Oy. I just remembered the two sessions I had with a pair of military psychiatrists who lived up to the old joke about military intelligence. Those guys must have gotten their diplomas out of a Cracker Jack box!
Maybe a reasonable question to ask would be if there is anyone here who voluntarily sought help for depression and was involuntarily confined for depression. If so, was it for more than three days? Were you forced to take medications? Which ones? How long did you have to stay? Did you have to take the medications when you were released? Did this happen in the last twenty years?
Although AHunter3’s idea of careful research and study of the options is a good idea, in reality it is often just not practical for the severely depressed. The first time that I was taken to the hospital for depression, I had withdrawn so far into myself that I had quit talking. I couldn’t think past the end of my nose. Another time, I forgot what was going on in my life. Still another time, I didn’t know that I was depressed; I just couldn’t stop crying at a regular checkup.
Maybe the reason that some of us talk about ourselves so much in these threads is that we are drawing upon our own experiences. AHunter3 does that too, but he has never had depression. I know what it is like to have the wrong treatment and the wrong meds and I know what it is like to have a good shrink and the right meds. He’s wrong to lump all of it in together.
AHunter3, I suppose that you might have someone acting out violently, but usually depressed people are more likely to withdraw rather than disrupt.
No one diagnosed Kytheria. We did what we’re supposed to do right off the bat. We suggested that she see a professional. Some suggested that she watch her diet and get exercise and fresh air. They are right. That didn’t need to be mentioned with each new post.
I do not understand the hostility toward people who ask for professional help. It is a glaring ignorance on the part of those who criticize and undermine.
Actually yes, one of my best friends was put away for 22 days for “depression”. The Psych ward made him “Hostile” instead. They tried to put him on meds against his will and if not for many friends visiting him a lot and asking to review his records and pushing that we were talking to a lawyer about the case, the 22 day evaluation may have turned into a transfer to a longer institution. The guy had some problems but nothing that these idiots were helping with. It was an Aunt who hadn’t seen him in 6 years that got him caught up in the clutches of the Psyches.
Today he is doing very well and somehow he accomplished all this without their stupid meds.
The hostility BTW is not against people asking for help, it is against people like you who push people toward Pysch too quickly and expound upon the wonders of drugs. But I guess you refused to read what everyone else on the other side of the issue have been saying.
Jim {now I have to calm down, I am sorry}
I would very much like to see folks respond to this. Also, please add some info about whether the practitioner was private-practice or not, whether you had insurance coverage that would cover psych treatment at the time or not, and, if you know, whether the psychiatrist in question was affiliated with a hospital, and, if so, public or private.
Oh, and year would be highly useful, wouldn’t it?
What Exit, again, the problem I had was with some people saying, “Don’t go to a doctor-they’ll just overmedicate you and make it worse!” That’s like telling someone who has a lump in her breast, “Do NOT go to the doctor! He’ll immediately say you have cancer and give you a double masectomy!”
I don’t think anyone was pushing Kythereia towards psychiatric meds or not. Most people were suggesting she ask her own physician for a referral or some advice.
That’s all.
Worry about overzealous prescription happy doctors when and IF it happens. That was part of what I learned in therapy-if you start worrying “What if?” all the time, that only feeds into it. One step at a time.
I think year, and state, would be interesting to hear, too. Certainly the situation described in What Exit?'s post would have been illegal in NY in 1997 when I was inpatient.
My inpatient time was NY 1997, for about three weeks. (I don’t have exact dates.) I’d been committed at my own request, with strong suggestions from family. I was admitted from the ER, and had private insurance that should have covered my inpatient stay. (Outpatient would have been different, but inpatient was supposed to be covered.) I was receptive to medication, so I don’t know if I’d have been given drugs against my will. The only people I recall from my stay who were fighting medication were in the ward after being transferred from a local prison. Certainly the doctors I had were always willing to answer questions about new medications, and took all reports about side-effects very seriously, no matter how silly they might have sounded to the patient.
An aside: Lute Skywatcher, one of my major regrets about my military service is that I didn’t take my ship’s doctor up on his offer to get me psychiatric treatment while I was in. I have no idea how the psychaitrists would have been - but I did trust my ship’s doctor.
I think year, and state, would be interesting to hear, too. Certainly the situation described in What Exit?'s post would have been illegal in NY in 1997 when I was inpatient.
My inpatient time was NY 1997, for about three weeks. (I don’t have exact dates.) I’d been committed at my own request, with strong suggestions from family. I was admitted from the ER, and had private insurance that should have covered my inpatient stay. (Outpatient would have been different, but inpatient was supposed to be covered.) I was receptive to medication, so I don’t know if I’d have been given drugs against my will. The only people I recall from my stay who were fighting medication were in the ward after being transferred from a local prison. Certainly the doctors I had were always willing to answer questions about new medications, and took all reports about side-effects very seriously, no matter how silly they might have sounded to the patient.
An aside: Lute Skywatcher, one of my major regrets about my military service is that I didn’t take my ship’s doctor up on his offer to get me psychiatric treatment while I was in. I have no idea how the psychaitrists would have been - but I did trust my ship’s doctor.
My friend was caught up in 2002 just after his Grandmother died who he had taken care of for 20+ years. He was in a bad funk, but putting him away on his Aunt’s word and the fact he was belligerent to the Social Worker that visited him was total Crap. It happen in NJ BTW.
Why would it have been illegal?
We didn’t really talk to a lawyer, we just made noises that we were to try and get him out. They were seriously talking about transferring to a county center for an indefinite period. Did we really have recourse?
Jim
Guin, I understand, I thought we were resolved and then Zoe started posting her crap above. It actually pissed me off, because I don’t think she read most of the thread and kind of took us all back to the beginning again.
I really do think meds have their use and place but I also think to many doctors in the HMO world prescribe drugs too easily. For me it was with Kidney Stones. The not good Doctor I hooked up with via the ER was going to put me on pills I would be taking for the rest of my life. I was only 25. I did not accept such a diagnosis on one man’s word and went to an expert that my Sister the RN recommended. Sure enough, he recommended diet, avoiding dehydration and drinking lots of water. So if a confused person goes to a Doctor and they are an overworked pill of the month club Doctor I do think more harm than good could be accomplished.
I guess the biggest point that we are all working towards in this thread is if pills are prescribed, get a second opinion. Pills can really mess you up or really help you.
Jim {damn, I think I borrowed that soapbox, sorry}
Let’s take a look at the thread, shall we?
Nine posts (more than half) before AHunter3’s mentioned drugs in a non-negative context (obviously, not all of these were “pushing Kythereia towards psychiatric meds”). AHunter3’s initial post included this disclaimer before anything else about medications:
and this advice at the end:
In short, quite a few posts mentioned drugs straight away, with at least one or two glossing over the other treatments available (in my opinion, of course). Also, AHunter3’s initial post said nothing anywhere near “Don’t go to a doctor. . .they’ll just make it worse!” I think the extremes of the viewpoints presented in that thread are nowhere near the way you rephrased them here, and I fear your personal feelings about this issue are coloring your perceptions so much as to make them imperceptible to many of the rest of us. Just trying to help you see what I’m seeing, make of it what you will.
Again, not being sarcastic, but unless one is on the wrong side of the plexiglass, is one at risk of being involuntarily committed when is not a danger to self or others? What kind of thing would get a not dangerous person in a situation like this? An acquaintance of mine was committed a couple of times when he was deeply into a schizophrenic episode, and he was definitely guilty of self-neglect and complete disorientation, so I could understand why he was hospitalized and think it was the right thing to do. He, of course, strenuously disagrees.
There was a situation in my life where I considered voluntary commitment. My psychologist gently talked me out of it. I have insurance, so it wasn’t that. I have never had a psychiatrist suggest anything of the kind. Maybe that’s why I have trouble with the very hostile attitude sometimes displayed towards the mental health industry. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, I don’t know. My doctor changed a diagnosis for me that was made by a different psychologist that I was thought was totally wrong and could have led to trouble for me in the future. I feel lucky to have him, but maybe he’s not the norm.
How poorly considered a choice would one have to be seen to be making in order to warrant involuntary commitment? Again, this could just be my experience, but the only people I know who were involuntarily committed were a danger to at least themselves, though massive and egregious self-neglect if not actual suicidal intent.
What kind of help can one expect to get for a situation like that at the ER that would not involve some time in the hospital and/or drugs? I mean, if you’re so bad off you go to the hospital, shouldn’t you expect to maybe be admitted or given medicine when you go? This is true for other illnesses and injuries for which one goes to the ER, why not psychological/emotional ones?
This is basically what I figured.
Could this really happen if you were a functional but quite depressed person? Could you give me an example of someone who was not remotely dangerous/harmful to himself but was bad enough for a shrink to involuntarily commit you?
This sounds really creepy to me, pimping someone out to a doctor like this. What behavior would provoke this kind of thing?
Thanks for discussing this issue and explaining it to me, AHunter3. Most of the people who are virulently anti-psychiatry aren’t nearly as articulate as you are and I can never quite see it their way. I am interested in seeing and understanding your POV
An example of the idiots I had to deal with: I was about 15 pounds over the Navy’s ideal weight. The drawing they asked me to do was of a normal-sized person, which they deduced to mean that there was a thin guy in me wanting to get out! Uh, you sure that I didn’t draw a fat person because I don’t fucking know how?! What would you have said if I had drawn a stick figure?
Personally, I’m just sick of the threads about mental illness where people are seeking support.
If people put their personal lives on a billboard, you can’t act surprised when someone draws a moustache on the picture.
Replying to Rubystreak’s questions:
Yes, sometimes. Paul Henri Thomas, whose story is available in the link above (linked to the reply “Really?” in response to OtakuLoki’s comment), was not dangerous. You could argue that he was kind of nutty, but that’s about it. Not only was he involuntarily committed, he was involuntarily electroshocked over and over.
I went into some of that. I’m not sure what kind of details or elaborations you want here. Would you like some anecdotes? A 70-some-odd year old widow, inheritor of the fortunes of an industrial equipment manufacturer that wasn’t Delta, who liked to drink but wasn’t a self-destructive alcoholic, wasn’t suicidal, and certainly wasn’t violent, was incarcerated by a doctor to whom her nephew and nephew’s wife spoke extensively before they talked her into seeing him. A friend of mine in the movement was referred for an evaluation by her school, she argued with the psychiatrist who didn’t like the plain dress and no makeup and no shaved armpits, and he had her detained and it took her 5 months to get out. A grad student at NYU who was doing a public interview of random passersby on campus regarding unionizing grad students was locked up for 5 days at NYU Medical Center. Lots of my better, more spectacular stories are old enough that some folks would say “Yeah, but things have changed” (although I don’t think that’s entirely true), but I could solicit for newer accounts if you’d like.
Was he genuinely dangerous? Was he at genuine risk of perishing, or just weird as batshit and disturbing to people and you figured if you extrapolated his behavior forward several years he’d end up in a bad situation?
You’re more at risk when you do have insurance. No insurance means it isn’t lucrative for them to lock you up. (This is especially true of private bins, which depend much more on insurance as a revenue stream. State bins can be underfunded snakepits with sadistic personnel and random acts of cruelty and coercion as the organizing principle, but they only involuntarily incarcerate crazyfolk brought in by the police or who have upset lots of folks in a public setting. In fact, if you’re poor and decompensating and want in and the only thing available to you is a state-run facility, you may have trouble getting admitted as an inpatient.)
Your doctor wants you to take Depakote; you tried Depakote a couple years ago and didn’t like the way it made you feel; you want to stay on Paxil, but the doctor thinks your current med is not doing the job and wants you on Depakote. You say flat-out that you aren’t going to take it. Doctor writes down: “treatment resistant; pt exhibits anosognosia regarding need for recommented txmt”. Tells you one more time why you should take Depakote, you say no, doc says “Would you mind waiting here, I have some samples of Paxil I can give you for free if that’s what you want to be on”. You wait, it seems to be taking rather long, and then Doctor enters with two ambulance folks and a stretcher and says an evaluation period is necessary in light of his concerns, and he will meet you up there once they’ve got you settled in. (Hi, Grace!)
OR
You lose your job. You are depressed, it has proven intractable and won’t lift. Doctor nags you to submit your resume to 7 companies per week. One day you come in and say you have taken an unrelated, lower-paying job and also that you’re going to give up your apartment and move in with a shared-house situation with some other mental patients you met at the day center. Doctor says you are giving up, you say you need to have some kind of job to have something to do, Doctor doesn’t like you living with other mental patients, you like the people. Four days later your doc, who is tangentially affiliated with the day center, asks you into a back room with two other staff members. They don’t let you leave until ambulance pulls up.
In both cases, these were egotistical arrogant assholes who had a reputation for heavy-handedness. (Frighteningly enough, one of them really likes the electroshock machine). Problem is, how would you know you had that kind of doctor until you had gotten to know your doctor?
They might be expecting a new pill but not expecting to be detained. Or they might not be thinking in “pill” terms at all but instead want to be made popular, outgoing, courageous; or they want their inhibitions and hangups to be erases so they can enjoy life instead of being haunted by old imperatives. (And think, for some reason, that psychiatrists do these things, as if they were personal growth gurus). In our culture, “I’ve had it with my life as it is, I’m going to shut down everything and change it now”, which is in many ways a courageous coming-out burst of honest self-appraisal, is peculiarly associated with “I need to be fixed, I’m ready, let’s get this over with, I wanna see the Doctor”. I bet some of the doctors on the board can testify to this!
Afraid so.
See above.
That’s how it happened to me. Our dormitory had an RA who was quite concerned about me, and then I freaked out the person running the Rape Crisis Center on our campus. Both of them forwarded material to the mental health department of the university medical center, and then the RA pressured me to “go talk to the psychiatrist just to make sure nothing’s wrong”. I figured it would get them off my back. Technically, I was a voluntary patient, because I signed a “consent to be treated by the doctor”. I thought it was just a meaningless paperwork thingie, and it certainly made no mention of not being allowed to leave. Psychiatrists talk, right? They’re head doctors! So even though I’m just meeting with him to dispell notions that I’m nutso, I have to consent to be “treated”, right? Wrong. Committed. Well, then, I change my mind. Oh no, now that you’re in you can’t leave until the doctor says so. Of course, that was a couple decades ago, but it still happens. And parents worried about their kids will speak with a shrink and then tell the kid that there’s a doctor who they want them to meet.
Hope you found this useful 
Count me as another who generally disagrees with AHunter3’s extremely negative view of psychiatry, but values his input. Hell, I like psychiatry. It makes my brain work right. But he sure does have a good point about the involuntary treatment thing. Here’s my own anecdote. (I’ve told it before here on the boards, but it’s certainly relevant.)
I have clinical depression. This one night, I realized I was having a major depressive episode. The next morning, I went to see my shrink. As we talked about what I was feeling, I mentioned that the night before, I had a feeling like “stop the world–I wanna get off.” She immediately assumed that I was suicidal, and insisted that I go to the mental hospital. I tried to explain that I wasn’t suicidal, and have never been suicidal. I was just really stressed out and unhappy and I wanted to run off to Tahiti or something. But, no. She decided I was suicidal, and that was that.
Fortunately my husband was with me, and got me out of it by promising that he would take leave from work and keep me on “suicide watch” 24 hours a day. :rolleyes: He usually would feel bad about lying, but the whole thing was so ridiculous that he would have said anything to get us out of there.
Of course, my trust in my shrink was completely broken, and so I found myself shrinkless right at a time when I really needed care. I was a mess. So my husband and I talked it over for a couple of days, and decided that some inpatient care might be a good solution.
So off we went to the mental hospital. We went through the intake interview…and they wouldn’t accept me! They basically said, “you don’t need to be here. You’re not the slightest bit suicidal.” :smack: Well, duh.
So we went back home. I found a new shrink, and we all lived happily ever after.
OP of the other thread chiming in.
I really don’t want to go into details–for everyone’s sanity as well as mine, I think–but it wasn’t meant to be a survey. It was meant as a “guys, I’m in a bad spot right now, any advice / tips / thoughts?” (I still really appreciate everyone’s help. Thanks, you guys.)
I’m keeping everyone’s advice in mind–AHunter3’s along with the rest. All I’ve got is a appointment to make a referral to a psychologist (I think), and so far that’s that.
I agree with those who say that what Guinastasia says AHunter3 says and what he actually says bear no discernible resemblance to one another.
Where, Guin, has AH3 said that people should not go see doctors or that psychiatrists or medicines are “EEEVILLL”? Where has he said people should “just get over it”? He hasn’t.
On the contrary, in every thread I’ve seen him post in, he’s been incredibly scrupulous about NOT saying or implying those things even while pointing out very important facts that tend to get glossed over: that psychiatric medicine does not work for everybody, that there are undisputed (but often unacknowledged) severe limitations to what psychiatric medicine knows, and that there are very serious (if very rare) risks involved in pursuing treatment.
I also want to echo what some others have said: AHunter3, I greatly appreciate your contributions to the SDMB.
I was diagnosed with depression when I was five years old. Since then, my diagnoses have included major depression, dysthymia, major depression comorbid with dysthymia, bipolar disorder (type II), borderline personality disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder comorbid with BPD and/or major depression. I haven’t seen any medical basis for the variety of diagnoses, just that I happen to have changed practitioners, and that whatever treatment I received before wasn’t successful, so maybe renaming it will help (even if the new treatment is the same as the old treatment).
I’ve been on a variety of antidepressants and other psychoactive medications, none of which has resulted in long-term relief, and the short-term success of which has been questionable (due to placebo effect, the cyclic nature of the symptoms, etc.) I’ve been happiest and least depressed at times when I was on no medication whatsoever, including a period of about three years when I believed I was completely asymptomatic and thought I was “cured”. The causative nature of this correlation is completely indeterminate, however. I have recently (with the consent of my medical practitioners) stopped taking medication, and I think I’ve improved overall following a minor downswing.
If my symptoms worsen severely, and my medical practitioners convince me that a new medical treatment may prove more successful than previous medications, I will hardly hesitate to try it. I also continue to undergo talk therapy, and I have a therapist (a PhD candidate in Psychology) I am very pleased with. In short, I’m not at all opposed to psychiatric/psychological treatment.
Nevertheless, I am severely aware of the limitations of the mental health field, both in diagnosis and treatment. They are serious and need to be recognized.
AHunter3, throughout much of my experience, I have found your posts about the limitations of psychiatric medicine empowering and insightful. It helps to know that I’m not alone in my frustrations and that my evaluations of the mental health field are not crazy (even if I am!) You have given me language and a conceptual framework for thinking about these things I may not have otherwise had.
You’ve also given me some degree of inspiration in informing that even without successful treatment, it is possible to live a…well, if not a normal life, a life nonetheless.
Finally, you’ve given me a lot to think about. My experiences have been different than yours. I’ve never been involuntarily treated or incarcerated–on the contrary, I had to threaten to hang myself from the hospital light fixtures once, because my insurance wouldn’t pay and the hospital wouldn’t admit me unless I was a clear and immediate danger to myself (or others). I’ve also worked for a homeless shelter where we struggled to get treatment for those who (in our opinion) needed it, but didn’t want it. Seeing things from the other perspective, through your eyes, has been challenging and rewarding.
We’ve had lots of posters here with valuable and unique perspectives who were unable (in their own minds at least) to be heard above the masses of opposing voices, and who flamed out in frustration. I’m glad (and impressed) that you’ve remained so calm, reasoned, and articulate. Please don’t stop posting however many times you’re flamed.
OK, I’ll give myself one reply to this thread before I go on to more pleasant things. I nearly didn’t reply for fear of being jumped on and I have posted less since my behaviour was pointed out, but I thought it was relevant.
When I say I was “nearly catatonic”, it’s because I don’t know the correct term for the state I was in and I’m going for as meaningful a definition as I could get. I was capable of doing some things voluntarily. I didn’t soil myself, so I assume I went to the bathroom voluntarily. I signed my own name to the committment papers, so technically I signed them voluntarily. However, for about 48 hours or so in 1992, I did not move unless told to or attempting suicide; I didn’t speak unless spoken to, and, if I did, it was barely a whisper. My fiance gave me a shower because I appeared incapable of washing myself. I was madly in love and in lust with him, but I didn’t respond to him in any way. I gather it was like washing a manniguin in some ways. That same fiance said later he saw no soul or spark of life in my eyes. I remember very little of that time except pain and fear. I was convinced I was dead and I just wanted my body to stop functioning. I don’t say I was completely catatonic in the sense society uses the word because I signed my committment papers at the hospital. I think, even my worst detractors would agree I was in a very bad way, though.
If anyone has a better term for the state I was in, preferably one or two words, I’d be delighted to read it. For now, I’m working with the best I’ve got.
One reason I talk so damn much about depression is because, regardless of what anyone chooses to think, I really do want to help other people who have it. On the other hand, Kytheria, one reason I didn’t post in your thread in MPSIMS is because I’ve been told I’ve been bringing it up too much.
I’ve watched my words and my posting habits since the incident Guinastasia mentioned, and I now post less and am more conscious of what I post. I stand by my post in this thread because I believe it was relevant. I’ve written what I’ve written in an effort to help people because I’m that sort of altruistic fool. I admit I’ve fallen into my own cliches and I’ve told the same story over-and-over again at times and I apologize to those I’ve offended. Perhaps I should stop trying and let someone else take over.
CJ
Is there a word for talking to yourself?
(Obviously i need it for my next solo conversation…I’m very harsh on my poor use of vocabulary)
While I’m here…is they’re really much of a corralarion between talking to yourself and insanity or…well, being a bit off?
Obviously if you think someone is talking back, or if you can’t stop in situations that are inappropriate. Or if you talk to yourself more than other people. That’s kind of a problem.
But sometimes I talk to my self, when I’m by myself, because sometimes you have to hear your thoughts to see if they really make sense…so am I a bit off? Or a total nutter?
Anyway though my real question reamins is there a word for this?