How do you feel about Involuntary commitment?

So I'll start off by saying I'm most likely an Avoidant, which isn't exactly relevant on the Anti-Psych forum but is relevant to this question.

For me, the idea of being admitted against my will to a low-class mental institution for several weeks, being made to live around and interact with other patients away from friends and family, being made to take group therapy sessions, and being forced to take meds sounds like a pretty shi**y experience. I'm a very private sort of person and I just couldn't deal with the lack of personal space.

That's not to mention some of the horrors that go on within the walls of low-class mental institutions, anything from breaches in human rights, physical or sexual abuse (from staff or others patients), draconian rules and regulations which if violated will result in unjust punishment like the restraints, condescending attitude towards patients due to having medical narcissism, as well as generally poor conditions... There's also the stigma element about these places too, if you've been to one you wouldn't exactly be too eager to tell your pals out of fear that they would think you're batsh*t insane (even though you likely aren't).

Sure they have helped some people, such as the clinically depressed to get better and prevent them from harming themselves (mainly true for the more regulated and more upheld institutions, like the private ones). But, from the stories online, it also sounds like traumatizing experiences have permanently scarred some of those that have went there. I know they're not all bad, and adolescent and children's wards are more accommodating, but sadly a lot of them are.

- What's your opinion on the places?
- Had any good or bad experiences with them in the past?

That one size fits all "rapid stabilization" is just bull $#%^.

So is their definition of "manic" and "psychotic" they stick that on everyone for billing purposes.



They wanted to do this to me and all I needed was to recover from a nervous breakdown and about a week of heavy drinking. All I needed was maybe some kindness and possibly a valium. I walked into the ER sick and dehydrated and in alcohol withdrawals. I was done couldent drink anouther day and couldent stop without anxiety from hell. I was sober for about five months and screwed it up. From the ER I got a ride in this nasty van to the psychiatric "hospital".

Step one of course is intake strip search and dehumanization.

Step two chart reactions to loss of freedom, forced nakedness and dehumanizing treatment as "symptoms of the illness".

Step three is zombify the hell out of you with dangerous drugs.

Step four is if you care about your health or dislike the effects of the dangerous drugs and refuse to take them is to make threats of scary needles and violence (forced drugging) and the state hospital.

Step five chart reactions to the threats of rape by needle using force and violence such as fear and anger as "symptoms of the illness".

Keeping the beds full one step at a time...

Its bull $#%^, I have friends in recovery who have relapsed had nervous breakdowns and went "psychotic" or "manic" and I was able by just being a friend get them through the worst of it with none of that dehumanization or drugging or coercion and violence psychiatry calls "help".

Thanks for responding, and that sounds really rough

Copy_Cat wrote:forced nakedness

Is that to put on the hospital overalls and to make sure you don't have anything 'harmful' on you?

Copy_Cat wrote:Step four is if you care about your health or dislike the effects of the dangerous drugs and refuse to take them is to make threats of scary needles and violence (forced drugging) and the state hospital.

I read about this girls experience in a psych ward when she was younger, if you started to 'act up' they would offer you an oral sedative, or to go sit in the padded room alone, and if you refused either they would jump you, restrain you, and inject a sedative agent into you...

Auxiliary11 wrote:Is that to put on the hospital overalls and to make sure you don't have anything 'harmful' on you?

They force it to humiliate but its called a "skin assessment".

It's Time to Stop Strip Searching Psychiatric Patients http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/home/a ... 115b7.html

Meanwhile ,

For the third time in a decade, New York City has agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit stemming from the illegal strip searches of thousands of nonviolent prisoners.

The settlement, which was announced on Monday, provides $33 million to the roughly 100,000 people who were strip-searched after being charged with misdemeanors and taken to Rikers Island and other city correction facilities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

People in Jail have alot more rights than psychiatric prisoners. Its sad.

And millions of people get on airplanes every day without a strip search even with the so called "terror threat".

Auxiliary11 wrote:oral sedative

I guess you could call it that,

The most dangerous of these are major tranquilizers, also known as neuroleptic (nerve-seizing) drugs or anti-psychotics. Of the more than two dozen in this class, introduced in the mid 1950s, the most commonly used are Haldol (haloperidol), Compazine (prochlorperazine), Thorazine (chlorpromazine), Navane (thiothixene), Prolixin (fluphenazine), Mellaril (thioridazine), and Trilafon (perphenazine).

Their purpose is to create "maximum behavioral disruption"--a goal clearly reflected in 1950 tests conducted with rats on Thorazine. Through chemicals, psychiatrists sought to sabotage thought processes and thereby deny the person control of his own body.

At the time the major tranquilizers were introduced, the lobotomy was touted highly and widely used by psychiatrists. With the procedure, the shredded brain was damaged forever, generating objections from family and friends of the patient.

The major tranquilizers were able to create a zombie state, identical to that seen after a lobotomy, in a person whose brain remained intact. For this reason, Thorazine became known as a "chemical lobotomy."

http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/drugs/dark_side_1.htm

Copy_Cat wrote:http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/home/a ... 115b7.html

Kinda makes me sick reading that, feel sorry for those that went through it.

Copy_Cat wrote:The major tranquilizers were able to create a zombie state, identical to that seen after a lobotomy, in a person whose brain remained intact. For this reason, Thorazine became known as a "chemical lobotomy.

Geez, they always find a way around it to get people to fall in line. This draws parallels to medical surgeons also, they treat their patients like slabs of meat on the operating table, and given that many surgeons are psychopaths, they have no problem cutting them open and feel no remorse if they make a fatal mistake. Like that quote from Rocky IV, "if he dies, he dies".