Fornits
General Interest => Open Free for All => Topic started by: Deborah on July 29, 2004, 12:28:00 PM
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This horrifying story is but one example of many that demonstrates the power held by the psychiatric community- frequently aided by well meaning family and friends- to incarcerate and medicate a person until they comply- agree to take their drugs. Notice the rhetoric is the same used in programs.
http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf (http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf)
Excerpts:
I knew that I wasn?t suicidal, homicidal, or delusional at that time. I also knew I hadn?t convinced the doctor that I wasn?t delusional. I was fairly certain that she intended to fit all of my responses to her into her template of a person with bipolar disorder ? If I was annoyed, I was ?agitated? and ?irritable;? if I disagreed with her, I was ?grandiose; if I spoke with intensity in trying to get something important across, my speech would be seen as ?pressured? or ?racing,? etc. She?d also made it clear that she meant to try to keep me in the hospital until I was ?stabilized? on the medications she?d prescribed for me, and then she had refused to tell me the symptoms I was exhibiting that the medications were expected to ameliorate.
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She [court appointed attorney] told me that I?d probably be released sooner if I just took the medications that were ordered for me. I gave her the following reasons for choosing not to do so:
§ I was not convinced that I actually had the condition I was diagnosed with, and I didn?t want
to take unnecessary medication.
§ The medications have side effects that I wasn?t interested in experiencing needlessly.
§ If I took the medications, I suspected that hospital staff would be inclined to attribute all
normal behaviors to their effects. That I ?responded? to the medications would then become
de facto evidence that I actually had the condition for which they were prescribed.
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On one of these [cigarette] breaks, I mentioned the ?Cell Phone Judge? [had taken a personal call in the midst of the hearing] to another patient. His response was ?Oh, that one. She does that all the time to make us so mad that we?ll act crazy.? Another patient agreed with him. Apparently I was not the only person to have experienced this unique interpretation of due process.
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[on furlough] At the bank I discovered that most of the money in our joint accounts had been removed. I asked for a new ATM card and was issued one, but I was also told that my husband could, at any time, call and report my card stolen and it would be immediately de-activated. So I took half of the money remaining in our joint accounts and opened a new account in my name. Then I withdrew cash from both accounts to insure I?d have some funds if my husband found a way to deprive me of access to those accounts and/or cancelled the credit card I was using.
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Speaking to the psychiatrist- I suggested that if she were truly interested in deriving causation from correlation using hereditary data, she might want to consider the fact that three generations in a row of women married to men in my husband?s family had been involuntarily hospitalized at around the age of fifty ? my mother-in-law, her mother-in-law, and now me. Dr. Spitzer* did not appear to find this information at all significant.
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[Speaking to psychiatrist] When she wanted to talk about the FBI, I?d had enough. I figured that the FBI had its hands full in the Middle East and that I had my hands full right where I was. I was not in the least bit interested in the FBI. I told her that I hadn?t eaten in a day-and-a-half and that I was having a little trouble concentrating, and I asked her if our interview could end. She wanted to know why I hadn?t eaten.
I told her that I was passively protesting my illegal incarceration. I said that passive protest was a traditional strategy of the oppressed, allowing them to register their grievances with their oppressors without risking retaliation. I told her that Mohandas Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had effectively used this form of protest. She made some notes. I imagined that they said something like this: ?Patient self-destructive ? won?t eat.? and ?Patient grandiose ? thinks she?s Gandhi and Martin Luther King.?
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Early that evening a staff member leading a patient group said that we were all in the hospital because we needed help and that, if we were involuntary patients, we were there because we needed to be protected. I lost my temper. I jumped up and shouted, ?That?s bullshit!? As I left the group and headed toward my room I continued shouting that I?d never attempted to harm myself or anyone else; that I was perfectly capable of caring for myself; that I didn?t have any of the symptoms of the disorder I?d been diagnosed with; and that the court had been jacking me around. I yelled that my rights as a citizen of the United States of America and the state of Texas had been violated; that I was supposed to be protected under the Constitution and federal and state laws; and that I didn?t want to hear anymore crap! I got a smattering of
applause from a few patients.
I ran into my room and a tech that was about twice my size started to follow me in. I had a
Styrofoam cup of water in my hand and I held it up toward him and said, ?Don?t come in here or
I?ll throw this at you. I need to be alone.? He said something about restraint and the absurdity of the situation hit me. I looked at my ?weapon? and then I looked at him. Then I quietly said, ?It?s water for heaven sakes. Please give me some time alone.? He must have realized how
impotent and symbolic my gesture was because he walked away and left me to cry quietly in my
room.
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[In court] My husband [an engineer] said that I was manic and needed medication, and that he thought it should be lithium. Dr. Spitzer* asserted that she was quite convinced that I had bipolar disorder and needed medication. She had made this judgement, she said, based on my irritability and agitation, my grandiosity, my family history, my hunger strike, and on my two emotional outbursts over the weekend. She actually said that anyone with this disorder was potentially dangerous unless they were hospitalized and medicated. She backed that up by telling the court that she would refuse to treat a private patient with bipolar disorder if that person refused to go into the hospital to be stabilized on medication.
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It was Wednesday, August 10, when the ?Order to Administer Psychoactive Medication? came
through. I found out when Doctors Schultz* and Adegbola* came to my room to check on how my back spasms were. I said, ?It?s been over two days and I haven?t heard anything from the court.? Dr. Schultz* told me that the order had just come in that morning and that I would be forced to take medication. I was shocked and devastated, although I know I shouldn?t have been. I?d certainly never been given any reason for optimism since this whole ordeal had begun.
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Every time I?d been offered medication in the past I had said that I would only take it if it were court-ordered. I?d never allowed myself to believe it that was possible for that to happen. As medication time neared I found that I was constitutionally incapable of joining the med line and obediently swallowing those pills. If these people were going to force medication on me, they needed to take responsibility for doing just that. I was told to come get my meds and I said, ?No thank you.? The nurse told me that if I didn?t swallow the pills I?d have to have an injection, and I wouldn?t like that. I said, ?Fine. Inject me.?
After all the other patients had taken their pills, everyone but my roommate was told to go into their rooms and to shut their doors. I lay on my back on my bed. A nurse and a large, muscular tech came into my room. The nurse gave me one more chance to swallow pills and I refused.
She told me they would have to give me an injection. I said that I wouldn?t fight them and I
wouldn?t help them. I lay there passively as my pants were unzipped and I was rolled over and
a needle was inserted into my hip. As the hypodermic was emptied into my body, I said, ?What
you are doing to me is very, very wrong.? As they left I asked what was in the needle. She told
me it was Thorazine.
I was so overwhelmed with the enormity of this violation of my person that I couldn?t even cry. I
curled on my bed in a fetal position and shook uncontrollably for almost an hour. Then I went to
sleep. The next morning I was injected with Thorazine again, and again that night, and again
the next morning. I was always offered the opportunity to orally ingest Depakote and Risperdal before I was unzipped, rolled over, and shot up. After the first time, other patients weren?t sent to their rooms.
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On Monday, September 22, [after relenting and taking the drugs] I was considered drugged enough to be released and I was. My ?Discharge Summary,? signed by Dr. Schultz* and Dr. Adegbola* on September 22, had this to say about my condition at discharge: ?The patient was compliant with treatment and tolerated medications. Mood was euthymic with no agitation, suicidal or homicidal ideations. No overt psychosis or bizarre behaviors. The patient was not demonstrating dangerousness to self or others.? Apparently, what my involuntary hospital stay and forced medication had cured was my non-compliance. Everything else noted here was also documented as having been true on September 3 and, prior to that, on August 22.
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Consequences
§ I lost custody of one of my dependent children for eight months. (She came home pregnant in May ? one month short of completing her junior year in high school in Florida.)
§ I lost three part-time jobs that were all to have started during the time I was hospitalized.
§ I lost my volunteer position in my church. The board voted unanimously not to keep me as a
church officer. They knew that I was, and would continue to be, so incapacitated by my mental illness that I wouldn?t be able to fulfill my duties. None of them felt it necessary to even talk to me about that decision before it was made.
§ A lot of former friends and acquaintances avoid me now. Many friends and family members have stopped sending me email. Only two friends and one of my sisters (not the one who took my kid) are comfortable allowing me to talk about what I went through.
§ I have been haunted by recurrent painful memories and bad dreams from having experienced the loss my liberty and privacy, the violation of my body, and the denial my civil rights for six weeks of my life.
§ I have lost faith in my country?s and my state?s commitment to constitutional and legal
protection for all of its citizens.
§ I?m still making payments to the hospital where I was incarcerated.
§ I paid for competent psychiatric care to obtain an accurate diagnosis and to get help in safely discontinuing psychoactive chemicals. It took almost five months.
§ I paid a counselor for psychotherapy to help me deal with the trauma of this experience.
§ I am still uninsured.
And these are but a few highlights!!!