infections. I developed unrelenting headaches, fibromyalgia, dry eyes, vision issues, G.I. disturbance, frequent urination, skin rashes, excessive thirst, irregular menstruation, and disorientation—I was getting lost going to familiar places.

When we sought medical attention for this cluster of symptoms, we were both told we were suffering from mild depression and were prescribed an anti-depressant (SSRI). Neither one of us actually felt “depressed,” though. Yet, we trusted our doctors knew best and so took the antidepressant medication as prescribed.

It’s absurd that we were given a psychiatric diagnosis given the physiologic symptoms we were experiencing. More unbelievable is that we did not even question the doctor. I would later learn that the constellation of symptoms we had is consistent with toxic mold illness, a subcategory of biotoxin illness known as Chronic Inflammatory Reactive Syndrome (CIRS). I was, in fact, subsequently diagnosed with CIRS.

We unknowingly lived in a home with hidden toxic mold, where up to two feet of water collected in the crawlspace underneath the home seasonally every winter. The root cause of our symptoms, which doctors diagnosed as “depression,” was completely missed. We did not need antidepressant medication. We needed out of our water-damaged home and treatment for mold illness/CIRS. Instead, we got put on an unnecessary neurotoxic medication with serious adverse health risks

The Second Hit: IVF Treatments Lupron and Synarel
When we decided to start our family in 2000, I experienced infertility. My husband and I utilized in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive our two children. During this process, many different pharmaceuticals we prescribed to me. These drugs are commonly used to treat infertility and my doctors assured us the medications were “safe.”

As part of my IVF treatment protocols, I was given Lupron and Synarel. Both are antineoplastic agents, meaning they are cancer chemotherapy drugs, used off-label for fertility treatment. Like all antineoplastics, they are harmful to both cancerous and non-cancerous cells—particularly in pregnant women and developing fetuses. It’s incredibly scary that they are used to promote conception, isn’t it? They are neurotoxic and can induce systemic damage to the central nervous system, connective tissue, mitochondria, the immune system, etc. over time. Equally disturbing is that I was advised to stay on the antidepressant I was taking throughout my pregnancy—for a depressive disorder it turns out I never had.

When I requested to be tapered off of the SSRI before attempting to achieve pregnancy, I was told that the risks to a baby from his mother’s untreated depression were greater than any potential adverse effects of in-utero exposure to antidepressant medication. Really? This made absolutely no sense to me; the only qualifier for my diagnosis of mild depression was unrelenting fatigue. But the doctor had instilled terror in me that if I did not stay on an antidepressant during pregnancy, I would be irrevocably harming my child. So I reluctantly followed his advice, unaware that prenatal exposure to an SSRI can be damaging to a developing brain and nervous system. Both my children were born with severe nervous system dysregulation and have developmental and immunological issues.

I also learned that toxic mold exposure and SSRIs can both cause various hormonal issues. My infertility was due to anovulatory cycles (failure to ovulate), but this condition was likely induced by the antidepressants inappropriately prescribed to treat the effects of toxic mold. I had also been on hormonal birth control for many years prior to our attempts to conceive. Suffice it to say, I was not healthy when I attempted to get pregnant, but despite my compromised health, the fertility doctors added more toxic chemicals to my body burden.

The Third Hit: Fluoroquinolones
Both of my children were both born via Cesarean section-my daughter due to vasa previa, my son due to failure to descend. In each instance, I received IV Ciprofloxacin prophylactically to stave off potential infection.

Within a couple of days after receiving IV Cipro, I experienced acute onset of significant arm weakness and severe wrist pain, requiring me to use wrist guards for several months. Because of this, I had difficulty physically caring for my children after their births. I also experienced photosensitivity, hyperacusis (sensitivity to sound), drenching night sweats, constipation/G.I. distress, hair loss, hyperactivity, brain fog, short-term memory issues, and fatigue. Additionally, I had irritability, emotional blunting, and personality changes after my son’s C-section. All of these symptoms were much more severe after my son’s delivery and they did not ever resolve completely.

After my son’s birth, I was prescribed multiple consecutive courses of oral Levaquin plus steroids for persistent pneumonia I developed during the second trimester of my pregnancy with him. The concomitant use of steroids with fluoroquinolones exponentially magnified the damage to my body.
Cipro and Levaquin belong to the class of medication known as fluoroquinolones. According to the European Medicines Agency, “Fluoroquinolones are associated with prolonged (up to months or years), serious, disabling and potentially irreversible drug reactions affecting several, sometimes multiple, systems, organ classes, and senses.” And fluoroquinolone toxicity can lead to a systemic health cascade. Like antineoplastics, fluoroquinolones are essentially chemotherapy drugs that negatively impact the immune system, central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, and peripheral nervous system. They also alter DNA, cause mitochondrial and connective-tissue damage, and can trigger severe neuropsychiatric/cognitive issues. Increasingly, fluoroquinolone toxicity is being recognized as a chronic syndrome, very different from “allergic reactions in that it does not go away when the drug is stopped.

Following the fluoroquinolone exposures, my health declined significantly and systemically over the next several years. Extreme fatigue, fibromyalgia, persistent headache, head pressure, G.I. issues, recurrent infections, cognitive issues, muscle wasting, and visual disturbances were just some of the symptoms I experienced. I also began to develop multiple chemical sensitivities, food sensitivities, and electro-hypersensitivity. I have been told by physicians and researchers this is all consistent with fluoroquinolone toxicity, which can lead to a progressive health cascade. However, this syndrome went unrecognized and, instead I was prescribed larger doses of antidepressants, which only exacerbated my declining status.

The Fourth Hit: Multiple Bacteria, Viral, and Fungal Infections… and More Medications
Between 2010-2013, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease and multiple coinfections (Bartonella, Erichliosis, and Babesia) along with other persistent parasitic, fungal, bacterial and viral infections (ascariasis, candidiasis, mycoplasma, Epstein Bar, and HHV6). I also received diagnoses of ME/CFS and CIRS (see above). As my health had been declining for many years, I was relieved to finally discover what doctors thought was the “root” cause of all my symptoms, and I was eager to address it. I was a compliant patient and followed their complex protocols. Over the next six years, an utterly absurd number of different pharmaceuticals were prescribed to me as treatment (listed at the bottom of this post), including more rounds of fluoroquinolones (Levaquin, Avelox) and their “second cousins,” Mepron, Malarone, and Flagyl. The years of aggressive treatment proved disastrous.
Very well-intentioned doctors missed my pre-existing fluoroquinolone and SSRI toxicity. No regard was shown for the growing burden on my organs, most notably the liver and brain. My G.I. system was decimated by the dozens of antibiotics I took. Aggressive Lyme treatment involving years of polypharmacy only served to further poison me, further impairing my central nervous system and immune system.

The Fifth Hit: Sedatives and Anticonvulsants to Quiet the Immune System
After years of Lyme treatment and with my body’s medication toxicity already through the roof, the next approach my doctors came up with was to add Ativan, a benzodiazepine, and gabapentin, an anticonvulsant, to my regimen–both off-label. These drugs were prescribed to calm the mast-cell activation and aid the intractable insomnia I had developed. Fluoroquinolone exposure can trigger mast-cell activation. So can toxic mold exposure.
In February 2015, I suffered an immediate adverse drug reaction to gabapentin. Within the first day of beginning this medication, my handwriting changed. I could not walk straight and began dropping things. I had an obvious and immediate decrease in executive function and short-term memory, along with hyperactivity, twiddling my fingers, and other symptoms that I would later learn fall under the umbrella condition called akathisia. According to the Akathisia Alliance for Research and Advocacy, the condition ”is an extremely distressing neuropsychiatric syndrome with symptoms including severe agitation, inability to remain still and an overwhelming sense of terror implicated in many suicides and acts of violence. It is a medication side effect.”

I reported all this to my doctor, who instructed me to stay on the medication and that my body would “adjust with time.” These were not harmless “side effects” that would fade, however. They were a serious adverse drug reaction, which went unrecognized as such and led to more polypharmacy.

Progressing Neurotoxicity: Let’s Up the Doses of the Contributing Medications
Over the next several months, my cognition and proprioception (perception of my body’s position in space) continued to rapidly decline. Additionally, I experienced the onset of deeply troubling new symptoms: an extreme fear of being alone, intense inner restlessness, confusion, blurry vision, severe headache, hand tremor, worsening insomnia, terror, and derealization/ depersonalization. Repeated changes were made to my Lyme treatment protocol with the assumption that these new symptoms and decline were related to that chronic health condition. The gabapentin and Ativan doses were also increased. Changes were also made to the SSRI. The adverse drug reactions and increasing toxicity I was experiencing were missed completely and the additional pharmacy was only worsening it.

Something was very, very wrong; I just kept declining. In no way did my deterioration feel like it was simply an exacerbation of Lyme. By the fall of 2015, things had deteriorated to the point where I had to stop driving: my vision and motor skills had become too impaired. We had to hire household help and childcare because I had become essentially non-functional. I was acutely aware that my decline was negatively impacting my children and I wanted to make sure there was a capable adult in the home with them at all times. I even tried hiding in the bedroom, away from their view, because my presentation and behavior had become very disturbing and I knew it. I would later come to understand that all the new symptoms beginning with the adverse reaction to gabapentin were consistent with medication-induced akathisia.

Confirmation: It Was the Drugs All Along
In December 2015, after 10 months of searching for answers to my abrupt and progressive decline, I finally got confirmation from my doctor and own research that I was indeed experiencing numerous, severe negative effects of the psychiatric drugs I was on. As Dr. Peter Breggin has pointed out, “benzodiazepines can produce a wide variety of abnormal mental responses and hazardous behavioral abnormalities, including rebound anxiety and insomnia, psychosis, paranoia, violence, antisocial acts, depression, and suicide.” Similarly, gabapentin and other antiseizure drugs can cause a variety of behavior changes. Breggin cites the FDA’s warning that they can cause or exacerbate symptoms such as “anxiety, agitation, hostility, mania and hypomania,” which “may be precursors to emerging suicidality.”

I also learned that a slow, supervised taper off of these psychotropic medications was required for my safety. My doctor, therefore, referred me to a psychiatrist for a guided taper. I was not “addicted” to the medications; rather, my brain had become dependent on them and so cessation had to be gradual and monitored.

The psychiatrist advised me to first cross over from Ativan to another benzo, Valium, because it has a longer half-life and could help to reduce any inter-dose withdrawal effects. Then, once I was stable on an equivalent dose of Valium, I was to taper slowly off of that. She also wanted to add in other medications to counter the negative side effects of the withdrawal process.

Crossing over to Valium was extremely problematic for me. I experienced an immediate adverse reaction to it with increased agitation and pacing on the very first dose. (It turns out I cannot metabolize Valium properly.) Upon reporting this to my physician, she told me just to “go slower” with the process and things would “even out” over time. Despite my following her instructions, nothing “evened out.” I experienced ever-increasing negative and disturbing symptoms. I now understand that I suffered from multiple drug-to-drug interactions and adverse drug reactions, drug toxicity that went unrecognized. There was no question: I had developed medication-induced akathisia.

Even So, Let’s Add More Medications
To counter these growing negative effects, the doctors continually changed dosages of existing drugs and added many new ones, all trial and error, with no discernible rationale. This only worsened things, causing even more frightening and violent new or exacerbated symptoms—rapid pacing, twisting dystonia (involuntary muscle contractions), severe depersonalization, disinhibition, myoclonic jerking, derealization, panic, agitation, aggression, severe insomnia, paranoia, vocal tics including profanity, monophobia (fear of being alone), agoraphobia, rage, stuttering, disequilibrium, severe confusion, heart palpitations, visual disturbances, air hunger, motor slowing, oppositional behavior, and more. My environmental sensitivities also escalated.

After the cross-taper from Ativan to Valium made things worse, not better, at one point I was prescribed low-dose Seroquel, an antipsychotic, off label for the extreme insomnia I had developed on this cocktail of drugs. Off label use of low dose antipsychotics for insomnia is not recommended, and it was soon clear why: After Seroquel was added, I developed vocal tics, suicidal ideation, extreme terror, and delirium, and the pacing and other movements increased dramatically. Despite my reporting this immediate negative side effect of feeling intense agitation and rage, the doctors denied that a low dose of Seroquel could cause this effect and told me it must be due to an underlying or emerging psychiatric illness. Really? How do you suddenly develop severe psychiatric illness out of nowhere?

Prior to being put on Ativan and gabapentin and the subsequent polypharmacy, I had never before experienced suicidal ideation or the other extreme negative behavioral and cognitive changes I’ve described. Yet I was repeatedly told that my very classic symptoms of akathisia were not akathisia and not related to medications. The Barnes Scale, a standardized tool to assess drug-induced akathisia, was never administered. And the very behaviors that I’d been reporting and that were unfolding right before the physicians’ eyes are known and dangerous medication side effects, included in manufacturers’ warnings. So why then did so many doctors fail to recognize this? Why did they continue to prescribe yet more medications?

By this point, I had lost my sense of human connection and self. I felt completely lobotomized. The collateral damage on my children and husband was and is inhumane.

Spinning Out: Let’s Go Cold Turkey. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
My physical/cognitive/mental health continued to spin out of control on the medication merry-go-round. In August 2016, I was admitted to a psychiatric unit from the ER due to severe confusion, pacing akathisia, and dystonia. Then, the uninformed doctor there forced an abrupt discontinuation of the polypharmacy cocktail I had wound up on in the name of “safe” tapering. I went cold turkey off of four psychotropic medications overnight. This severely shocked my CNS. Over the next few weeks, I experienced what felt like seizures and had difficulty forming words, severe vertigo, worsening cognitive function, visual disturbances, racing heart, auditory hallucinations, and more terrifying symptoms. Six weeks later, fearing for my life as I spiraled into mania, psychosis, and suicidality from this abrupt cessation, I sought reinstatement of some of the medications. Doctors accused me of “drug-seeking.” It’s not that I wanted to be on any of these poisons ever again; I was simply trying not to die.
The partial reinstatement did stabilize me a bit.

Then, while I was at an outpatient facility only one month later, I was again rapidly tapered off the polypharmacy cocktail. Originally, I understood, the withdrawal program was to be completed over 15 days. I have since learned that my rapid detox was longer and more intense than the prescribed protocol. According to my medical records, I received 23 days of treatment, which included the administration of daily six-hour infusions of IV NAD+ (a coenzyme necessary for metabolism) with B complex and amino acids. I later learned that the dose I was given was significantly greater than the maximum standard dose and was provided at too fast a drip rate. The treatment course was also many times longer than is typical and was done without proper methylation support.

This treatment protocol is purported to protect the brain and ease medication withdrawal syndrome. However, this was not at all what happened to me. I had a severe, utterly catastrophic response to it, inducing permanent and profound physical disability. During the IV NAD+ administration, I experienced extreme brain burning, increased heart rate/blood pressure, auditory hallucinations, seizures, extreme agitation, terror, tremors, fever, hypomania, worsened akathisia with pacing, violent dystonia, hand clawing, delirium, jerking and twitching, and homicidal and suicidal ideation. Most horrifically, the severe adverse reaction provoked me to make an impulsive, akathisia-induced suicide attempt.

I now understand that, with my pre-existing mitochondrial issues, a suspected underlying connective tissue disorder, and years of cumulative toxicity (both medication-related and environmental), NAD+ would not only not help me, but would be likely to have severe adverse effects. Genetic/ epigenetic researcher Bob Miller, among others—whose work focuses on Lyme patients and others with complex chronic diseases—has said in an interview that for some, NAD+ treatment causes a destructive process in which certain molecules in the body start behaving in destructive ways.

This process seems to have accelerated my mitochondrial dysfunction, which led to extensive connective-tissue damage and progressive collapse of my musculoskeletal system.

No provider recognized this serious contraindication with their recommendation that I be given NAD+. Instead, they touted the opposite, claiming it to be neuroprotective for all.

The Results of Polypharmacy and Failed Treatments
As I say, I have experienced profound progressive connective tissue destruction since receiving the IV NAD+. At the age of only 55, I am now non-ambulatory, bed-bound and requiring full physical care in an assisted-living facility. This has left me unable to bathe or dress myself. I have difficulty feeding and swallowing. I have very limited use of my hands; my manual dexterity is poor. I also have profound autonomic nervous system dysfunction and cannot tolerate even supported sitting. It feels as though my entire spine has collapsed, with bone on bone-discs and other supportive connective tissue severely compromised. My tendons and ligaments feel too lax systemically throughout my body, head to toe—my feet now curl and bend in ways that they should not.

My upper palate has fallen and my lower jaw swings so much so that it often feels like I’m being choked. Speech articulation is difficult because of the laxity in my oral cavity. I have systemic collagen and cartilage loss. My internal organs don’t feel supported and I’m experiencing prolapse. I am right-side lying 24/7, propped up at an angle and need assistance repositioning my body. Toileting is difficult. My vascular and lymphatic systems have been severely affected. I have full body-tissue swelling, like an exploded baby diaper.

It feels as if the structural integrity of my connective tissues, the glue that holds *everything* together, is gone…like chewing gum on hot pavement or stretched-out pantyhose. I quite literally feel as if I’m melting from the inside out. Additionally, I have a constant, severe acid-burning sensation throughout my body and deep bone pain, head pressure, and central vision and auditory processing issues.

And Yet They Insist It Was All in My Head
It has been a grueling 39 months since that IV NAD+ and rapid taper off toxic medications. During this period, my mental and cognitive state has steadily and dramatically improved. I no longer have any psychiatric symptoms and my personality has fully returned. I am once again gentle, kind, funny, thoughtful, and empathetic.

Doctors kept insisting that the extreme cognitive and behavioral changes I experienced, beginning with that original adverse reaction to gabapentin, were signs of an emerging, intrinsic psychiatric illness. They had wanted me to continue on various psychotropic medications and strongly recommended that I seek treatment in a long-term inpatient psychiatric facility for my “severe mental illness.” If they had been correct in their assessment, I would not have experienced the dramatic return to a healthy mental and cognitive state that I now enjoy despite declining their medication/treatment.

But I never had the emerging severe psychiatric illness the doctors said I had. Rather, the perverse neuropsychiatric manifestations were actually triggered by repeated misdiagnosis and careless polypharmacy. No question: The toxic effects of medications caused these problems.
But my misinformed doctors told my family that I’d become perversely mentally ill. Because of their ignorance, my family believes that I abruptly lost my mind at the age of fifty. When I rejected the false diagnoses and refused further interventions (i.e., re-starting psychotropic medication), doctors labeled me non-compliant. This caused my family to believe I didn’t care enough about them to seek “treatment.” In fact, it is because I love them so deeply that I refused treatment. I knew my decision would appear non-compliant, but had I gone back on the poisons that induced this catastrophe in the first place, I would never have regained my mental and cognitive health. I may even have lost my life.

Speaking My Truth
Without an authentic understanding of what happened to me, how are my children supposed to process this trauma? That is why I wrote this essay: To speak the truth about what happened to me.

In today’s world, physicians are grossly misinformed regarding the very real risks of pharmaceuticals, especially the grave dangers of polypharmacy and adverse drug reactions. Our medical system does not look for the root causes of our symptoms and is dangerously broken. Patients are dismissed and gaslighted when reporting negative side effects and misdiagnosed with psychiatric illnesses instead of medication toxicity.
I was systematically poisoned into oblivion by modern medicine and labeled with perverse psychiatric illness that did not exist prior. This absolutely never should have happened to me, to my husband, nor to my children.

Over the last year or so, I have had multiple objective tests completed that verify my cognitive, psychological, and physical status. As a result, four separate doctors concluded that my past decline was due to medical error and polypharmacy. While this acknowledgment is validating, it does not change the fact that my family is now gone, and I am left permanently physically disabled and in palliative care, all due to a fatally flawed medical system and its love affair with prescription drugs.

What They Prescribed
Following are most of the medications I was prescribed for my complex constellation of symptoms of Lyme disease, co-infections, CIRS, etc., with no regard for their potential toxicity to my liver, brain, or organs. Many of these were extended courses of drugs, taken long-term and given concurrently. Looking back, I cannot believe that I survived. This is what medical polypharmacy looks like. It is not one or two drugs; it is dozens.

Macrobid (nitrofurantoin)
Ceftin (cefuroxime)
Cephalexin
Moxatag (amoxicillin)
Cefdinir
Minocycline
Doryx (doxycycline)
Cedax (ceftibuten)
Tindamax (tinidazole)
Minocycline
Clindamycin
Biaxin (clarithromycin)
Rifampin (rifampicin)
Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanate potassium)
Deplin/Duleek-DP (l-methyl folate)
Fluconazole
Ketoconazole
Itraconazole
Voriconazole
Rocephin (ceftriaxone ) – IV via Hickman catheter
Azithromycin – IV via Hickman catheter
Mepron (atovaquone)
Alinia (nitazoxanide)
Malarone (atovaquone/proguanil)
Biltricide (praziquantel)
Nystatin
Bicillin (penicillin G benzathine) – IM injection
Albendazole
Mebendazole
Stromectol (ivermectin)
Bactrim/Septra (sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim)
Vancomycin – IV peripheral
Cortef (hydrocortisone)
Testosterone/progesterone (BHRT)
NAD/B complex – IV
Meyers cocktails – IV
Glutathione – IV
Phosphatidylcholine – IV
Cholestyramine (CSM)
Ketotifen
Hydroxyzine
Vitamin B12 – Subcutaneous Injection
Low-dose naltrexone (LDN)
Cipro (ciprofloxacin) – IV
Levaquin (levofloxacin) – Repeated and extended courses
Avelox (moxifloxacin) – Repeated and extended courses
Valtrex (valaciclovir)
Medrol (methylprednisolone) – Given concurrently with fluoroquinolones
Symbicort (budesonide/formoterol)
Synarel (nafarelin acetate)
Lupron (leuprorelin)
Vioxx (rofecoxib)
VSL-3 (bifidobacterium, lactobacillus, and streptococcus probiotics)
Singulair (montelukast)
ProAir (albuterol)
Xopenex (levalbuterol)
DuoNeb (ipratropium/albuterol)
Alvesco (ciclesonide)
Prednisone
Promethazine/codeine
Chloestyramine
Probalan (probenecid)
Ursodiol – Given because of Rocephin
Ferrous gluconate (iron)
Nexium (esomeprazole magnesium)
Xyzal (levocetirizine)
Allegra (fexofenadine)
…And HUNDREDS of oral herbal medicines and supplements
The cascade into unnecessary and catastrophic psychotropic polypharmacy included these drugs:
Celexa (citalopram)
Lexapro (escitalopram)
Zoloft (sertraline)
Remeron (mirtazapine)
Buspar (buspirone)
Ativan (lorazepam)
Valium (diazepam)
Clonazepam
Seroquel (quetiapine)
Risperidone
Zyprexa (olanzapine)
Benadryl (diphenhydramine)
Hydroxyzine
Anticonvulsants
Gabapentin
Lyrica (pregabalin)
Baclofen
 

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#47
Forced haldol injection
He pissed off the staff by pointing out how he was getting awful care and as expected they retaliated to put him in his place, you really need to be careful what you say when dealing with these people.

u/Lucky-Lengthiness563 wrote:

Hey there folks. So I just got back from a horrific 72 hour hold (they only kept me for 24 hours). I had felt suicidal and was going through a pretty tough detox from an alcoholic bender. I ended up going to the emergency room where I was left in a hospital bed parked in the hallway for 9 hours. Even through my vitals were elevated and I was clearly in great distress i was not seen by one doctor or nurse. Turns out they were just parking me next to a security guard to ensure I would not escape while they had me transferred to the emergency psych unit. I had unfortunately said the magic words to get my self put on a 5150 making once again the fateful error of thinking I could actually get some help from a doctor. Anyhow eventually I get pushed in the hospital bed across the busy parking lot full of spectators by a low level staff person from the hospital and three security guards to the psych ward. The oldest building in the hospital that looks like something out of a horror film. We are buzzed in through the prison like door and I find myself once again in this hell. It is a state run institution for poor folks and transients that don’t have health insurance (Santa Clara eps if anyone is familiar).

Medical care does not happen in this institution, it is nothing less than punishment. I’ve been to jail for the night on a couple of occasions and found it to be the same level of comfort. There are no actual beds here unless you act up and get to be tied down in one of the “crisis beds”, otherwise you are in a plastic recliner spaced a few inches from other patients who are usually in psychosis that is not getting treated, at all. Not to mention the complete lack of any type of measures to keep people at least 6 feet apart. Nope you get 3 inches and the person next to May very well come right off the streets and likely smell like urine or feces. They don’t bother cleaning people up. By the time I had finished the substandard “intake” preformed by the workers that have absolutely no sort of medical credentials at all and I learned that I was just to be warehoused in this horrible fucking place because I made the mistake of trying to get help I really started to get pissed off, rightfully so in my opinion. But of course, I can’t get pissed off here because I am a totally suicidal ape shit nuts delusional hysteric and my emotions are not real.

I did become moderately irate and verbally criticized the care I was getting. I also pointed out that last time I had the pleasure of visiting this institution I observed the staff member sitting near the med room watching porn on his phone (I had one prior visit) to which they all assumed was some made up delusion. I carried on my complaint session for about 5 minutes at a moderate volume. I wasn’t yelling although I certainly wasn’t being polite. I didn’t threaten anybody or cause that much of a nuisance, at least not that much to deserve what they did to me. Anyway before I knew it, I was being held down by three large men and forcible injected with Haldol.

Not once did I give anyone a medical history or even a brief list of drug allergies and I didn’t even know what they gave me until later after I “calmed down”. Along with a laundry list of complaints about this experience and every other experience I’ve had like it, I am appalled that this would be an option they jump to that quickly. I have no history of a psychotic disorder or any symptoms of psychosis ever. I am a depressed Alcoholic. I also really struggle with my weight and the last thing I want or need is some drug that causes massive weight gain. Anyone else have experiences like this? Do I have any recourse? Also if anyone can give me some idea about what I might expect now that I have this medication in my system. I read that it lasts 4 weeks! I am so horrified that I am going to blow up and gain god knows how much weight. Thanks in advance
 

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#48
Just being in the same room is dangerous
If you do not make any statement about having symptoms they might still declare you insane and put you on a Community Treatment Order, if you do anything that piss the psychiatrist off bad things will happen to you, you can only guess what you should say and not say.

cabraa1 wrote:

I think being introverted is generally frowned upon. I was accused of hearing voices even though I always answered no to the question. They wrote I was reluctant to disclose what I was thought by them to be experiencing. So even if they aren't told what they want to hear they still find a way around it to declare severe mental illness. It was written I was guarded and suspicious as evidence of schizophrenia and that medication would change this. I was forced medication for my personality basically.

A cto can be avoided by agreeing with the psychiatrist that you are indeed ill and then pretending to take medication, but even then they will likely eventually push for a depot to ensure compliance. Best bet is to help people avoid psychiatrists and mental health teams all together and be aware of the grave dangers of seeking help. The word needs to get out.

I was put on a cto for merely voicing I did not want to take medication that they had prescribed and did not feel I needed it. This angered the psychiatrist. I was naive and wasn't aware he held enough power alone to force treatment especially when I had not behaved in any unusual manner. Once the psychiatrist says something, it's taken as the ultimate truth, no evidence is needed. I wasn't a danger to myself or others which is one of the necessary criteria for a cto. The psychiatrist just had to write in his report that I was, no explanation of how I was dangerous and that was sealed. It was said I lack insight just by disagreeing about the need for medication, I had lived my life so far fully functional, no problems after all. But he was seen as a "reliable witness with expertise" by the panel, my views were said to be clouded by my so called mental illness therefore unreliable. The patients right to appeal, have their views heard and so called protections like advocacy and legal representation are illusory.
 

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#49
Stories of people escaping
The following stories are all taken from https://theabscondingarchives.com/archive

#1 ESCAPING (A LOVE STORY)
I spent some time receiving involuntary treatment in the summer of 2019. My partner came to visit me in the hospital, I got very overwhelmed and upset. This meant that I even got a little frustrated. Later, when my partner had left the hospital I began to feel bad about how I had behaved. I thought that I needed to remedy this.

I dragged a chair to the outer fence and stood upon it and pulled myself up over the large fence. Luckily I lived nearby, so I started walking home. I wanted to apologise for everything and I wanted to tell my partner I loved them.

I was wearing blue hospital issue pajamas as I walked sweatily down the street. About half way there, I saw the psychiatrist the hospital had given me walking towards me. I was a bit worried but I saw that he had two reusable bags full of groceries, he was just doing his shopping. I told him what I was doing and he said to go back to hospital when I was done.

I walked home. Told my partner I was sorry and that I loved them. We hugged on our couch as we both felt overwhelmed. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself for being in hospital, absconding gave me some power to claim back my autonomy and my identity.

#2 ESCAPING WITH WORDS
I’ve been locked up in psychiatric hospital units heaps of times. For me, it was always traumatic, unsafe and never helpful so it’s no surprise that I frequently tried to escape, sometimes with great success, sometimes with only a bruised body or spirit to show for my efforts.

My most successful escapes came after I surreptitiously watched how staff responded to escape attempts by other mental health consumers. A person would take off down the stairs towards the street, then a pack of staff would head after them down the stairs. I noticed that the stairs also went up, towards some office space, and that was the key. So, when I escaped, I ran *up* the stairs instead of down. I’d wait quietly, just out of sight, for the nurses to run out, look around, then come back into the unit. Then I could calmly stroll out.

My escapes had different motivations. Sometimes I was so scared of what they were doing to me, I was trying to get to safety. These were the escapes I needed the most, but they invariably failed.

Sometimes I needed to deal with practical stuff that the staff wouldn’t help me with. You know, like feeding my cat.

A few times I escaped to go get a decent coffee because the unit only had decaf, which is an abhorrent crime against humanity.

Mostly I would come back on my own after realising there was no escape from a psychiatric system that has so much authority and reach.

My best ever escape was my last one. It didn’t involve running with my feet. Instead I escaped with my words. After years in the system I realised they were never going to hear me or help me. And so, I wrote a beautiful, completely false recovery plan to show my psychiatrist. I kept a straight face while telling her all the things I knew she wanted me to say, like how I wanted to keep taking my medication. I faked just the right amount of believable, sincere vulnerability. I got the discharge I needed and have kept myself free of psychiatric services ever since.

Absconding will never stop while institutional indignities, abuses and rights violations continue to exist. I shake my head when I hear mental health staff debating how to stop so many consumers absconding from psychiatric units. The way to stop absconding is kind of obvious to me: run a service that we actually want to use (you know, that’s respectful and helpful) and we’ll stop running away from it.”

3 BAYSWATER TWICE, TURANA ONCE, ATTEMPTS SEVERAL
I just kept escaping or trying until they put me in adult prison at 17, a long story of abuse in state and church care

#4 BULLET PROOF GLASS REALLY ISN'T
I was in a facility known as Intermountan. This is the type of place that would drive people to insanity, and then once they broke you there was no chance of ever getting out. This place was quicksand. The harder you worked to get out the deeper you got yourself.

One day my roomate cooper and i get a new roomate. I'm not gonna say too much about this kid because he had seirous problems and i know his behavior wasn't his fault. But he had a habit of pulling his pants and underwear down and then setting his genitals on the back of peoples heads. Good thing he never did it to me or he would be dead and I'd be in prison. Anyways one day he does this to cooper. He walks up behind him while he was sitting watching tv, he pulls his underwear down and starts humping the back of coopers head. It took 4 guards and a shot of tranquilizer to get cooper off of this kid. They put him in "solitary" for a week as punishment for attacking him. The kid who just sexually assaulted him didn't get in any trouble at all. Go figure right?

So now a week passes and cooper is back from solitary. And he seems.... Different. He's talking about the outside a lot more often now. And he was smiling. I'd never seen him smile before. So i knew something was up. In our room we have a big pane of bulletproof glass separating us from the outside world, separating us from freedom. This glass was thick. Probably 2 inches or more. And i understand why, there was a lot of dangerous people in this facility, they had to keep them in somehow. Gotta protect the sane people in the outside world from the crazies. So like i said this glass is unbreakable. I've watched another kid in his room try to break his window with a rock he snuck in from outside. No dice. The staff actually laughed at him as he tried, saying something along the lines of "trust us thats not gonna work". Not even a scratch in the glass. But every once in a while i would catch cooper inspecting the glass at night. I knew he was planning but i just figured whatever his plan was, it wasn't gonna work, so i didnt think much of it.

Fast forward probably another week and i wake up in the middle of the night to a cool breeze on my face. I bolt upright and look at coopers bunk. He's gone. Then i look to the window. Its gone too. And i dont mean he broke it. I mean the pane of glass was missing. He got the entire pane of glass out of the window frame and i guess he took it with him because it was just gone. Nowhere to be seen. So i did a quick mental inventory. Do i think it's worth it to risk getting tased for a chance at freedom? Hell yes was my answer. So i put on my pair of hospital crocs, and i hopped out window frame. And then i just went home. Nobody ever even came looking for me. That was the whole "escape". One night i just woke up and the window was gone, so i left. But thats not the end of the story.

Three or so years later im taking my new girlfriend to a restaurant she likes and guess who was sitting at the bar. Thats right it was cooper. As i approached him he instantly recognized me. He greeted me like an old friend, gave me a big hug. I look at him and a say "cooper. I gotta ask. How did you escape? Where did the window go that night?" His response still makes me laugh to this day. If im ever feeling sad or depressed i can think about this moment and it never fails to make me chuckle if not laugh out loud. So i ask "where did the window go?" He responds in the most badass chuck Norris voice "i took that bitch home as a trophy". Moral of my story is this. There are people that accept, and people who make change. Cooper was the latter.

Be like Cooper.

5 The Ballad of Mark the Ring: A Tale of NBII
All patients gather round to hear
The tale of Mark the Ring
Whom we revere even today for
His courage and his daring

When Mark came stumbling onto the Hall
Fuming that he was there
He said he wouldn’t stay too long
And tossed his long blond hair

He flashed a smile with straight white teeth
And said he didn’t belong
That doc with the pink slips a creep
So Mark would soon be gone

And those of us who’d long abided there
Looked sideways with a grin
We knew of the sorry fate of those
Who entertained such plans

We lined up nicely for our meds
And never thought to tongue
And obediently went to bed
To the dark dreams of the drugged

And as the flashlights travelled the night
In intervals of fifteen minutes
Mark told the staff he’d seen the light
And wanted to stay with them

He flexed the muscles of his arms
And touched his narrow waist
The nurses grinned and flipped their charts
His smiles were well placed

Then sometime in the morning hour
When just completing their notes
They heard a sound they’d reprise
In later anecdotes

For Mark the Ring had hoisted a chair
And smashed it through a fire door
And then he ran down the fire escape
Never to be seen anymore

And we who lacked the courage then
Remember him with awe
For he refused the tyrant’s yoke
And took his rights by force

Submitted by Elizabeth Richter
 

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#6 THE NIGHT THE POWER WENT OUT
One of my more amusing stories was a somewhat voluntary commitment. I met a friend for lunch who noticed I was struggling with my eating because of my ED. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but she was concerned, so she talked me into going to my psychologist. She was busy and told me to go to the General Hospital. My friend called my girlfriend because she had to teach. My girlfriend and I walk up to the general. I, of course, think all this extra fuss and exercise is not worth it. I just was overstimulated and wanted to eat slowly and in a dark and quiet setting!

We get to the Hospital and I am triaged and we wait for 3 or 4 hours in the waiting room. My girlfriend was talking with another woman in the waiting room and failed to hear my name called. I heard it. I eventually got to the psych doctor but it was maybe 5 mins so he forgot who he had been looking for. At this point, I decide to leave the hospital waiting room. I was ready for dinner. My girlfriend physically assaulted me, stopping me in my tracks and ripping my winter coat. The french guards came and she tells them what's what and they don't listen to me. I get frustrated and throw my cardboard bowl they gave me in case I vomited at them (it was still unused). They get very upset.

I have to be re-triaged. At this point, my heart was racing, and they decided I needed an Electrocardiogram. I really wasn't into it. When they left me alone to get into a gown, I decided to reboot my phone. See it was rooted and I was on the hospital's secure network because I was a student there.

{NB: Rooting is the process of allowing a smartphone to attain remote control over other subsystems - AA}

This made me happy in the waiting room, checking email and whatnot. Anyway, I decide to reboot the phone, but it had the rooting software in it. I'm not that great with computers, I like to dabble, and probably a bit paranoid. But doing this made the hospital's power go off, so they were couldn't take my EKG, which I didn't want. I know it's not as extreme as an ECT, but I think I have a little electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and I'm just not that into it.

So the power was off, and I was actually in a nicer place to be. The waitroom and staff room were sort of between my nice private little room where I was waiting for the EKG. The power went back on in an hour and a half. And I truly regret anything I may have done to postpone other patients' care, it's difficult to say if it was a coincidence or not.

After all that I get into the special psych area. I am told to change and store my things in a locker. One male nurse told me to make myself at home, so I took it literally and walked out naked. Thank God he didn't alert the other staff, because I'm pretty sure they'd judge me harshly for that. They did eventually feed me, thank goodness.

They eventually released me. I had been telling my girlfriend the whole time to go home and how I didn't want her there, and I wish the hospital had respected me more. Anyway, like most of the times I've been there they have taken my partner's word over mine, but I eventually get released maybe around 8 or 9, got there around 2pm. As soon as I am released I have to start running, because she was following me. She knew where I lived, but I suppose that finally gave her the message. The mania itself, if one can call it that, started because she came over to use my internet, which she needs for her job, but refused to leave everytime I asked for about 4 days. I just can't reason with crying people.

Anyway, I've been a few other times, and have managed to convince them of my compliance to their medicine, and that time I don't think I was forced to take medicine. It's a terrible place to be when you are underweight. The way I've managed to stay in Emergency and get fed is by crying and telling the nurses I am underweight and really need food and water. And just for clarity, I am a woman who had a girlfriend. Thanks for reading and to everyone else who has or will submit their stories.

#7 I RECRUITED HELP
I was in a psychiatric unit because everyone said I couldn’t manage my experiences of anorexia. They held me in a freezing room with only one thin blanket and told me I had to stay there until I ate. Except I couldn’t eat their food. I hated it there and kept pleading to be allowed home. They said I had to eat whatever I was given and comply with their goals for my body before I could leave.

My friend visited me and smuggled in food that I felt safe eating. Literally, smuggled food in so I could eat because they were starving me. He smuggled a sweater in too, so I could secretly wear it under my blanket. (He arrived wearing two sweaters … left wearing one!) The doctors had convinced my family I had to stay, so I had nowhere to go. I’d only known my friend for a few weeks, but it made him sad to see me there. I decided to trust this new person in my life who was prepared to smuggle for me and who made everyone angry by standing up for me. I asked him if he would help me leave. He said “Yes” right away.

It was many years ago, but I’ll never forget the pair of us striding through and out of the unit together. We were young and had to look confident and bold. We held our heads high, looking defiant. The staff were shouting after us, and one jeered that I would be back or dead within a month. I don’t think I would have ever have had the courage to leave by myself, so I’m really glad I recruited help. And I never went back.

#8 More Powerful than a shot of Valium
It was going to become my third time being forced into a mental hospital in as many months. I had become homeless and was caught in a vicious cycle of C-PTSD minding my own business in Brisbane when I had a seizure and someone called an ambulance.

Once it is on your record that you are 'under mental health' they never let you forget it and I didn't feel like answering questions so I walked out of the Emergency Department crossed the road to a train station and was waiting to catch a train when two burly looking security guards came marching towards me and (illegally) grabbed me. As an average sized woman they towered over me and they really enjoyed it too.

When I asked what they thought they were doing they just sneered at me and one of them said "we'll decide what rights you have". They got me by each arm and had to carry me kicking and screaming all the way because I refused to walk. When we got there they threw me into the wall and deliberately slammed my head while a nurse demanded they hold me down, you could see the sick joy in her eyes, as I kept fighting and wouldn't stay still I was pinned on the ground by four men while she stuck the needle in me and I could smell her breath as she said "Now what can you do?". They had let me go and I got up slowly not feeling any effects and still furious I lunged at her and got her in a headlock and just started punching her as hard as I could in the face. I realised that the security goons were just standing there with shocked looks not doing anything to grab me and it occurred to me that this was now a hostage situation. I dragged her towards the nearby door yelling all kinds of threats hitting her a few more times and amazed they were allowing this just slammed her into the door frame and ran. I'm looking for the nearest outside door and don't care one bit about all the yelling and screaming behind me. I turn a corner and there it is.

As soon as I get outside I can see a service station with a taxi filling up across a busy road that I just run into and the guards running after me are too scared to follow into the traffic and wait for the lights to change. I slow down and walk up to the cab just as he's putting the nozzle back in the pump "Can you take me?" "Where are you going?" I only really know one place in Brisbane and I have a keycard in my pocket "Fortitude Valley" "Sure get in" They have to watch us drive off and I never did hear anything more about it.

#9 desperate call for help
I could use some legal help with my case (Netherlands) why does nobody care?

Please come on and expose the truth

#10 An unsanctioned stroll
The power went out during a thunderstorm. Before the generator could kick on I pushed on an external emergency door - and the only thing holding it shut was a now unpowered maglock. I enjoyed a nice, entirely unsanctioned walk about the grounds in the storm.
 

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#11 I was a missing person
I'd been in the emergency department at The Northern Hospital all night without sleep, waiting for a bed in the psych ward. I had breakfast then walked out and got a taxi home. In the next two days the police called a few times, as the hospital had reported me as a missing person, but I ignored the calls.

On the second day the TBI (Targeted Brief Intervention) Team called an ambulance. I refused to go back to hospital so one of the paramedics called the police. When the police arrived, I got into the ambulance, as I was subject to an Assessment Order and didn't want to be taken by force.

When I got back to the emergency department, I saw my file on the desk. It had 'Absconding risk' written on it, which made the nurses paranoid.
It had all been worth it for two days of freedom.

12 Breaking out of captivity is the most life-affirming thing I’ve ever done (repeatedly)
Great escape #1 (2011) I admitted myself to a private hospital to deal with some addictive behaviors. Over the next four weeks, with nothing to numb and distract me, my trauma memories came flooding back. I was deemed “too unsettled” to do any therapeutic work. Instead, I was given endless mandalas to colour in and not allowed to leave. Bored out of my brain, and constantly in fight-or-flight, with no support (despite being surrounded by staff), I absconded - climbing over many walls and running to freedom (the beach). Feeling the power of the waves helped me feel alive again. I also bought a coffee (oh no! Caffeine was not allowed in this rehab!) #seriousrebel

Great escape #2 (c.2016) I can’t remember how I got to ED but running away was heaps of fun. First, I just waltzed out of ED and went up the lifts to the upper floors of the hospital and played on the swivel chairs and admired the city lights at night (pretty!!). There was a park with a giant fountain and a flower exhibition being set up across the road, which were HEAPS of fun to play on. Parts of me that love building sites played with the construction machinery and then we swam in the fountain and enjoyed climbing the mythic statues. I took myself back to ED and all they said was “you probably shouldn’t have done that”. I was sent home the next day with no follow up. #mentalhealth “care”

Great escape #3 (2018). My first admission to a public psych hospital was a rude awakening. My god the staff were all too busy to ... you know, do their job of caring for the patients. I tried to let them know I had a diabetic cat at home who had now missed 2 insulin injections... no one cared. I got increasingly distressed that my cat might get very sick while I was trapped in hospital. I also missed my first 2 meals because no one told me how anything worked (actually, most things were broken anyway). My first meal was marked “vegetarian” but had big, obvious chunks of meat in it. I was told to check the white board to find out who my contact nurse was... but the board was completely blank. I asked if I could get my regular medication and get leave to see my private psych but no one could tell me anything. So I dressed like a social worker (I pass) and walked out when a team swipe themselves out. I then ran all the way down the hill to the train tracks. I walked along the tracks to my house, took my meds, made sure my cat was ok and went to my psych appt. My psych encouraged me to go back to hospital. When I got back, NO ONE HAD NOTICED I WAS EVEN GONE FOR 6 HOURS!!!! #mentalhealth “care”

Great escape #4 (2018) This time I was admitted to a private hospital as a public patient (woohoo!) but found boredom and drivel group therapy we’re not really helping me, although the food is WAY better in private. And the staff care a LOT more if you run away. I had to dodge a lot of staff as I ran, but did find out they won’t follow you into the parts of the hospital that are being renovated (pro tip!). The number of staff running after me grew until there were 20+ people chasing me down the street (most as unfit as me, huffing and puffing). Alas, I only got a few blocks away before one of them was able to grab me ... and then I got sectioned and sent back to public. #privatementalhealth “care”

Great escapes #5-#9 (2018-9) There were many subsequent runners over the next few months. One time I ran from the point where the ambulance was dropping me off at ED. I had no shoe laces but luckily my friend found my runners (they fell off while I was running) in the street near the ED and picked them up for me. I spent the day wandering the streets, disoriented, in my socks and having crazy fun (sorry to my friends who were wandering the local parks looking for me up trees).

I think my fav attempted escape was when I was in the middle of climbing a fence and I paused as I saw another patient leap over an impossibly high brick fence and run away in front of my eyes. Unfortunately, I paused long enough to get caught but I was SO IMPRESSED by that ninja patient. So much respect.

My least fav attempted escape was when I was in ED and I’d been handcuffed and restrained (neither were that therapeutic, just saying). A nice doctor suggested maybe I didn’t need to be tied down. So they untied me and I did a runner. I didn’t know how to get out of this ED and ended up running into a dead end. As the security guard tied me down, this time with 4-point restraints and tape over the wrist restraints, he taunted me that I should’ve turned right instead of left. And that if I’d really wanted to kill myself I would’ve. Next time, he said, “do it properly.” I was restrained (ie tied to a bed) while this a-hole taunted me, for 5 hours. I kept trying whatever I could to get away, gnawing at the tape, getting one hand free, freeing the other, then an ankle, while the guards laughed and the re-tied me down. I was then put in HDU and discharged the next day. #itsprettyfucked

#13 Seeking A Mirror
I have always seen and felt that my created environment mirrors my best me back to me. In hospital, no me is there so I would be running to the place which reflects me.

I am very quick to pull canulas and walk straight on out of those places.

#14 Safety Response Form
April 2010
Greyson Estates
By Faye P (age 16)

I guess it started yesterday during the co-op(1). We were supposed to write a paper about why we were frustrated(2). I felt like the questions were too personal so I didn't want to write the paper. I didn't want to get 0's(3) though so I tried to write it anyway. About three sentences in I crumpled up the paper. I think I started crying. Ms. Sara said I could go to my room but I wouldn't be able to have my late bedtime. Sp I refused. I tried again at the paper, but I couldn't do it. I kept crying and Ms. Sara said I had to go to my room. I got up and walked into the hallway. The thought crossed my mind that I could just run out the door. But then I thought, "You aren't really gonna do it. You never really do it" and I was about to go to my room. But I thought running would be like an adventure. I knew I'd have a safety response form, but I wouldn't have to deal with that for a while. So I opened the door and I started sprinting.

I ran back behind the rec hall and into the woods. I felt like I was in a dream, I couldn't believe I'd really done it. I had to stop running because I needed to step over stuff. I made my way to the field behind the main house and started running again but there was a pile of wood in the way. I went back into the woods and wandered around until I was behind the outpatient building. I saw a green van drive up and down the road a few times and I heard people calling my name. I waded through a ton of green leafy plants until I saw the bottle. At first I wasn't going to pick it up because it was covered in dirt and had to have loads of germs on it. But then I thought, "what the hell? I'll have a safety response form anyway and if it gets infected they'll just give me antibiotics."

I smashed the bottle on a tree and picked up a few pieces. At first I just did a few scratches. But then the cuts got deeper. I bled on the leaves and on my pants a little. I planned on just staying there like that until I was found, but no one came and I got bored.

I got up and walked toward the suburbs behind Greyson Estates. I saw a shed and I remembered that Suzie told me that she'd hidden in a shed when she ran, so I thought I could hide in the shed for a while. I tried both doors but it was locked. So I moved on and went down a little trail in the woods. Then I saw another shed and I went over to it. This one was really old and full of cobwebs and old tires. It didn't have a door, but I decided to sit in there for a while and self harmed again. (I had pocketed a few pieces of the bottle.) There was an old, caved in barn near the shed so when I got bored of sitting in the shed I decided to go investigate that. I wondered if it was the same barn that Jake and Katie had hidden in when they ran.

When I got to the barn I saw a stream that went into a tunnel. I wanted to see what was on the other site. So I crossed the stream on some rocks. I walked over to the tunnel and saw that it was full of water and that there was no way to get through it without getting really wet. So I went back over the stream and kept walking. Soon I came to a house where two boys were kicking around a soccer ball in the backyard. I stood and watched them for a while. They didn't seem to notice me. After a few minutes I started walking again.

Slowly the suburbs faded into the country. I started following a road and decided to stick with it. Soon I passed a jogger. He said "hey" to me and moved on. I went in the grass and waited for him to get far enough ahead of me that I wouldn't have to deal with him again. I kept following the same road for I don't know how long. I passed houses, fields of horses that snorted at me, and tons of litter. I thought every car that passed me was a cop car or a Greyson van. Somewhere along the way I decided I wanted to be caught. They didn't seem to be looking for me way out in the middle of nowhere, and I had no idea how to get back to Greyson.

Eventually it started getting dark. The country road I was on turned into a bigger road and then a highway. I decided to try to find a town and look for a phone. I didn't have any money, but I thought that they would have to put a 911 call through. However, the road signs were really confusing. I was scared of crossing the highway, so once again I chose a road and stuck with it. I walked along the highway for a long time. It got really dark out and I couldn't see. I was tripping over things. I wanted to get off the highway at an exit but the exit never came. I was really scared. I started saying "I'm gonna die out here. I'm gonna die out here." over and over. Then I decided to be positive so I started saying "I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay" instead.(4)

A few minutes later I saw a cop car on the side of the road. They asked me if I was from Greyson Estates. Then they asked me if I had anything on me. I showed them the glass and they had me drop it on the ground. They asked me if I had cut myself and I said yes. When they saw my arms they called the rescue squad to come look ad me. While we were waiting I told them what happened and the girl cop patted me down to see if I had any weapons or something.

The rescue squad took a long time to come. When they got there they poured water on my arms and wrapped them up in gauze. Then the cop handcuffed me and drove me to the hospital. We passed the Greyson Estates sign on the way.

At the hospital lots of people came in and asked me questions. They wouldn't take off my handcuffs. I kept asking them to take them off. Then a mental health lady came and asked me lots of questions.She asked me if I wanted to go back to Greyson. I nearly said no, but then I said yes.(5) Then she let the cop take off the handcuffs.

After that, the doctor came in, unwrapped my arms and squirted a lot more water on them. He steri-stripped the bigger cuts and glued the smaller ones. Then he wrapped them up and Nurse Jane came to take me back to Greyson.

When I got back to Greyson they took me to the nurses station. They had me call my mom. She seemed glad I was okay. I felt bad for worrying her. My dad scared me by saying that if I did anything else he'd have me sent to a locked facility.

By the time I got back to the unit I was so tired I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn't even care that I was on ISP(6) and in the QR(7). I thought of taking off my bandages them, but I was too tired. So I went to sleep.

(1) Program jargon. It's just a structured activity of some kind. Often planned by the residents.
(2) This whole thing was of course, a required writing exercise and staff were going to read it. So it had to be a bit censored in some places. The essay was actually about "how we contributed to the unit being put on rebuild" (a group punishment, essentially the whole unit was grounded). I had not been involved in the situation that caused the Rebuild, so it was a bit of a catch 22.
(3) Points taken away for not participating in the activity. This could get privileges like late bedtime, outings, or good snacks taken away if it happened too much.
(4) The "being positive" bit was likely for staff benefit. I doubt that happened.
(5) I doubt I told the mental health lady I wanted to go back to Greyson. That place fucking sucked.
(6) This stood for Intensive Supervision Precaution or something like that. It meant you had to have someone watching you 24/7 and you had to sleep on a mat in the quiet room.
(7) QR just stands for quiet room, which would be more aptly named the scream room.

#15 Finished my shift
I was taken to the hospital where I worked in a mixed episode. I was not super happy about this arrangement and even less so when they put me in the secure room. Suckers didn't realise I worked in the hospital as a social worker and had my mental health and ED enabled swipe card in my bag. Weird thing was they searched my bag but didn't twig about my swipe.

ED and MH is special access so maybe that's why. I swiped my way out of the room, put on my name badge and donned my ID and swiped my way right out of the ED, like I'd just finished my shift and right into my husband who had been called in to see me. I think I tried to convince him they didn't know who I was or something and they couldn't remove the evil from my blood anyway but he made my oppositional arse go back, took my card and ID and told the staff who I really was. Security was then stationed outside my door and I was given something to "help me relax".

I find this funny now but I was out of my tree completely and it was good my husband intercepted me cause I was pretty disconnected from reality and had some interesting ideas about how I was going to fix the problem of having evil in my blood.
 

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#52
Life destroyed by neuroleptics
Often when you have been harmed by drugs your brain is damaged beyond repair and there will not be any way to recover

u/Gainzster wrote:

Exhausting is what it is.
Trying to exist after neuroleptics is exhausting, everything that should be easy is hard, everything that’s actually hard is impossible, you look around and remember just how easy it used to be to do most tasks, and now it’s a marathon.

It’s been years since I’ve been on any drug but I honestly feel like I’m still on them, the accumulation of damage over the years without the drugs even being taken is phenomenal, everyday I wake up and feel like I’ve had someone hit me with a sledgehammer while I slept, severe headaches and awful cognitive abilities.

It’s all horrendous, and there’s no reward to anything, pleasure centres have been destroyed, higher abilities severed, I’ve tried for years to heal and it doesn’t happen, my days are less than 10 hours a day and I’m sleeping twice a day due to the exhaustion.

I even have a little gaming channel on YouTube and I’m just apathetic to it all, I want to make content and I just can’t motivate myself at all, these drugs have ruined everything, and there’s no cure, nothing, and the world barely cares.
 

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#53
The trouble teens industry
United states abuses teens in an industrial scale via the "troubled teens industry" that makes money ruining the lives of teens that have not even been convicted of a crime

u/kasserolepoop wrote:

I was forcibly drugged, hospitalized, kept locked indoors, and put into solitary confinement for talking to a boy at age 13
This continued w/ different hospitals and different drugs until I was 15. Then one of the hospitals recommended I be sent to a therapeutic boarding school. Was there until 18, where I had no freedom, no voice, no independence, and was emotionally abused/gaslit constantly. Reenacted my trauma several times over until I was 25. And I'm only now, at 27, realizing how fucked up it all actually was, how I never deserved it, and how fucking strong and badass I am for surviving all of that. And thriving to boot.

My parents still say that Grove “saved my life.” I have always maintained that, actually, I saved my own damn life.

I was sent there in 2008 after multiple psych hospital stints. I was cutting and suicidal at the time, crying out for help, attention and love from my parents who had neglected me and emotionally abused me my whole life. They were getting divorced, I was grieving inside but felt the need to suppress it for their love and acceptance, and my emotional suppression boiled over into the self-harming behaviors. Then, to make matters worse, my parents sent me to psychiatrists who over-medicated me for years. I was sedated, gained a lot of weight, unable to think, and increasingly self-harming as a result. So they sent me away to Grove.

I was lucky to have had one good doctor at Grove who saw what was happening took me off all of the medications, and only then did I start getting better. Many of my Grove friends and classmates were also victims of over-medication. At the same time, I needed to be out of my toxic/abusive home environment, so I think a change of scenery and actually being parented in some way was good for me. Grove is certainly not the worst of the worst of these “troubled teen” centers.

However…I have long felt traumatized by the experience. Being sent away scared me so badly, made me feel like such trash at an essential level, that I became an obsessive compulsive perfectionist. While at Grove, I knew the only way to get out was to “become normal.” I’m sure being taken off the medication helped a lot with my ability to get back on my feet, but I struggled with self-worth to an extremely unhealthy degree while I was there, and long afterwards. While there, I went to great lengths to perform my “healthiness” and became very involved with student government, became a tour guide, role model student etc. I was doing so well that I was sure I’d get to go back to my public high school and lead a normal rest of my adolescence. Yet every time I tried to advocate for myself and my progress in the program and leaving, they would “consider my case,” then deny my request to go home without any reason. Even though I was constantly told I was one of the biggest “successes” of the student body and had all the privileges one could earn as a student there, I was continually denied the chance to go back home for three years until I aged out and graduated from there. I felt like nothing I did was enough to warrant my having a “normal" life and being a “normal” person. I felt inherently flawed and unworthy of an actually adequate transition period between therapeutic boarding school and college.

Just two weeks after graduation, I started college at an elite liberal arts school on the US East coast, which I worked my ass off to get into (most of peers ended up at either community colleges, or “therapeutic colleges”…”college counseling” there and college prep in general was horrible, I’m so grateful I went to an external college counselor and that didn’t happen to me). College, especially one that was academically rigorous, was a huge adjustment after being two weeks out of Grove. I fell in with the wrong kids at first and smoked a lot of weed, and couldn’t get better than B’s and C’s my freshman year. I spent most of my college years isolating myself in my dorm, smoking weed constantly, never feeling "good enough” or “normal enough" to socialize with my peers much.

Eventually I adjusted and thrived academically in college, recently earned my Master’s degree from an Ivy League university, and this fall I will start my PhD at a public Ivy. What a miracle that I survived all this shit and thrived the way I did — I’m one of the lucky ones.

I still don’t know the extent to which my success was reliant on my intense and ever-looming fear, borne from my parents and culminating in their sending me away to Grove, of being rejected and abandoned. I’ve worked through my self-worth issues since then, which I believe were at the root of my cutting as a teen, and were worsened by my time in treatment in many ways. It has become clear to me that I didn’t really heal in a real way because of Grov
Lucky574-3867

2 points · 10 hours ago

Yes, you do realize many years later sometimes.
At 18 I was taken in for a depression screening. They said I was severely depressed and they had this hospital in Tarpon Springs, Florida called The Manors. ( The Manors was closed down eventually for fraud). Once there, I wanted out. They said I was a danger and couldn't leave. I was put on Mellaril ( spelling incorrect? ) For some reason even though it was in Florida most of the kids there were from my Northern Virginia area. Fortunately my referred to once home Psychiatrist was decent and got me off it immediately. When I look back he may have saved my life.
I can't believe they'd put an 18 year-old with no psychosis and no violent or criminal history on that junk.
My story is kind of lightweight compared to what you went through. Terrifying.
e during my adolescence, but in spite of it in some ways, and in spite of my parents. If not for that one doctor there who was actually good and saw me through the fog of my medication sedation, I don’t know who or where i’d be. Yet, Grove worsened my condition and changed its form into perfectionism, so that on the surface I looked “healthy” and “normal” again, but my root wounds were very much still there, driving my behavior and ruling my life for nearly a decade afterwards.

Anyway, finding this sub was super validating. It’s helping me to process what happened to me and people I knew and loved. Thank you everyone for bringing awareness to TTI and its evils, advocating for teens like I was, and those in even worse situations. I remember many of my peers at Grove having really been through it with these programs, and how deeply patronized we all felt by the staff and programs we’d been through. How all I really needed was validation, but instead was met with the opposite, and how damaging that is for so many teens trying to heal and process their trauma, and ultimately fulfill their right to exist and individuate.

Lots of love and light to you all.

slanderproof wrote:

Yeah - always astounded that TTI survivors had less rights than criminals. Presumably no judge was involved before you were forcibly disappeared for very important years of your life.

Lucky574-3867 wrote:

Yes, you do realize many years later sometimes.

At 18 I was taken in for a depression screening. They said I was severely depressed and they had this hospital in Tarpon Springs, Florida called The Manors. ( The Manors was closed down eventually for fraud). Once there, I wanted out. They said I was a danger and couldn't leave. I was put on Mellaril ( spelling incorrect? ) For some reason even though it was in Florida most of the kids there were from my Northern Virginia area. Fortunately my referred to once home Psychiatrist was decent and got me off it immediately. When I look back he may have saved my life.

I can't believe they'd put an 18 year-old with no psychosis and no violent or criminal history on that junk.

My story is kind of lightweight compared to what you went through. Terrifying.
 

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#54
Parkinsonism after being forced on Haldol & My Psychiatric torture at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics

u/AYangUBIguy wrote:

TLDR: Psychiatry department preys upon innocents showing up to the hospital ER and forces upon them "obscene" amounts of antipsychotics. Here is my story of a person with a generalized anxiety disorder getting diagnosed schizophrenic and tortured in a psych ward for 45 days before being transferred to a modern day insane asylum, where I nearly killed myself upon arriving but remained under involuntary commitment for another month.

The most disheartening thing about it all, is that after admitting I'd been "cheeking" up to and including 6mg of the horrible antipsychotic Risperidone to avoid to horrible physical aches and pains that came with it the vicious psychiatrist yanked the Olanzapine. Olanzapine was my alternative via injection and I'd taken it and confirmed I had no adverse reaction to it. She said I'd claim to have a reaction no matter I was given and therefore could choose between only Risperidone and Haloperidol/ Haldol.

So I went with the Haldol and proceeded to become Parkinsonian after a week or so on it at lord knows what dosage. I could only lie in bed and my entire body hurt horribly. I could barely speak sentences and my mother after visiting me left the hospital wing sobbing. They checked my blood for the levels of Haldol in it out of concern because I was half-dead and could barely move before putting me on Abilify and Lexapro combined. At what dose of Abilify? 20 mg daily by mouth on top of a 400mg injection. I developed an unbearable akithesia and despite being exhausted couldn't lie still.

It's a hell of a thing when you're in the ER room one minute trying to help yourself and a few minutes later when you start moving toward the exit an armed security guard moves in to block you from it. Said the other friendly Hispanic security guard, "I see it happen all the time." Haven't been on an antipsychotic since leaving as there has been no need for one and there never was any need for one. I showed up trying to address stomach pains and get sent to a psych ward instead.

Edit: Here is a link to the report requesting an involuntary commital. Apparently this is all it takes. Mind you I had/have zero criminal record or history of self-harm and had never in my life shown up to ER like this prior.

To give context, I did not travel to different states for the purpose of obtaining certifications I don't know where they got that from, I said I wanted to become a Red Hat certified engineer via the testing center in Cedar Rapids after having obtained the Red Hat certified systems administrator a few months prior. And that I had not yet decided on a place to live and was living in temporary places ie airbnb primarily in the meantime. My thoughts were organized despite my frenzied speech and I did not travel to Iowa for allergy shots. As far as the schizoptypal diagnosis, I deeply resented being evaluated by some psychiatrists in the first place so they concluded based on my "strange views" such as the moral superiority of vegeterianism and advocacy for barefoot shoes over modern footwear that no medication could benefit me and I had their silly personality disorder. My state-appointed lawyer said I did well at my hearing a week in and expected me to win, but I lost and this psychiatrist was granted absolute power over me. She wouldn't even give me an antidepressant despite my request.

To Anne who left me a beautiful note while in the psych ward, and whoever left me a note to keep faith in God, thank you.

https://imgur.com/gallery/XI5opsO https://imgur.com/a/phK61u1 https://imgur.com/a/oJXYrX0
 

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#55
Lives destroyed by ECT
Often people get so badly harmed that their entire future get ruined, their mental abilities stolen from them. This often against their will. You may have spent years of your life studying something only to have it all disappear because a psychiatrists deemed you unwell.

u/Biscuit-Hunter wrote:

Almost 3 years post-ECTorture: My observations
I used to post here under another account which I have long forgotten. Thanks psychiatry. Anyway, I had 3 rounds of shock torture in January '18. I was 25. "Temporary" memory loss my behind.

When a lot of people conceptualize ECTorture memory loss, it's in terms of "life events", which is fair, however it's more extensive than that. Things one has learned, studied, can just as easily be memory holed by the Big Zap. For instance, I used to be a champion math student in school. Now I can barely do the most remedial of math without confusion and frustration. I knew a man who studied physics in college. The man was a prodigy, but unfortunately was deemed most "unwell", given ECTorture to my understanding against his will, and all of his knowledge he gained disappeared at the flip of a switch. Sad.
What else? Speech impairment, clumsiness, balance problems, unsteady gait, loss of affective empathy and sympathy, incoherence. And these are just things I deal with now. I have made somewhat of a recovery, like I can read and write again though I worry what I say makes no sense. I've compared writings, poetry, journal entries before and after and they're like night and day. I tend to kind of ramble and make strange digressions and to me, it's mostly incoherent nonsense, but still progress nonetheless.

What REALLY bothers me though is the speech problems. I never stuttered a day in my life before the Big Zap. Also my accent changes? People ask me if I'm from up North because of how I pronounce some things. Nope, never even been. Someone asked me if I was Latina because of how I spoke? Nope. A guy I work with told me he could tell what mood I was in based on what accent "I" was using. It definitely isn't a conscious thing and actually a source of SHAME and embarrassment.
 

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#56
Sent to psych-ward after giving birth
This is just one of many horror stories taken from the comments of this video and illustrates that even if you beat the odds and win you might still be traumatized for life.

I was taken the same way, went to the er for siezures and mental disturbances, nothing horrible and they kept everything secret, kept doing little things that I noticed, like taking my clothes, my phone, going through my things, saying it's just for precaution to protect myself and THEM, even the nurse said, " why are you taking her things? She's not suicidal or feeling like she's going to hurt someone else?" Then the next day I'm being told I'm being moved into another room... that's where it all started, I was literally shoved by an officer into a room with nothing but a chair and a camera! The social workers had lied and said I was suicidal, wouldn't let me contact my family, I have 2 children, one 6 and one was only a few months old at the time! I was horrified how could they do this to me??!! And because I called out the social workers and called them liars, they kept me in there for 3 days, watched constantly by police officers in a small window, bleeding on myself, not knowing where my kids were or if anyone knew what was going on, not knowing where I was going to end up and wondering why I was being treated this way. I cried for days, and another messed up part is that you aren't supposed to be held in those " cells" for so long, it's temporary until they find somewhere they want to send you and I watched so many people come in and out that I lost track of time. I was miserable and I just wanted to know my kids were okay :( then the day came and 2 officers came in and had to strip search me, Pat me down like I was some sort of criminal and put me in the back of a police car and took me HOURS AWAY from my family and children, I did NOTHING BUT CRY, I found out if I would have gotten to this place in Williamsburg earlier I would have been able to see a JUDGE and be released but the social worker obviously had other plans, that's why they kept me and I was sent to this mental hospital days later and too late to see a judge and get out on a Monday night.

I told them I went to the hospital VOLUNTARILY for siezure related things and mental disturbances from the siezures, then out of nowhere was considered INVOLUNTARY and placed on a TDO. I was put into a BLOCK, this place was literally for people in PRISON who have mental breakdowns and I was living a nightmare for 5 days until GET THIS, I ACTUALLY HAD TO GO TO COURT AND GO INFRONT OF A JUDGE TO GET OUT OF THAT PLACE!! FOR WHAT??!! They agreed I didn't belong there and I was soon shackled and had to sit in the back of a police van this time to ride for hours home. I was crying hysterically when I got to see and Hold my children. I suffered from barely any mental illness before this other than some postpartum depression but now I have PTSD and anxiety, panic attacks, all sorts of problems from that experience, the mental health system needs to be changed, this should NOT BE ALLOWED AND SHOULD NOT BE LEGAL!! THERE ARE SO MANY OTHERS THAT HAVE GONE THROUGH THIS AND ARE GOING THROUGH IT RIGHT NOW AND IT SICKENS ME THAT THESE " PROFESSIONALS " THINK THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO TREAT THE MOST VULNERABLE THIS WAY!! IT'S DISGUSTING TO SAY THE LEAST AND THAT HOSPITAL, CHESAPEAKE REGIONAL AND THE WILLIAMSBURG PLACE CALLED EASTERN STATE HAVE NOT HEARD THE LAST FROM ME THAT'S FOR SURE!!!
 

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#57
Akathisia from forced injections
It's a horrible condition and often it will be chronic driving the victim to suicide.

u/AutoPoly wrote:

I want someone to talk to about my drug-induced akathisia
Hello. I am an 18 years old male that is suffering from drug-induced akathisia and Parkinsonian symptoms. I get a constant uncomfortable feeling in my body that I must move, sitting or lying down is mentally agitating and painful. I also lack fine control in my arms and mouth that I lost after a forced depo injection of a type I antipsychotic. I am legally detained in a psychiatric hospital in the UK, and I'm struggling a lot.

I never wanted to take the medication: the story started a year and a half ago when I started working on improving myself. I first cut off gaming and social media like reddit and instead of doing that all day every day of the week I read junk fantasy webnovels for 16+ hours a day for 3 months. I also started exercising lots and starting to take care of my mental health. After that period of time, my brain was rewired enough to come off of the addiction to reading, so because I was addicted to overstimulating myself with anything, I cut off all external stimuli. I stayed in my own thoughts doing next to nothing all day for 2-3 months. I felt my cognition, memory, focus and emotional states significantly improving. However I still experienced some extreme mood swings, caused by hypersensitivity and invalidation from my environment (living at home with my parents and older sister). They have a lot of mental health issues themselves which caused it to be rubbed off on me. This also started when I was 11, where I experienced a mental break down from school being too easy and pressure from religion. Ever since then I shut off my feelings and escaped through PC addiction.

After that period of time, I went on vacation: first to Poland then to the Netherlands where I experienced another mental breakdown, or as the doctors call it psychosis. I was forcefully admitted to hospital, put on Olanzapine and 6mg of Lorazepam. After 3 weeks I was transferred back to UK where I spent many horrible months in an adolescent ward. I received a forced injection of Lorazepam when I simply was walking with my eyes closed and experimenting because they deemed me to be relapsing, while that was the withdrawal from Lorazepam dependancy which I stopped the 1.5mg at the time without knowledge that it has to be tapered.

Eventually I was discharged, after which I immediately stopped taking 15mg of Abilify which they prescribed me, and I felt much better. I however "relapsed". I tried to escape from home because I was feeling so drained by my mum's toxicity. That led me to the police detaining me and me being sectioned again. For trying to escape from home when I'm 18! There I forcefully received multiple injections against my will. After two weeks I was transferred to the current hospital.

I am now being legally threatened with injections when I stopped taking the Risperidone today in the morning. I am also sick of being told by nearly everyone in my immediate environment, including my psychiatrist, that my mental health issues are some intangible problem that medications magically fix with the excuse that research shows that they help and that if I stop them I will "relapse" again. Unusual behaviours because I don't care for social conventions isn't "relapsing". I am scared that I will be forcefully injected against my will when the side effects of the medication are making me feel suicidal. But mentioning that only makes them say to keep taking the medication and that I'll feel better, or to switch to a different medication, using the fact that I have improved myself (correlation) as that meaning that the antipsychotics are helping me (causation). They also speak of the nonsense chemical imbalance and other pseudo-science as if it is objective truth.

I'm sick of having my emotions constantly violated by my environment due to ignorance, cognitive dissonance and broken emotions. This is whether at home or at hospital, people around me, except for my dad now who is becoming much healthier recently and who is also very intelligent, simply don't understand and instead just try to appeal to my emotions. This makes me feel threatened as that's what I experienced since childhood from my mum and religion, Jehovah's Witnesses.

How do I avoid getting forcefully injected again? I'm worried that my mental health will degrade again because of irrational beliefs of my psychiatrist and mother. Hence I am also looking for healthier people to talk to. Does anyone want to talk to me? I feel quite scared and lonely, I've never really had anyone in my life to truly open up to. Only recently I found some friends, but my old habits of escapism and the Akathisia + depression make it really hard to get motivation to speak with them as I feel discouraged by my immediate environment.
 

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#58
Anorexic teen tortured with boiling water
Boiling water mistakenly pumped into her stomach, missing out on visits with family, and being restrained by six people - that is how a Norfolk teenager has described the care she received while being treated for anorexia out of the county.

Mellie Plummer, 18, now feels she had always had disordered thinking around food. But it was in 2012 when she began to act on the thoughts in her head.

She said: "At the time I didn't realise I was doing it, nor did I realize it was creating a problem. I began to cut out lunches at school, make sure that I walked the long way home, and slip my dinner to the dog when no one was watching. I thought that my actions were helping me stay in control."

After that, she deteriorated quickly and soon her parents took her to see her GP and she was referred to the child and adolescent eating disorder team, where she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

Miss Plummer, who lives in Brundall with her mother Catherine, father John, and sister Esther, tried to take her own life and was admitted to a psychiatric unit in Lowestoft.

She said: "The next four months became extremely ugly with anorexia becoming louder and stronger every day. I was admitted into the Norfolk and Norwich with self injury again; only this time it was very different.

"When I arrived at A&E it was apparent that the eating disorder was damaging me more than self-harm ever could. I stayed for several weeks bed bound and tube fed until my physical health was stable enough to again be transferred to a psychiatric hospital."

Miss Plummer, who also has two brothers Joey and Billy, was transferred to Rhodes Farm, in North London, in July 2015. At the time this was run by Partnerships in Care, but in March the facility changed hands, and location, and was renamed Rhodes Wood. Miss Plummer moved with them.

She was discharged in July 2016 but it was in these hospitals Miss Plummer said she was subject to treatment that "wouldn't be wished upon your worst enemy".

The facilities involved were approached for comment but despite Miss Plummer giving them permission to discuss her care, both said they could not comment due to patient confidentially.

A spokesman for Elysium Healthcare, which runs Rhodes Wood in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, said: "At Elysium Healthcare the safety and wellbeing of our patients is our priority.

"For reasons of patient confidentiality, we are not able to comment on individuals in our care, nor those who have received care and treatment with us in the past. However, we do take any complaint very seriously and we have robust policies and procedures in place for investigating these and are always ready to look into any matters raised through these channels."

Miss Plummer did complain to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), who confirmed she had been in touch. Her complaint is ongoing.

Miss Plummer said: "I know that I was very unwell during my admission to Rhodes, but that doesn't make me incapable of understanding what is wrong."

Miss Plummer said for much of her stay she was fed via a nasogastric tube, but staff often forgot.

She claimed: "I was given a feed two or three times a day; during these feeds I was restrained by up to six staff members. Whilst I am aware that many of these times I did need safe holding, I don't believe I needed it when proving that I would comply."

She said: "I experienced many issues regarding tube feeding; right from not measuring the feed to syringing boiling water directly to my stomach. I remember crying in pain."

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/health/norfolk-teen-speaks-on-eating-disorder-treatment-1-6055650
 

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#59
Social media, human rights, punitive psychiatry, freedom of speech
This is why it's a bad idea (most countries) to be too open with your political views, try to hide your anonymity as well as possible.

u/blackideaforme wrote:

I am 40 years old and I am from Greece
Living in Greece which doesn't respect human rights and liberties (e.g. economic). I was unemployed in Greece with no assets (except a small car) and no income and I had to pay 500 euros on income tax. This is significant when you consider that the system in Greece is very nepotistic (no good jobs without political connection), corrupted (e.g. public spending, tax evasion, political finance) and statist (all economy is directly or indirectly financed by the Greek State).

Organised political abuse and harassment on facebook group (εξωκοινοβουλευτικοί φιλελεύθεροι). Because of my anti-state and libertarian beliefs,I was systematically abused in a facebook group by organised members of political parties, famous journalists, famous social media influencers, syndicalists and anonymous or eponymous users. The abuse was so ferocious that 4chan looks like a playground. Even when they knew, that I had became suicidal and I have been hospitalised in a dirty ugly dehumanising abusive psychiatric clinic, they kept harassing me for example by circulating a meme with my face and ridiculing my suicidal ideation in combination with my local stereotypes (island of Crete). For example Panagiotis G. Papanikolaou, a neurosurgeon, a very famous social media influencer, a politician and syndicalist of the doctors, who has access to mainstream media (TV and media) and has even spoken to the parliament,... liked that photo that was ridiculing me, which was posted by his friend Freddy Vasilopoulos.

Punitive psychiatry. In 2015 after the elections and the same day that the new government of Syriza was announced I mad the following statement in that facebook group: With such an awful government cabinet (Varoufakis, Lafazanis, Polakis, etc.), in 6 months I would commit suicide (expecting once again that this government will continue the kleptocracy, steal public money, increase taxes and close the banks). by all means I never really meant that I was seriously thinking suicide and I just wanted to give emphasis how awful this government will be. The powerful people on that facebook group sent the police and they drove me in a psychiatric clinic.

The clinic was awful. A young psychiatrist interviewed me and one of the questions was If i had consumed cannabis. I answered truthfully that a month ago I had smoked cannabis. He told that I shouldn't have told him that and jailed me in the dirty psychiatric clinic. They locked me in a dirty dehumanising jail full of severely mentally ill people, who had lighters on them! Also, in the toilet there was a bended metal plate covering a hole. My bed was in the corridor of the jail and all mentally ill people were smoking and drinking their coffees on my bed. I was shocked and scared. I was supposed to spent just one day in that jail before moving me in the more decent psychiatric clinic, but because I got in Saturday and the next day was Sunday, they told me that there was no psychiatrist around to take me out of the jail and I would have to spend another day in there. With a clever choice of voice, I said to them that there were three different ways to commit suicide inside the jail (e.g. the lighters, the metal plate and the electrical cords above the fake roof), they got scared and miraculously a psychiatrist was found to take me out the jail. What shocked me further is that I had complaint about the cleanness of the place and they nurses forced the severe mentally ill people to clean the place!

The psychiatrist who spoke to me for no more than an hour in a week was very aggressive against me. I was scared and shocked and I wanted to get out the psychiatric clinic as soon as possible and he was aggressive. He had the style of an interrogator of the police and he was also mocking me. At his report wrote that I had histrionic and avoidant personality disorder just to mock me even further, because histrionic personality disorder is more prevalent to women.

The above experience MADE me suicidal and after that I was hospitalised several times in the same psychiatric clinic. I am not going to write now more details about my experiences, but I will mention that the system in Greece was supposed to be free healthcare, but if they check you that you have money to spend, then the psychiatrists demand to visit them during the afternoon and pay them 50 euros to talk to you for a half an hour and in my occasion to inject me with 300mg Olanzapine every month. If you don't pay them they mock you, they confuse you with wrong evaluations, they taunt you. Not all psychiatrist were like that. Some of them were more ethical, serious and respectful. Every public psychiatrist has evaluated me differently. All of them, were forced to follow the order from PAGNI psychiatric clinic to inject me with 300mg Olanzapine per month (Greece is very small, civil liberties are weak and the society corrupted, hard for a individual psychiatrist to go against such a clear order from a very powerful psychiatric clinic). The mental illnesses that have attributed to me are the following: histrionic, avoidant, narcissistic, antisocial, borderline, bipolar (mainly bipolar), no bipolar, psychopathy, psychosis, no psychosis, obsessive compulsive disorder and I don't remember what else.
The stigma:

The stigma is ferocious. I was socially isolated by my local community. Some of them believed that I was just a punk, some other that I was a cannabis abuser, some other that I was "crazy". In general they stopped talking to me. In a very corrupted and nepotistic society like the Greek, when you are canceled by the psychiatric system, the people just ignore you. They think that you don't have anything to offer them (e.g. more power).
The stigma influences even your very close friends that they even help you. A friend, who is visiting me almost daily, he also has a stigma against me. In discussions he just cancels me and he always trying to enforce that I am wrong (and himself and the psychiatrists right). First I have to mention to you that I am an extremely self aware person. Even If I had psychosis, I would have understood it. I belong to the 20% of the population who knows what is going on in his brain and on his mood. And in discussions I am very sharp, articulate and very logical. I use sound arguments and examples in discussions and my speech is clear..

A few days ago I had a discussion with my friend and he ad hominem attacked me. His ad hominem attack was that I had studied computer science and I even don't know if my mouse (logitech mx master) was bluetooth or not. I honestly didn't know what kind of mouse I owned, but my logic said that it was probably bluetooth. I said ok, I don't know for sure, but I think it is bluetooth. He attacked with some derogatory adjectives that my mouse was with "unifying receiver" wireless connection. First of all, I insisted that my mouse was probably bluetooth, and secondly most likely the "unifying receiver" wireless connection is essentially bluetooth with a different name. Let's search it, I said! And I was right. The mouse didn't only had bluetooth, but also the "unifying receiver" was essentially bluetooth with a different name. The conclusion is that my friend never accepted that he was wrong to attack me. He insisted that he knew better and that the "unifying receiver" connection was NOT bluetooth! After all... I was in a psychiatric clinic! Not him!

I gave the above example just because it is a pretty straight forward example. I have similar examples but with more complicated subjects. The debate with my friend was not a difficult subject to be resolved. Just with a simple internet search and it is done! Nevertheless my friend canceled me and continued to CANCEL me just if my reliability has completely vanished. He continue to ad hominem attack me, distort reality, fall into fallacies, mock me, use irony against me, etc. and at the end he also told me that I don't know how to discuss.

Has anyone else with the stigma of mentally ill person be canceled and anything that he says is never taken seriously and it is like he is talking to walls and that always people, who are very conformist with the disturbing reality, to make you feel that you are always wrong whatever you say?
I am in trouble here in Greece. The system now owns my body. I do not have ownership of my body, just because I have threaten to commit suicide. I feel very stable and I need to stop the injections of 300mg Olanzapine per month. I do not know what to do. I am thinking of immigrating somewhere else, preferably in a more liberal country, but liberal countries are more expensive. Greece doesn't help me at all. There is also this coronavirus that restricts travel around the world. I could have immigrated to a cheaper country.
 

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#60
Sent to a psych-ward due to wanting to climb a mountain
All it takes for a child's life to be ruined is having some argument with a parent and then the child may end up labeled as insane, locked up and tortured.

It's not just the physical damage from these quack treatments, it's also very harmful to be labelled as defective and it will be very difficult to every fully recover from that.

u/_Evildogooder_ wrote:

Kind of long piece of writing I wrote about my experience of being made to seem crazy by psychiatry. How Involuntary commitments as a youth for three years ruined me.

I never thought anything was wrong with me when I was young. Not because I was ignorant or uneducated. I didn’t think anything was wrong with me because it was the truth. It still is the truth. Except that when I was ten they sat me down in an office and said I was sick.

Outside there was a mountain I could not take my eye off of. I told my dad I could run right up it. He said, you can’t climb that in a day. But I knew I could. He said there was no time. So, instead I sat on a couch while a woman who would only ever know me for a few hours said I needed to be fixed.

I went to a therapist after that. She told me she knew I was angry because of my fists. So I opened up my hands but all that got me was a three year trip to institutions. There were no more mountains to climb after that. Just hallways to walk through and empty rooms to strip down in. And of course more couches and chairs to lounge in where they sit you down and say you’re ill, you’re imperfect, you’re impaired.

So they make you afraid. They say if you don’t act normal you’ll never get out of this place. But I want my spirit back so I say what they want me to say. I finally escape. Only to realize that now I really am...sick. They held me hostage for years and now they’ve imprisoned my brain. I don’t know how to act because I’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that I’m defective. The ones around me who have never been diagnosed begin to claim that I’m deranged. So what can I do but self medicate? Then struggle to get sober over and over.

Then, with a little help I realize the truth. This did not just happen to me. This was not just some series of unfortunate events. This was done to me deliberately. There was nothing wrong with me when I was young. I was targeted because I was different and it was distinctive. I had a soul that was bold. I had a mind that was powerful. It threatened them. I had a spirit, that unfortunately, was too easily subdued.

It was a straightforward process. They hurt me, they broke me down and then they made me mad. Mad with agony. Mad with hate. So by the time that I learned the facts I was determined to be no more than delusional. It was simple for them to say, you’re psychotic, and lock me up in hospitals.
Now they silence me with injections and medicines. They let me know every now and then that I’m not free. That I’ll never be free. All the while, they say the same thing to make me afraid: if you don’t act normal you’ll never get out of this place.

I’m heavily against antipsychotic medication. I’ve been medicated on and off now for two and a half years on antipsychotics. Before that I was only on anti depressants. In 2018 something happened that made me realize that all of the (significantly horrible) events in my life were put together deliberately to try and take me down. Not to kill me but simply to brainwash/take me under control. Since 2018 I have been hospitalized seven times. Five of which were involuntary. The other two I was heavily coerced into going. Essentially threatened. I was first on abilify which I am certain either put holes in my brain or melted my brain tissue. I have not been the same since. I went off my meds for a few months and in those few months were when most of those hospitalizations occurred. I was then put on Latuda and then most recently seroquel. Latuda and abilify both took away my creativity. My lifeline is writing and I couldn’t do it anymore. On seroquel I can still write but am fairly certain I am being poisoned with it. I have lost 15 pounds since starting it and can’t eat anymore. So the problem is that when I’m on my meds I’m fucked. I’m silenced and I become a robot. Which is of course what they want. When I’m off my meds I’m fucked. I can’t work, I can’t keep a stable job and I frequently get literally forced into going to hospitals. What should I do?

jbb1979 wrote:

Yea, I get the whole thing, tell them they're right, you're sick, and you like the drugs.

So, they let you go, and you can throw the drugs in the toilet, at home, where you can be yourself.

The smart patients, in psychaitry, lie, so the doctors let them go, sooner (...)

And, if you say the drugs make you feel better, more healthy, they soon send you home, knowing you'll eat the drugs voluntarily, then they're happy, when one more person is on their pills, even if the effect is minimal and, side-effects really nasty.

You're not alone, psychiatry is a place where they destroy the spirit or, degrade it, so there's less of it, and, less work, hassle, so on.

I don't really see freedom in itself, as the goal, for me . . but, psych is torture, and the drugs don't make you better or, more free, they ruin you, your mind.

Virtual-Knight wrote:

I'm always terrified by stories like yours. I was destroyed by a p$ychiatrist as a child and what scares me most is, I wasn't even locked up in one of their "hospitals".
 

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#61
Locked up for 12 days without trial
Psych-wards can lock up people for a long period of time without even going to court, this can have a disastrous effect if you have a job to take care of or anything else important. These quacks will try to bend the law allowing them to treat people against their will and most victims do not know how to navigate this legally.

u/antipsychiatry2020 wrote:

My hospitalization
I was held against my will 12 days at Pembroke Hospital (UHS/Arbour-owned). The admitting physician never gave the Notice of Rights or notified CPCS (public defender) of my desire to be represented by an attorney. I then filed a Request for Emergency Hearing on my own and faxed it to the court. The court replied with, "Denied. Hospital complied with applicable law." State law requires an adversarial hearing no later than the next court day. On the 3rd day, the Charge Nurse asked me to sign and 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤-𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 the Notice of Rights, which I refused. The attending physician filed for commitment up to 6 months and Rogers Guardianship (forced drugging). I told the doctor I would ask for an independent medical examination at State's expense. He decided to withdraw the petitions and release me. They kept me 4 more hours after the court hearing was supposed to be held.

No talk therapy, groups, or any meaningful treatment was offered. Only heavy sedatives for all. There were 3 patients per bedroom, only 2 locked bathrooms on my ward and 1 RN/1 technician for 30 patients.
 

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#62
He was prescribed antipsychotic for no good reason
Luckily he didn't blindly trust the doctor, instead he fixed his hormonal issues which ended up curing the mental issues he had.

u/PsychThrowaway92103 wrote:

This Community Saved Me
I was going to a Psych NP for the first time in my life for ADHD. I had been seeing a counselor for a while, and she thought I may have it. I go to the

Psych NP, and I also tell her I have a little anxiety.

"Well, where there is anxiety there is also depression"

"Ok..."

"Look, I'm going to give you Abilify to help you with your depression."

At this point, I haven't even told her I have depression or anything like that. I immediately went to Google and saw that this was an antipsychotic.
"NO, I'm not taking that. Also, I'm not bipolar!"

"Well, I'm going to fill the prescription anyway and also give you Strattera. You have bipolar and don't realize you have it"

The whole time I'm livid at this woman. I've never been manic. Not once. She doesn't care. She just wants to give me her drugs. I also typed in "Abilify Reddit" and this sub came up. I read in horror at all of the negative reactions you all have had. I immediately flushed all of the Abilify down the toilet with the Strattera. I just want to say thank you to you all here. Thanks to your posts, one person was spared the negative side effects of antipsychotics. I didn't even take them one time. Do you know what's the best part? After getting my hormones fixed with TRT, I don't even have any ADHD issues... FUCK psychiatry. I also have no anxiety or depression. Doctors all along the way told me to not get TRT but to take these antidepressants instead. I am so lucky to have not listened to any of them.
 

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#63
He got blood clots during psychiatric hospitilization
Of course rather than blaming the psychiatric medications the estradiol medication he had been taken was blamed even though that was discontinued while he was confined to the ward.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667296020300094

The horribly transphobic peddler of pseudoscience R. B. used that to advocate against self medication.

1616157823506.png


1616141695050.png


The study itself also blames the estradiol medication but they hide the full text behind a paywall. Experts have already warned of antipsychotics being linked to blood clots

https://www.nursingtimes.net/archive/antipsychotic-drugs-linked-to-blood-clots-22-09-2010/

While estradiol (especially oral) will marginally increase the blood clotting risk it is still significantly safer than taking birth control pills as cis female.

Update after gaining access to the full text
As expected he did indeed get blood cloths after he was anti-psychotic and at that point he was no longer taking HRT.

After admission to the inpatient psychiatry service,risperidone 0.5 mg twice daily was started for his reported hallucinations, paranoia, and perseverative thought patterns.
 

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#64
Software dev cuts ties with family, they decide to commit him
Carlos Rodrigues, a computer programmer who was compulsively hospitalized for 71 days under the Mental Health Act, decided to sue five of the doctors who intervened at various stages of his clinical process. The first criminal complaint was filed at the Court of Oeiras on 22 September. This is not the first time that people who have been internally compulsively contest these types of decisions in court. The relatives, who triggered the internment, defend that Carlos suffers from “delusional disorder” and that he does not want to be treated.

Carlos Rodrigues, 42, says that he had never been to a psychiatrist in his life, that he had never taken any psychiatric medication and that, however, on 13 October last year, four PSP agents knocked on his door for the drive to the hospital. They brought a driving warrant. It was said that he was "a person with a psychic anomaly", that his state of health had "deteriorated", that he was in danger and refused to be treated. He ended up staying 71 days in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at Hospital Egas Moniz, in Lisbon, and was medicated with injectable antipsychotics. He says he was left with "his professional life ruined", that he was depressed because of hospitalization and medication and that the stigma of his supposed madness will remain forever as a brand. “Need for treatment was recognized by seven psychiatrists” ›

The Mental Health Law provides, since 1998, that the compulsory internment of mental patients is carried out according to a set of rules that have to be validated by the courts. Right from the start, he says that doctors can be interned "in the exercise of their functions", "Health authorities" and the Public Ministry. It is also said that the measure is so serious that "a dangerous situation must be involved". ”. In the case of Carlos were family members, the parents, the brother and sister-in-law, who is a doctor, who asked for his hospitalization because they are convinced that he suffers from a mental illness of prolonged evolution. At the base of the relatives' belief would be information that he had posted on the Internet, says Carlos. As well as the fact that there was a schizophrenic patient in the family, his paternal grandfather. The programmer adds that, at the date of the hospitalization, he had severed relations with his parents, precisely because they were telling his friends, youngest daughter and professional contacts that he suffers from mental illness, something that discredited him and brought him several work problems.

His family members argued that Carlos suffers from “delusional ideas”, “that he started recording conversations with the family saying that they were harming him”, that they watched him with video surveillance cameras, considering “his father as the main culprit of the conspiracy”, he mentions the report on his case, prepared by the Centro Hospitalar Psiquiatrico de Lisboa, which is part of the compulsory internment process, which took place in the Criminal Criminal Investigation Court, in Lisbon. The family tried several times to take him to the psychiatrist and Carlos did not accept it, the family said. Carlos filed a lawsuit against the doctors, because he says he was hospitalized unjustly and that he does not suffer from any mental problems. He mainly disputes the “clinical information” that gave rise to the hospitalization, which was requested by family members and is signed by an internal psychiatric doctor (in training period). In the note, the clinic says that the information it reproduces was passed on to him by his relatives and sister-in-law, "worthy of credibility", for being a "colleague", read in the clinical information of 11 October 2013, which the PUBLIC consulted .

Commission created to receive complaints from inpatients has not existed for six years Commission created to receive complaints from inpatients does not exist for six years › Read more In the clinical information, despite never having seen him, the doctor takes it for granted that Carlos suffers from “a delusional disorder with a long time of evolution”. It alludes to its social isolation and severing relations with the family. In his first psychiatric evaluation, in the emergency room at Hospital S. José, where he was taken by the police, another doctor wrote that Carlos suffers from “persistent delusional psychosis”. Carlos says that the doctor hardly spoke to him, he read the other doctor's clinical information and collected information only from his family members. Pedro Silva Lopes, Carlos' lawyer, who came, for the first time, to expose the case in an opinion article in PÚBLICO, says that the document that justifies the internment was requested from the beginning by the lawyer, but was “intentionally hidden for six months ”by the hospital. Only on the 9th of April this year, after the patient left the hospital, he was provided. The psychiatrist in question works at the Hospital Egas Moniz, where Carlos was hospitalized. Carlos Rodrigues asks: “How does one go about saying that the person is beyond Baghdad without having seen him? There are no reports of any contempt. ” Carlos Rodrigues says that he has a computer company that receives European funds and that several businesses have been left behind because of the internment and the strong antipsychotic medication he was subjected to, by force, in addition to being stigmatized. “This will accompany me for the rest of my life. If I have a problem

publico.pt/2014/11/05/sociedade/noticia/carlos-benavente-processa-medicos-que-o-internaram-a-forca-e-o-deram-como-louco-1675130

https://archive.is/tDXEl

mckay949 wrote:

My dad already passed, and things like this are one of the reasons that if my mother ever get sick and is about to die, I'm not helping her at all, in fact I hope she dies as quickly as possible. She never had me involuntarily committed, but she did spend a decade trying to force me into treatment, and part of the times she tried that she succeeded. No matter how much worse I got, she always thought the treatments were always helping me. She is exactly the kind of person who would do the things the article describes to me. I'm not going to help someone who wants to destroy my life.

SoggyEconomist wrote:

This guy was a functional person before all of this happened to him. He had friends, a job, coworkers and his own apartment. His parents just really wanted to get back at him

mckay949 wrote:

I read the whole thing, I understand portuguese because I'm brazilian. Pretty bad situation, I thought in western Europe maybe the things would not be as crappy as in other places, too bad they are crappy there too.

And that's the thing, before he had a job, and now he either doesn't or he lost a bunch of money. Yeah, that's not helping, that's hurting someone.
Edit: I forgot that you can use chrome and it auto translates, so anyone can read the article even if they don't understand Portuguese.

schizopandatoy wrote:

How could he even sue? In my country this is completely out of the question, there is no way to sue the oppressors.

FinallyAnts wrote:

And it won't even hurt them if you win in mine, the USA, they just give you a pitiful sum from their insurance.

nameless33395 wrote:

anybody know how the laws around this are like in germany?

Trance_Gemini_ wrote:

That was refreshing to read with the chrome translate feature. Usually articles use medicalized language that is sympathetic to the psych industry. Was refreshing to see phrases like "compulsory internment".
 

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#65
Charged 8600$
In most US states they can hold you for 72 hours without it even going to trail and then you will get billed for it.

Throwaway_bcrules wrote:

I was living in Cleveland ohio when the police and EMS showed up and basically kidnapped me because someone called 911 and said I was screaming about wanting to kill myself ( I didnt ) but without proof, I was forced into the ambulance and forced into a 72 hour hold in the hospital. I was literally sitting on a bed in the middle of a nurse's station with no privacy at all wearing nothing but a hospital gown under police guard. It's still fucking scary that they can legally do that.

Edit: oh yeah, and it cost me $8,600

I had just gotten home from a party and was slightly drunk so they wouldnt take my word for it that someone had basically swatted me, so I had a shit three days of forced hospitalization under armed guard and had to pay for it because they were "just doing their job"

https://archive.is/EPt04

https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/nxcu83/the_male_suicide_rate_is_so_high_because_men_are/
 

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#66
Pressured into signing himself/herself in at 15
Psych-wards often use intimidation to get people to agree to treatment without having to formally do forced treatments. Thus a lot of 'voluntary' treatments are not really volultary.

Even_Set wrote:

when i was 15 years old my mom took me to a hospital to try and diagnose an anxiety disorder by what at the time we were “specialists”. After i was talking with the “specialist” and showing a great deal of emotion he looked at me and asked if I was insane. I was really confused and asked “Do you need to be kept here to be treated?” I had said no, im just here for help with anxiety and possibly depression.

He left the room and came back a few minutes later with a police officer. He told me I could either admit myself to the hospital or have the officer say that i was a threat to the staff and force me in. I didnt know what my rights were so I signed myself in.

It was a terrifying experience, and they held me there for 9 days before my parents could finally get me out. Years later I am glad to see that the hospital is getting sued heavily and it is losing traction. I am not going to name the place, but it is in the greater chicago area.

Because of this i will never have good faith in our medical system again.
 

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#67
Charged 3000$
Of course this was without court-order.

Skorkabian wrote:

I can confirm, I was suicidal, talked down by family, voluntarily checked into a psych ward and held 3 nights, with basically no agency while inside. Total cost was $3,000.

If you want some tales from it, we had the really old guy who get released on the second day I was there, and they managed to lose all the stuff they held for him during his stay because it wouldn't be safe for him to have, his cane for instance. There was a vet who was in for some aggravated assault stuff and was getting ready to sue them if they didn't get the old guy a new cane... BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T ORIGINALLY GOING TO.

There was only a 30 minute period where you could call out every day, and the only entertainment options were a TV in the communal space and whatever you had the sense to bring or have brought, I thankfully brought a bunch of books.

I only saw medical staff on check in and check out, the rest of the time it was just the most bored adult babysitters who ignored us.
US Hospital charged me 3k for being babysat, seeing a psych twice, given antidepressants, fed, and having a roof over my head for 3 nights.
 

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#68
Jordan Petersson almost died
The guy who told other people to "clean their room" before pointing out how our society is bad almost died from benzodiazepines

nationalpost.com/news/the-doctors-here-have-the-guts-to-medically-detox-someone-mikhaila-peterson-on-her-fathers-condition


His advice is not good, i got depressed when i tried following his advice and ignoring how bad our current society is.
He's a horrible con artist who tries to scam young men into accepting their horrible fate so they won't challenge society and the elites at the top.
 
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