In 1995 a psychiatrist diagnosed me as being “a danger to myself or others” and I was places in a mental hospital against my will. After a week or two, I ran away when I escaped through an empty door. Now it’s been eleven years later and I got to thinking: if someone noticed me one day and alerted the authorities, would they be able to put me back since I ran away?
Presumably you somehow paid for your SDMB subscription with something linked to your ID – why don’t you think of the mods won’t put it to the test for you and alert the authorities?
This is a hypothetical, of course. Right?
I have a feeling that they would be wasting their time. If the police did come to my house I would hire a lawyer who would argue on my behalf that since 1993 nothing has happened to me or anyone because of me so I was either misdiagnosed or I was somehow “magically” cured and things would get messy. This is why I posted the question.
Wow, you’re having a bad month.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
I am wondering if you “hid” or simply went home and no one came back for you. I guess it would depend on your diagnosis. If you were “Baker Acted” and you were simply depressed at the time, they may have just said you left AMA and not worried about it. More information is needed, I think.
These two posts were hypothetical.
I was diagnosed with “Oppositional Defiance Disorder”, “pervasive developmental disorder”, “schizotypo”, and a laundry list of other ailments. I ran away and left the state.
Well, at least you don’t have porphyria: Question about food and digestion. - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Was it just the standard 72 hour hold for observation? Or were you actually declared legally incompetent and assigned a guardian? The latter is lot more permanent than the former.
Doubt it, unless you are still engaging in the same behavior, whatever it was, which of course is a huge variable here, and caught the attention of the right people. It is pretty hard to get committed against your will today.
I work in a locked In-Patient unit for adolescents. We had one of our clients run while on a home pass (she was two days from discharging anyway, but the call of friends and booze was too strong for her to resist. We got her back on the day she was originally to discharge, but her actions just added more ammo against her - danger to self, poor impulse control, poor judgement, etc. But I digress) If she had remained AWOL for another day we would have discharged her officially, and that would have been that. We wouldn’t have kept looking for her, and if she was found she would have to be detained on new/fresh reasons. Generally we have a time limit for how long charges are kept active. And if you were a child when you ran, then you REALLY have nothing to worry about now, as an adult.
So the requirements to get commited as different now as they were in 1996?
We don’t care if our posters are crazy, as long as they’re not jerks about it. If we rejected/turned in every poster that had a few screws loose, we’d have a much smaller membership. And a much less interesting board.
Great Slogan! Add it to the site banner…
It’ll attract many more web surfers than “fighting ignorance” 
ODD and PDD are, to my knowledge, not diagnoses that would get you committed today. Today, PDD is simply seen as a form of Autism (“PDD Not Otherwise Specified” was my son’s original diagnosis, before someone finally had the balls to say Autism). Schizotypo is a word I’ve never even heard before.
I’d say you’re probably in the clear, as long as you don’t still present as a danger to anyone. I’d think the ODD symptoms may have been what made you look “dangerous” to those who didn’t understand. As far as the PDD diagnosis, I’d be curious to hear the symptoms that led to that. Maybe you just have a touch of mercury poisoning, which will present some of the same symptoms (Mad Hatter’s Disease looks a lot like high functioning Autism, depending on whom you ask). Got a lot of “silver” fillings? Eat a lot of tuna? Live in an area where industries burn coal? Those things are all high in mercury, and while most of us can purge it from our systems harmlessly, some can’t.
Could you rephrase that?
As of now, they don’t keep psych records the way they keep police records; a few months after you’ve gone AWOL, they don’t have APBs out for your ass, nor are the police checking your name against a database of schizzies-at-large or anything.
— escaped from an East Texas psych bin by exactly the same means as the OP
Our usual MO: When a client escapes we alert the family and the police. After X number of days they are placed on an administrative discharge.
I would imagine that there is no formal APB put out/search done by the police unless there is already a further legal hold on the client (i.e. they came to us from Juvie/prison, and are scheduled to return there once they are stable, or are a registered Sex offender). As Iam not a Police Officer, I cannot say for certain.
Maybe it’s supposed to be schizotypal personality disorder?
I make schizotypos all the time 