If you do not sign a consent form (commit yourself), they’ve got 72 hours to file to hold you on an involuntary basis. You’re entitled to a hearing before a judge if they do in fact file to hold you. In most venues they don’t have to actually get you up in front of the judge before the 72 hours runs out, they just have to file the notice of intent to seek an involuntary order on you within that time. And if they can get you to sign a consent form (which they won’t necessarily explain the implications of, as I recounted in my own tale), the 72 hour clock stops, and then you have to formally sign a 72-hour-notice of intent to leave in order to start it again (with a fresh 72 hours marked on it). Also, in most venues, they can hold you for just short of 72 hours, transfer you to another facility, and then that facility starts a 72 hour countdown. (I don’t know how legal that really is, I just know they do that).
They use pushy sales techniques and overt threats to get you to sign, or to refrain from issuing a 72-hour notice, or to rescind one once you’ve done so: “Oh, come on and sign, you have all kinds of privileges as a voluntary patient but we have to keep you locked in here with no shoelaces and no belt if you don’t sign”. “Well, I’m sorry but you need to be in treatment, and while I can’t keep you from insisting on wasting the time of my good buddy Judge Howard, it’s not going to do you any good, he’s never refused a request for an involuntary hold order when I’ve requested it.” “The way you said ‘no’ so forcefully and practically flung that pen down, I think maybe you’re having a crisis, hey Marie do you think he’s maybe having a bit of a crisis, do we need to call for an emergency depo of Prolixin? I know you won’t like being strapped down and injected, but we have to protect our patients and staff from dangerous residents who are losing control. You know, most people just go ahead and sign.”
But yeah, they can’t just lock you in with no due procedure.
I’ll describe what the court hearings can be like if anyone’s interested (it ain’t pretty)
You know Zoe the first 4 replies in Ky’s thread said see a doctor.
Why is that the correct response? She posted a few sentences and people where sending her to the doctor.
I feel like I been over this too many times in this thread.
People jumped on the go see a doctor a little too quickly in my opinion and then Guin got bent out of shape by AHunter3 reasonable post.
You still insist that “We did what we’re supposed to do right off the bat. We suggested that she see a professional.”
**Why is that what we’re suppose to do? **
Jim {I’ve got Deja Vu all over again maybe I should see a doctor?}
FWIW, you’ll get no argument from that involuntary commitments can often be unnecessary and that hospitals can be brutal. The only person I know of though who was committed was there because he threatened his parents with a knife.
What Exit, what is so inappropriate about saying, “Well, we don’t know if you’re really suffering from depression-so ask a doctor who can diagnose it properly?” What is wrong with seeing a doctor? I don’t get it. Not a psychiatrist, simply a physician.
Where did Guinastasia posit anything as a certainty?
I am not treated by “an Institution that has a God-Complex” that just wants my money. I am treated by a doctor who is a human being, and who has helped me. To say he helped save my life is not an overstatement. Are you going to tell me I’m just jaded or worse yet, delusional, because my POV is in direct contradition with yours?
devilsknew, I am more than willing to accept that there are other views on the mental health field than mine, but your post is just flat-out intolerant and condescending. You’re entitled to your opinion, but that does not invalidate mine, Guin’s, or anyone else’s who has benefitted from psychiatry. It’s ironic as fuck that you’re calling out arrogance when you’ve dismissed Guin’s and others’ experiences in three sentences. Pot, meet kettle.
It gets you on the treadmill. You see a doctor, they are not a very good Doctor and he prescribes the Pills that the Drug companies are pushing that month. This now throws you even further out of whack as he prescribed a drug for depression when you were really just in a long funk as **Kalhoun ** so well put it.
Now the drugs really throw you off and you end up on others drugs and seeing a mental health specialist and the treadmill is moving quicker.
Will this happen to everyone, no of course not. Will it happen to 1 out of 10 people, I don’t know but I think that is a reasonable estimate, it might be higher.
There are steps you should take before the Doctor if you are not suicidal or otherwise a danger to oneself. This is where the Exercise, diet change, Happy Projects, Treating yourself is worth a try first.
Do you come out of it okay or do you get to experience the Joys of an Institution like **Ahunter3 ** described?
I hope I finally manage to make myself clear, I know I am not a very writer.
The most important thing to always remember about AHunter3’s experience is that he did commit himself. He admits he signed a consent without reading/understanding it. What I want to know (and has been asked before) is the percentage of psych inpatients who were involuntarily committed with the additional question of were they really involuntarily committed or did they sign themselves in and not realize it, or did a parent or guardian sign them in, did they sign themselves in and not remember it, were they tricked into signing themselves in? I admit that there is no way to compile this data without access to hospital admission records. While I have never felt like launching a pitting, I find AHunter3’s habit of seeking out all mental health threads and crapping all over the entire profession due to a bad personal experience and some other people’s mostly outdated anecdotes extremely annoying. There’s a pretty good chance that Kytheria may go talk to a doctor or a counselor or a psychiatrist/psycologist who says there is nothing really wrong with her and she is worrying herself unnecessarily. Or she gets the help that she needs, whether that be medical intervention, counseling, or a get over it speech that prevents her from getting worse. If she really has a problem, ignoring it won’t make it go away. And I guess that is my biggest problem, AHunter3, you are more than happy to tell people what not to do…when do you ever help them out with what you think they should do? How does your post in the original thread help someone make a very difficult decision when they need to do something and you tell them whatever you do don’t do anything that will get you imprisioned and electroshocked.
I’m not going to claim that it’s all that easy to avoid involuntary committments even with the reforms in the laws since the 60’s. And when I think about it without thinking of myself or someone I know as a potential victim of such tactics, I’m not sure that I want it changed all that much more. (Not to imply support for some of the shadier things that you mentioned happening - esp. the transfer between facilities to restart the clock.) Just saying that there are still some people who are kept, and treated, involuntarily who are both hazards to themselves and/or others, and who won’t (and in many cases can’t) offer consent to treatment.
As you pointed out above there is a snarky way to look at people who come in looking for inpatient treatment: Those who really need it never ask for it. I know you said it’s not really a fact, but that snarky view of things does hold a certain amount of truth for all that it is an exaggeration.
My personal strategy for getting out sooner, if I felt that I was being held against my will, would have been to appear as cooperative as possible. I want to say that would appear to me the most reasonable way to get out - but I have to admit that after serving in the Navy onboard a ship, even limited freedoms in a hospital wing are generally more freedom than I’d had while at sea. (I got huge respect from the nurses and other patients for having the foresight to ask for a script for tobasco. Apparantly not many people considered that aspect to being committed, prior to their first meal.) As much as it seems intuitive to me to use the strategy I’d outlined, I have to admit that considering your experience, and that of What Exit?'s friend, it seems I’m the one with the minority view on this issue.
Either way, as I said before in this thread - your warnings, while my experience suggests such incidents are more limited than you imply, are a good way to make sure that patients going in for treatment are aware of their rights and responsibilities. Which can only be a good thing. The more people take the time and effort to research their health the better off they are.
While I’d like to hear your view of the court procedings, I can make some guesses. Frankly, I’ve been involved on the periphery of some other court room drama (including a child custody case, where the one parent accused me of being a borderline pedophile for watching anime) and I know that appearing other than calm, focused and reasoned in court is a mistake. Alas, I can see how someone thinking their liberty is being taken away without due concern for their rights would have a hard time being calm, focused and reasoned. Desperate, emotional, and barely restrained would seem more likely to me for most people. Which will predispose the judge against such persons being reasonable.
That “treadmill” that you speak of has literally saved the lives of some of the people who post here. I am one of them.
There is a reason why clinical depression is recognized as a disabling and sometimes terminal illness. One member of my family did not survive depression.
If people are just feeling “depressed” and they mean that they have a case of the funky blues, then exercise, getting new hobbies and fresh air and waiting may be enough. But if they may be clinically depressed – even though exercise and fresh air are still good for them – they need to see a physician just as they would with any other illness that may relate to brain chemistry.
It is inappropriate to diagnose anyone over the internet. That’s why it is appropriate to encourage Dopers with medical symptoms to seeks professional opinions. (That is the way that some of us understood what Kytheria posted.)
BTW, you write well enough. You could easily have pointed out my own errors.
Zoe, I am sorry, I have to go to sleep. I never said a lot of people don’t get a lot of good help from Mental Health Providers. I just keep desperately trying to say that I thought the quick leaps to Go see a doctor was premature from the very brief post **Kytheria ** made. You disagree with me fine, I get it, I choose to disagee.
Have a very good night.
The post I made wasn’t even directed at you (nor against people who take meds/see docs), but since you took it as such : Has it worked? I’m not trying to be snarky here, it’s just that the last I heard of you, your life wasn’t exactly going the way it should be at this point.
I’m not saying that docs and meds can’t help you, just that they can only take you so far. Of all the people I know who’ve managed to successfully break away from their depression, they all first began with regular drugs and docs but eventually moved away from that. Some of them still have to take pills and talk to their therapists but most of them don’t and none of them rely on it.
When you think you are crazy, when everyone tells you that you are crazy, then it is easy to stay there. I learned how powerful the mind can be when I hallucinated while going through a very bad spell of depression. If my mind can convince me that my skin is wearing away, then it can also convince me that I am happy. You can change your brain waves you know. It’s not hard to stimulate the left side of your brain. Try it sometime, it just might work.
I know, I have it. I originally went down this path not because I wanted to but because I had no insurance so I couldn’t get the drugs or docs even if I wanted to.
So are drugs supposed to make your life go exactly the way it should go? I don’t know of any pill that can do that, and I’d venture a guess that’s not the reason most people take them.
If a person has a chemical imbalance that responds to medication, the drugs just make the troughs shallower. In the past, they have gotten me out of the depths of despair. Once I’m dealing with a more level playing field, then I have to do the work. I have felt victimized by the way my brain worked, and medication helps me keep those out of control feelings and thought processes in control. Believe me, I’ve tried the modifying those cycles by sheer will alone, and it just does not always work when things get really bad.
As for the “treadmill effect,” I don’t buy it. Most people I know who have taken meds for depression are only on them cyclically.
Who said otherwise?
Riiiight. And diabetics should use their brain waves to fix their insulin problem. Some people do need to be medicated. Can you accept that and not tell people they should just cure themselves? It belittles the fact that depression is, for a lot of people, a physiological problem, not just something they could “snap out of” if only the would make the effort.
Most not-for-profit mental health clinics have fees on sliding scales for people who don’t have insurance.
Hi, I just found this thread and haven’t read through it all yet (though I did read the link in the OP) but I wanted to show support for AHunter3. While he does hijack sometimes (I know because he has hijacked at least one of my threads), I don’t believe the linked thread was a hijack. When you consider an issue it is important to take all sides, especially those sides that are based on personal experience. AH3’s experience is no less (and no more) relevant than Guin’s experience, or Zoe’s, or anyone in this thread that has experience, and I think it is incredibly counterproductive and yeah, arrogant, to say “oh, don’t listen to him” (as Guin said to Kyth in the linked thread). AH3 never said anything like that to the people who were recommending that Kyth go to a doctor; he just set out his experience so she could take it as she wanted to. I guess I just really don’t like the idea of someone saying “don’t listen to him” on a board where we are ostensibly all adults capable of sorting wheat from chaff. It feels like shutting down dialogue. Especially when AH3 is so not a troll who lambasts psychiatry for the hell of it or because Xenu told him to; he has real reasons for thinking the way he does even if one does not agree with his conclusions (I don’t agree with him all the time).
I do sometimes think people on this board are way too eager to diagnose people based on a one-paragraph OP. Those types of Internet surveys are designed to get people to seek help, especially if they are hosted by the drug companies (most of the “about depression” pages on the Internet are hosted by drug companies, especially the flashy ones with their own domain). I don’t think that psychiatry is evil, however, I do think that being a new discipline it has more of a “possibility of fuck-up” than other areas of medicine, so one shouldn’t just put their lives into the hands of the doctors, one has to be more pro-active about one’s recovery. (This assumes that Kyth does have depression, which she may not.) The important thing is to be informed and look at all sides of the issue, and I think that means reading AH3’s posts in addition to those posts by people who were helped by psychiatry.
But to throw another data point on the “all doctors just want to drug you and lock you up” graph, the only time I ever went to see a doctor (a GP) about my anxiety he spent half the visit talking about my sexual history and what I’m using for contraception, chastising me for using the calendar method, and throwing off my talk about my anxiety with a “do you feel you have more stress than other people?” sort of verbal hand-waving gesture (he did not even look at the “health complaint” sheet that I had to fill out in the waiting room). It really pissed me off because I did not have insurance at the time and was paying for the visit out of my own money and he didn’t even address my primary complaint. I’ve said it before, whether GPs, psychiatrists, dentists, or whatever, all doctors are quacks. Okay, more like 92%. And that includes all the ones I’ve ever seen!
Well I liked the fact you basically supported my position with your post until I got to the last Paragraph. I just can’t accept the quacks line and the 92%. I hope you were joking and I am being obtuse. There are Doctors that do little more than act as HMO ‘Script’ writers but as I said earlier I think this would be closer to 10-20%, nowhere near 92%.
I do agree with the bulk of what you said in the first two paragraphs.
Yeah, I was being facetious. It does seem like I have had exceptionally bad luck with doctors, though. Like the woman I went to last week (my celebratory physical I arranged just because I have insurance and can do that now) to whom I also brought up my anxiety who also talked about my reproductive system for most of the session (she was not as dismissive as the first doctor, though she wouldn’t talk about it either). Shit, I must really look promiscuous, and also, like an idiot.
In about 18 months (providing I pass my finals) I’ll be working as a junior doctor in a psychiatric hospital for 4 months. It is not a specialty I am particulalry interested in, nor is it something I’m particularly looking forward to, but Og dammit I’m absolutely going to do my best for my patients.
And you know what, I’m going to be looking after people like Ahunter3, Siege and Guin and I’m probably going to look after them all differently.
Nah, some doctors just seem to be hardwired that the only things that can go wrong with a woman are with the reproductive system. I was hospitalized for a week with a high, cycling fever (up to 105F) a couple of years ago. The only pain I had when I was admitted was in my neck, but I had complained about cramps to my GYN the day before. They decided that I had a uterine infection despite the fact that I was now totally pain-free in that area, and I had to pretty much throw a fit to get them to consider that I had body parts other than a uterus (oh, and breasts - I was nursing at the time, and I displayed my breasts to show that I had no signs of mastitis roughly twice a day the whole time I was there). Even when I did manage to talk to someone who wasn’t a GYN, he ended up ordering an MRI on my uterus, and when it came up totally clean, he told me that it must be a silent uterine infection. Once I got out and talked to my regular internist, she said that it sounded like classic viral meningitis.
I did not say that. I am in agreement with you on this first part. Drugs can help you get out of the lows, but you need more than just drugs to get you to where you are close to being a functional member of society.
It was implied that that’s what I was saying. I’m not. I’m not saying that drugs and docs don’t work for a lot of people, I’m just saying that they can make it worse and I’ve found that you can’t rely on them alone.
Did you read the links I posted? It’s not just “snapping out of it,” it is stimulating the under stimulated part of your brain which causes depression in the first place. It’s not just happy thoughts but a concentrated effort to change the patterns of your brain waves which naturally increases the levels of serotonin. I didn’t mean to imply that this is the case in all states of depression. I have no idea what it’s like for those with clincal depression, my depression is entirely biological. I don’t know if this treatment would work on those with clinical depression as well.
The people who helped me out of my crazy/depressed state were not those that coddled me. I’ve seen people who’ve been on various drugs and to various doctors for their entire lives and haven’t managed to accomplish shit. They are in their 30s and still live with their parents and manage to blame everyone and everything else for their situation but themselves. For these people, drugs and docs did nothing for them. They use their depression as a crutch and blame everything on their condition.
