Forced Psychiatric Treatment or Care

Has anyone here experienced Assisted Psychiatric Treatment or also known as Forced Psychiatric Care?

I am not sure if it is Anti-Psychiatry to believe that this is wrong or not. Some Psychiatrists have disagreed with it.

Anyone want to talk about Forced Psychiatric Care in general?

Nathan

I've experienced it, both as a patient myself and through my mother who was sectioned and hospitalised also.

In my mother's case; well, even though I hate teh whole idea, it did save her life. She was psychotically depressed, had tried suicide, had also attempted to burn our house down (with her, myself and my brother in it). She was taken away in an ambulance in teh middle of the night. I was roughly eight or nine, and petrified. She was held on a secure ward, where we couldn't visit, for six months. She was put on depot medication (had been refusing meds) and came home after six months a different person. I mean different too; I didn't actually recognise her.

Since then she's stayed well. She hasn't taken meds now for maybe twenty years (perhaps longer even) and says herself she's glad they took her in; the treatment got her well enough to come home and stay well. She still has depression; she deals with it in her own way now and it's never been as bad as it was back then. She understands her illness now, and works to live with it and control it. For her, forced treatment gave her back her life when everything else had failed. Hard to argue against it, even though it leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth.

For me it was a nightmare. I was sectioned because I was refusing treatment and was becoming a danger to myself. I believed that I wasn't part of this reality, started cutting myself up to prove I was. Once sectioned, I was given ECT, twice a week, for three months. You do the math; I had 22 treatments in all, came out of the other end no better off symptom-wise but with cracking great big holes in my memory and an impaired short-term memory which still causes problems today, and which I truly believe was caused by ECT. It made no difference to me. When I came home I was still labouring under the idea that I was somehow not real, still cutting myself periodically, and rather confused now to boot. ECT is not something I would ever have agreed to. To have someone fry your brain and be powerless to do anything about it is a terrible thing to go through. I am still very angry that I had so many treatments, when it was obvious it wasn't helping, and with no regard for my feelings at all. I will never let myself go through that again; sounds dramatic but I'd rather die. I am sure they put something in my brain when they did it. They're not going to get the chance again.

So... for me, I have to say forced treatment is wrong. Yes, it did mean I still have my mum; but I think her case is probably an isolated one and here at least forced treatment seems to be nothing much more than a way of making people comply with treatments they don't want. I believe that everyone should have some say in what is done to them, expecially their brains. I know my mum is grateful for the second chance she got; but maybe also had she had the right support to begin with she'd never have needed that chance.

I'm not sure if it's anti-psychiatry; certainly it's anti-psychiatric practices. And this is one practice that really shouldn't happen.

I wrote my story about it here:
http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbigbrother/

It's to long to post here.

Isme your story is so clear.Thats true,and sad how something can be both good and bad.Good for some,not for others.I could imagine it.My mother needed help at times and my father,and I wish they had because if it helped them maybe the damage wouldnt have been directed onto my brother and me.But then again my dad was really raving and paranoid,something to calm him down would have been great,but my mum was away with the fairies anyway so medication would have no doubt made her worser,what a nightmare.My husband on the other hand was a victim of forced psychiatry which is what turned me against psychiatry because I saw how evil they could be.

NathanY wrote:I wrote my story about it here:
http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbigbrother/

It's to long to post here.

NathanY ,thanks for shareing your story.

I have a rather large marketing campaign going for it now on Yahoo and Google. I might be adding MSN to the campaign soon.

I'm looking for feedback as well to put on the site.

Does anyone have any ideas concerning how else to speak out?

I've spent hundreds of dollars and there have been many supporters. There has been no opposition to my complaint.

They force you for a reason. You get sent to a hospital (not a ward) but a psychiatric hospital because your a threat to yourself or someone else. They give you med's and treatment. While your in there care there boss. Thats the way it is.

Currently that's the way it is, but this is America and it's stuff like this that will be in future history books like slavery and Hitler with the Jewish folk. Still yet in it's own concern and mark of a scar in history of it's own amplitude..

One must first conduct a criminal offence in order to be obtained, this is freedom obiding, not the current oppressive violating PsychoSocial mechenisms.

This being N-America dosent mean anything to the topic. When your sent to one of those hospitals its because there removing you from society....so at that point its not in your or societys best interest for you to have freedom, just like in prison. Except its not supposed to be a punishment.

I dont know how things are run in the states but here getting sent to a hospital or even being admitted to a ward is not an easy thing to do anymore. They've changed things up over the last decade....closed hospitals so the streets are full of homeless mental patiants and ect. You have to be a RISK to even be seen. And if you are enough of a risk....and actully do get sent up to a hospital then its for your own good.

Now i'm not denying the illegal BS that gose on in those places, not for a second. But its there job to help you when you arent able to help yourself. Maybe in the states they throw everyone who's feeling a lil blue into a hospital, which is wrong...and if that were the case i'd be on your side 100%. But if you get sent there here then you probably should be there. And when your there.....they are god.