#9—Psychiatric Center: My first stay
Creation Date: 2022/12/05
So, I have come to my first blog article on Psychiatric centers. Back on the first of this month, I wrote my article on my second stay in a General Hospital's bahvioral health unit (or BHU), also known as a behavioral science unit (or BSU). My stay in the Psychiatric hospital lasted for almost six months. I am going to write about all that I can remember. Even today, I am still medicating for fear of imprisonment in Psychiatric hospitals. I have stayed in a psychiatric hospital 3 times (thus far) and I am back in my hometown as I write this blog.
Okay, I am ready for a prep talk.
Prep talk—
I know I am still on "medicine" (pharmacology drugs) and I am still in mental health programs, but I feel that by writing about my experiences in feelings here in this blog, I am slowing regaining my self-esteem after that last 10 years of my life stolen from me by the Office of Mental Health's affiliated facilities, programs and services because of forced drug treatment for a dis-order I don't believe I have.
I have experienced physical and emotional trauma, and now, after ten years in the revolving door, I feel more in control of my emotions when it comes to the experiences of trauma, or so I believe, although I am on anti-psychotics so my range of emotions is quite limited in deed.
I am going to relive visually and auditorily my experience in the Psychiatric center from my first stay, and I know it was a traumatic experience in itself, but I have come so far and I know someday it's possible to recover from the trauma.
As Christ, Jesus, was persecuted for wanting to help others and be helped, I feel my faith grow in Christ every time I am called a schizophrenic, crazy, that my world views are invalid. Thanks and praise from me to the Living God and His Son for leading me to the source of the bells I heard in the distance as child, so that I could hear The Words of the Living God, his prophets, and His Son who was murdered by a democratic mob, who has created a place for me in Heaven when I depart this trauma scene.
I am ready write about the first experience now.
My arrival—
I wrote that I would be transported to the psychiatric cener, or "psychiatric hospital" on the first on the month. I was asked, as a precautionary measure, that I be willing to be strapped to a gerny while in the ambulance. I asked if I had a choice. They said "No". So, I would be transported while strapped to the gerny whether I liked it or not.
The destination was made aware to me prior to the transport, but at the time, I wasn't exactly sure where that would be. The ride lasted for quite some time, so I could tell I was no where near home. And when I arrived, I was taken into the facility on the gerny. I wasn't allowed out of the straps until I was "safely" inside locked doors of the facility after entering an electrically powered gate which allowed access for the ambulance onto the facility grounds.
After I was allowed off the gerny once inside a building, I still did not know exactly where I was because I wasn't shown a map of the location. Once inside, and off the gerny, I was asked to enter a room for the admission process.
Admission—
After the ambulance team left me, I was reluncant to enter any room. I told staff in the psychiatric facility I had no interest in being there and I wanted to leave immediately. They let me know it wasn't going to happen and this was for my own good.
My own good?!? I had been experiencing emotional disturbances for a prolonged time and they wanted to tell me I couldn't return home? Because I wasn't taking medication? They were expounding my emotional trauma. But, finally I gave in. I knew then I would be a prisoner, treated like a slave to something I didn't know what I was getting into at the time.
I gave them hell for holding me hostage there. I was not ready to enter something I knew nothing about. All the information on me from the "dosier" the General Hospital's BHU had started on me was given to the facility, faxed over as they awaited my arrival. I had a realization that I seem to have become a science experiment of some sort for the behavioral health academic community. They wanted to know more about me, but at the same time I would later come to recognize that my emotional and physical trauma was something that the accademic professionals would keep questioning and that the crux of the situation of me being the mental health system now was 'would I take drugs or not'. I will write more about that later.
They took a profile picture of me as an important safety measure, and then instructed me to follow staff as I was led to "the unit" I would spend nearly 6 months on.
The unit—
There are at any one point in time around twenty five or more other clients on the unit, that all have their own treatment plans to adhere to, and that live out months, sometimes years surrounded by the same faces.
It is my experience in a psychiatric facility that there are not those who have been trained as a "peer support specialist" on adult units. Yes, adult units. So, that is to say these facilities have children units as this was a civil hospital.
I have learned that there are two types of Psychiatric hospitals affiliated with the Office of Mental Heath, one being a civil hospital and the other being a forensic Psychiatric hospital used by the court system to "find competence" in those undergoing either a criminal trial or are in jail to find inmates in competence and cooperation of the findings of a judgement passed down on the inmate by a judge or jury. Again, this was a civil hospital I was in, and yet I was treated as if I had committed a crime for wanted help with my emotional disturbances because of the perpetual physical and emotional trauma I had experienced since I was a child.
As for a "peer support speccialist", one who advocates and helps report accademic malpractice to the Office of Mental Health in affiliated mental health programs, services and facilities, the were 'therapy aids' to more or less keep clients on track, get them into groups, and report in democratic fashion non-compliance with the whole treatment deal. Therapy aids in the psychiatric hospitals I have been in are either 'your best friends or worst enemies' in a classical sense.
But, I now what to get to forced treatment. That is to say "forced drug administrations".
Mental health courts—
Mental health facilities have a court system that streamlines forced drug administration to clients who are either, in democratic fashion, deemed non-compliant or are regarded as in an emergency while on unit. When I say streamlined, these courts need no witnesses of trial. They are in all practicality held in secret and involved a "mental hygiene" lawyer that represents the client. What I have come to learn is that mental hygiene lawyers tend to protect the interest of the facility. It's how the Office of Mental Health's affiliated facilities maintain control of liability when it comes to drug administration, because the drugs are known to have in some cases adverse side-effects, and for maintaining control of which drugs are to be used and the method of administration. It really doesn't matter in America if a client doesn't want drugs, or wants out of a facility. I have learned that the only way to get back into the world is if you take the drugs, willingly or in compliance with a court order to take them. Qutie frankly, it's either take the drugs or be in a psychiatric prison for who knows how long.
Afer thirty days of not participating in the drug aspect of treatment at the facility I was in, I experienced the feelings of being taken to court to force the drug aspect. I already knew how the drugs were affecting me. I was a believer in the Almighty Living God and His Living Word, and I believed I would be let out. Oh, to the contrary.
Forced to take drugs—
Schizophrenia is one of the more "severe" "illnesses" (or mental dis-orders if you are a high education academic). After thirty days of not taking drugs at the facility for the diagnosis I don't believe legitimate, a court hearing took place for forced drug administration I would either not have to take or be forced take via court order. I was in a foreign land and I was up against the odds.
The court found that I needed to have drugs administered and my heart dropped. I lost some faith in the Living God's will for me because I felt He would never allow such a thing to take place.
I had little time to comply and allow drug administration afer the court hearing or else I would have to be restrained, strapped to a bed and drugs injected into my body even if I was a Holy Roman Catholic follower and had faith in the Living God. It didn't matter that I believed in virtuous ethics, the ethics of the mental health courts is some other ethics that I found years later to be in conflict with true ethics. I found myself in the mental health system trying to overcome the adversity of emotional trauma and I was being forced to take drugs for a dis-order I didn't know what was, other than delusions. I was young in adulthood and couldn't comprehend that I was about to be forced to do something I didn't want to do, so I said I would not comply with the order because it was not what Christ, Jesus, would have wanted for his flock. I was strapped to a bed and I was administered an anti-psychotic injection.
I felt singularity like I had never felt before in Christ, Jesus' life. I was completely demoralized. After the anti-psychotic kicked in at as high a dosage as it was, all I could do was sit in a chair and feel nothing at all, because that is how that drug works.
There was also a pill I had to take, and later in life, the dosage I was to take was actually twice the legitimate level anybody should take of that specific drug. I was so out of consiousness for the remainder of my time at the facility the first time, group therapy sessions meant little and I learned little about mental health treatments. I spent countless days nearly passed out in a chair, all because I sought help to straighten out my mentality and outlook on life after years of perpetual physical and emotional trauma.
Group therapy—
Group therapy felt like being back in academia courses. As I have mentioned in previous blog articles it became apparent to me that group therapy sessions are segmented and there is information in each group therapy session to support other groups which I found best to try and correlate to establish a basis for release and "discharge" from the facility.
Now, this being my first time in the facility, which has a revolving door, group therapy was hard for me to get into because I was half asleep all day every day because of the drugs that I was forced to take at such high-level dosages. I was already completely demoralized from the drugs I got little out of therapy. I simply relied on my virtuous ethical lifestyle to create my demeanor and outlook after taking drugs. I couldn't think on drugs. I had virtually no emotions while on drugs. I struggled hardcore in group therapy.
The best I could do was be kind and willing to have a conversation with other clients, mind you if I was on drugs or else if I wasn't on drugs clients viewed me as someone they didn't want to associate with. I am still not sure why.
There was one group therapy which by the end of one session, and many days on the drugs, I was willing to speak to the group faculty why I might have a disturbance in my mentality and outlook on life. This person was a psychologist, and I wrote him a note for the end of the session.
My first psychologist—
One day, at the end of a group therapy session I felt done trying to remain resolved in the life of Christ, Jesus, and wrote the psychologist a note and a certain traumatic experience that had happened to me many times in my life. When I had given him the note, they seemed genuine in accepting what had happened to me, but I have pondered in recent years their actions after that considering the diagnosis that had been given to the facility prior to my entry into the facility. The General Hospital let the Psychiatric center "know" that "they believed I was "delusional".
The psychologist asked me to have private one-on-one sessions with them to go over the trauma. But, again, I was not familiar with the mental health system. I was only starting my academic research into the field when I was hospitalized at the General Hospital in my hometown for the second time by the local police. I was hesitant to go over it with this psychologist because they weren't on my "treatment team" and I wanted to be compliant, you know? But I gave it a go with the "blessing" on the team because I had confided in this psychologist. So I had a session with them.
The session started with me reaffirming what I had written. But then, the psychologist asked me if I would accept hypnotherapy to help relieve the trauma.
So. Hypnosis.—
Now, I have experience witnessing first hand how powerful that hypnosis can be. I knew a woman who was in a motor vehicle collision and her leg pain seemed to be excruciating. She opted for hypnosis to trick her mind into thinking nothing of the pain and it worked! There was also the fact that her husband coerced her into letting the psychotherapist "wipe her mind" of knowing people in her life whom she had relationships with. He wanted her to forget me. And forget me she did. When I tried to contact her after "the wipe", she did not have any recollection of whom I was. It made me lose faith in the Living God. I was in all practicality "dead" to her life. I was cast out of her life, as if I was unwanted. Unwanted by her husband. It might have had something to do with her falling in love me over time as we spoke often, it was just that I knew she was married and I am not the type to meddle in marital affairs. It got to the point where she told me she felt I was her soul mate. I was still in love with someone I had been out of a relationship for close to three years and I didn't know what to say. She had spoken to her husband about the relationship we developed, and that she was ready to leave him for me. I spoke to her husband after that and he was willing to accept that she believed I was her soul mate. I did everything in my power to salvage the marriage between them as they had children. As I said, I was still in love with somebody else three years apart. The thing was the couple were Mormons and believed strongly in soulmates. Because I ended up denying the lady of me whom she believed strongly that I was her soulmate led her to want to cast me out of her life as if she had never met me. And when I spoke to her while her husband was there, she knew little of our relationship after the accident and her hypnosis therapy sessions. I was in all effect erased from her mind. Her husband and I spoke after the hypnosis and I agreed to let it be.
Hypnosis has that power. Hypnosis can wipe interactions, relationships from a person's "knowing". When the psychologist asked me in the one-on-one if they could hypnotize me, I wanted to know "to what end?". The instructed me that they wanted to pull the memory from my mind to inform them of the trauma, as if to say they didn't believe me, but were "faithful" in their training to hypnotizing people into recalling memories.
Now, as much as the physical and emotional trauma affects me even today, I don't want to lose my memories. I don't want to become a slave to hypnosis and lose my life in Christ, Jesus. If they can wipe the memory of a soulmate from someone, they can wipe my undaunting faith in Christ, Jesus, from my mind. That I can't let happen, and I already had a feeling that the mental health system hates religious people, considering a life in Christ, Jesus, a delusion that can be corrected with pharmacology drugs and group therapy, hypnosis to.
As much I had a terrible feeling about the situation, I allowed the Psychology academic the benefit of the doubt and gave it a go. They pulled out a pocket watch and told me to follow the watch with my eyes while they swung it like a pendulum to certain degrees. I did and then they told me to close my eyes. I did and then they told me to recall the memory. The hypnosis effect didn't work on me and I was consious. I can recall the experiences I have had physically and emotionally without hypnosis, yet the psychologist seemed hesitant, reluctant to accept my memories of the trauma because I couldn't be hypnotized and while hypnotized, recall the trauma. I ended the treatment, and I did not have another session with that psychologist one-on-one again because they questioned me. I could not accept that academic professionals were questioning my trauma. I did, however, have to continue group therapy sessions with this Psychologist with the other clients as part of the treatment plan.
The rest of my first stay inpatient at the psychiatric hospital was spent eating meals, taking pills, and most days I was practically sleep-walking over-medicated on anti-psychotics.
Food and drugs—
One of the drugs I was forced to take in tablet form - or if I was non-compliant with taking the drug every single day while I was there, regardless if I attended group sessions, there was an injectable form of the drug - had a side-effect built into the programming of the pharmacology behind it's creation.
The side-effect that concerned me with the drug was that it compelled me to consume food fast and plentifully. When I was admitted to the psychiatric center, I had not lived a life prior to the stay in behavioral health programs and facilities, I worked, I studied, and I lived a wild social life. My average body weight had been around 145/155 lbs. ever since I had graduated my hometown highschool and received my diploma.
This particular side-effect of weight-gain caused by taking the drug for prolonged periods of time influenced my eating habits so much that I increased in body weight all the way to averaging 200 lbs. whilst consuming the drug as part of treatment.
I felt starved always waiting for the next meal, praying to the Living God to sustain me between meals, because that one drug was controlling my desire to consume food and how I felt when it came to emptiness nutrionally. That drug, and the feelings it gave me, the weight I gained, was a nightmare, and the staff wouldn't cease the forced drug treatment no matter how many times I let them know I was starving and practically sleep-walking all day. I even had trouble breathing. I had never been overweight before, I was in all types of athletics and community programs throughout my life.
I had no control over when I could eat or what I would be served. Days were planned by the hospital but did allow access to a snackbar located on the grounds in another building, but only if I was compliant with the court-backed treatment plan whilst I remained inpatient. The snackbar was a vending machine. However, the facility as part of treatment allowed for off-"campus" time for those who were nearing treatment goals that are worked into the plan to get people ready to get back home and back to societal life.
The 'pre-release' program—
When I was meeting treatment goals, I had more control over my daily activities. I began the process of 'day passes' and over-nights back home.
Day passes allowed for exiting the facilities under the condtion that I return, least the local police departments go looking for me, and lock me back up in the facility. There were rules, and I followed them.
When I left the place for 'day passes', the area and community in the surrounding area was something of a business district so there was always shopping I could do. There was also a library up the main road where I would spend the longer 'day pass' alloted times. Day pass alloted time was incremental in alloted time when clients complied with all rules and there were no reported 'disturbances' in the community.
Family members came and saw on in-facility visits. There were also days I was allowed to go out and about with family. They brought me my clothes and shoes from home early in treatment so I didn't have to where facility issued clothing the entire time, a luxury some clients didn't have, and that saddened me.
Eventually, after full compliance and treatment goals were reached, I was allowed "discharge" from the facility and I returned home.
I had employment offers and I was able to get back into the workforce almost immediately on release, but I had to stay on the pharmacology drugs while working with the facility's outpatient clinic services team.
This team was an assertive community treatment team operating in junction with the psychiatric center I was at to keep people on the drugs, and if non-complaint, have the police return them to the hospital to go back through the program. There is a fear factor effect with this type of service, but it was the only option available to clients who were deemed compliant with treatment and the insurance billing for inpatient stays could no longer be justified. In retrospect, ACT teams associated with inpatient stay psychiatric centers seem like a work-around for insurance billing, keep the clients on a short leash with in-home care management to make sure there isn't a liability factor as well.
Back to work—
So, I returned home after time nearing six months combined between the general hospital's BHU/BSU and the inpatient long-term stay psychiatric 'hospital'/center. I was over-medicated, over weight, and no longer had the social life and friends, contacts when I returned. There was always family around from time to time, and I always knew I could count on them, unless it was with help coming off pharma drug use, then I was on my own.
I am going to dedicate this blog article to the life in Christ, Jesus, and to my family.