Fugitivus Discussion Forum

So about a year and a half ago, I was hospitalized for self-harm and suicidal intent. There was one specific incident in my stay that I thought, for a long time, was isolated; that it was the only thing I needed to deal with. I'm only just coming to terms with the scope of their abuse and the complete lack of competence and compassion displayed by them and others in the mental health industry. When I say "them," I'm referring to the various counselors and psychiatrists.

So at this particular hospital, we'd spend our days in about six separate but identical group therapy circles, always giving the same dry summation of our experiences to different counselors. They had a system by which one would earn more phone time etc. which basically consisted of phrasing the same dry summary in a variety of different ways. We would each have about fifteen minutes of talk therapy with a thoroughly incompetent counselor and then fifteen minutes for a psychiatrist to tell us what meds we would be taking. If I requested it, I was given a small pamphlet of woefully vague and incomplete information on the drug, written by the hospital.

My mom has bipolar disorder. Because bipolarity is moderately heritable, they prescribed antipsychotics and mood stabilizers to me. This was in complete disregard of what I had actually *stated*- I did not display bipolar mood cycles, I was depressed and I had panic attacks and I was extremely sensitve to sedation and averse to blood tests. SOUNDS LIKE I'D REACT GREAT TO LITHIUM AND SEROQUEL HUH THOSE SHOULD FIX ALL OF MY PROBLEMS. On the lowest dose of Seroquel, I was sedated until the middle of the next day. Same with Zyprexa. And I was not informed at all of the health risks of those medications; I was only told about the possible side effects.

One night, after I had been there for more than a week, I was arguing with one of the counselors about how I was being treated. She responded to everything I said with, "It's not a problem with the hospital. You aren't working towards your recovery." She made me furious. I couldn't sleep; I sat in the hallway and wrote. But apparently that's a good enough reason to have used force to place me in seclusion?

EVEN THOUGH I had requested that she not be around me for the remainder of my stay and I was told this request would be honored, the same counselor was there. And that night, I was being told to take a medication that my psych had not discussed with me. I asked for the information, and I didn't want to take it after reading it. So everyone in the room started telling me that I was lazy, that I didn't care about getting better. So I got angry and threw a chair. And then, EVEN THOUGH personnel are only supposed to use force when other methods of deescalation have been employed, and EVEN THOUGH I was shaking in a corner, terrified, as the approached me, I was thrown into restraints. Then they stuck me with who the hell knows what drugs and left me there for an hour and THAT SAME FUCKING COUNSELOR was there, mockingly telling me that I had put myself there, that I had to calm down while I was assaulted, and ignoring me when I said my had was going numb, ignoring my cries of pain. And then I was supposed to sleep there.

The next day I couldn't remember what had happened, I just pushed it out of my mind. They had stuck me in the acute unit. I just slept all day, refusing food. I was back in the regular unit the next day. They still had the same counselor there. The next day I was discharged.

I was seeing a psychiatrist after I got out, and he stuck to the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and refused to listen to anything I said. He put me on lithium, even though I kept telling him that I have panic attacks when I'm supposed to have a blood test, and I kept telling him that the pills made me feel like I was going to vomit and made me so dizzy I couldn't focus my eyes. I kept telling my mom how much I hated that doctor, but she didn't find me a different one for several months, and the one I finally found still didn't end up doing anything useful. I had a psychologist, too, but she never helped, because I didn't feel comfortable talking to her - she was extremely judgmental. Eventually, I quit seeing either of them.

I've written about this several times but I just still can't understand why the fuck they did those things and how they can look at the way they operate and look at patients like me and not realize how damaging their practices are. I mean... how can you DO that to somebody and not feel horrific remorse?

I finally have a competent psychiatrist and a psychologist that I get along with, but I don't feel like I can talk to my psychologist about anything I need to (self-harm, abusive self-talk, etc.) without risking being hospitalized again, and I don't feel like I can tell her about my experiences because she works at the hospital.

Wat do?

I started cutting maybe when I was ten or eleven. Around ten years I tried to kill myself by taking half a bottle of aspirin. I was fairly open about my cutting and didn't really bother to cover up the marks, so when I was maybe thirteen I got 51 50'd. My first visit was only three days long and fairly uneventful, but I immediately started cutting again when I was let out, so I got put back in it for a week. I was sitting in an office talking to my parents and some woman who worked at the hospital, and when I realized I was going to be put back in against my will, I threw my glasses and started crying. The woman called three male nurses in on me, and I was carried off into a room and- trigger alert- strapped down to a table. They peeled my pants down and gave me a shot in the ass. I swear to god the male nurses were giggling. After that I was loaded up into an ambulance and shuttled off to the hospital, where I was barely awake when they took my picture. The whole next day I was so drugged it looked like the walls were wiggling and pulsating, and I thought the Cenobites from Hellraiser were going to burst through and get me. Other than that I just remember them being really stupidly strict and authoritarian, as if we were juvenile delinquents in need of correcting rather than kids who were hurting and in need of help. I remember one guy's stupid lecture about how cutting "doesn't make sense" because it's like slapping yourself in the face after someone slapped you first. If it didn't make sense on a psychological level, I don't think we'd be doing it to begin with. God, fucking stupid. I was really messed up about my experience for a really long time after that, but maybe two years ago I started to get over it.

the booty shot?