In light of the recent events and media discussions pertaining to the issue of sexual violence, we feel that it is of the utmost importance to speak out about this issue in the context of psychiatry and the treatment of those perceived as mentally ill. As victims of psychiatric coercion, we wanted to share some of the sexual violations and abuses we experienced in the name of “medical treatment,” such as forced catheterization, being watched while showering, and legal sexual assault.
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Rudy’s Story
I have been forcibly hospitalized three times. The first time was while serving in the army in 2009, and the second and third times were in 2014 about a month apart. All of these hospitalizations were traumatizing for a variety of reasons, but the third time was by far the worst.
In 2014, I was in community college and was experiencing a great deal of stress due to pushing myself too hard. As a 26-year-old college student, I felt like a failure for having taken so long to begin college. I also felt ashamed of having a mental health diagnosis and being discharged from the army for that reason. I never felt like I quite fit in with my classmates or with students taking part in the extracurricular activities I participated in, such as my theater group. I was scared that I would never fit in or be normal.
One day, as I was driving to rehearsal for my theater group, I began to panic. I felt intense anxiety due to not being able to learn my lines as a result of the psychiatric medications I was taking. When I arrived at the theater, I became catatonic. The director called the ambulance, and I was put in restraints and taken to the emergency room. Although I was only in the emergency room for a few hours, the experience felt traumatizing and further isolated me from my peers.
Wanting to put that experience behind me, I continued with school and theater. However, the pressure kept building up. I started to feel like I couldn’t handle it, and I didn’t see a solution. I did not wish to drop out of school, but I also could not see myself making it to the end of the semester.
One day, just a few hours before rehearsal, I isolated myself in my room, hiding under my covers, feeling like everything in the outside world was just too much. A friend came to check on me, and I was unresponsive. My friend then called my roommate, who called the police.
Before I could fully grasp what was going on, the paramedics arrived at my apartment. Because I was catatonic and unable to respond, they put me on a stretcher in four-point restraints and took me to the emergency room. The whole ride, I felt terrified, not knowing what would happen next. Eventually, I regained my ability to speak and begged the paramedics to take me out of the restraints. They didn’t listen. To them, I was just a mental patient, not a person with a voice.
When we arrived at the emergency room, I was taken to a bed, still in restraints. A nurse approached me, telling me she needed to take a urine sample and would need to catheterize me because I was restrained. I pleaded with her to take me out of restraints so I could go to the bathroom on my own.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” I said. “When I was in the hospital the last time, they let me go to the bathroom on my own. I’ve never been violent.”
She shook her head, dismissively. “I can’t take you out of restraints,” she said. She then prepared the catheter.
It was in that moment that I realized how little people actually cared about me or respected my autonomy. No one in the hospital cared about what I wanted or what I was comfortable with happening to my own body. Even though no one disputes that catheterization is a painful procedure, the nurse did not seem to care how it would affect me.
The nurse then pulled my pants and underwear down to my ankles and forced a tube into the tip of my penis. I felt a type of pain I had never felt before. I asked her to stop, telling her how painful it was. She would not stop. I felt incredibly helpless and humiliated. The whole experience was infantilizing — I was seen as so crazy, abnormal, and ill that I could not even be trusted to use the bathroom on my own.
After the nurse had collected the urine sample, she left the catheter in me for another half hour. I continued to experience pain and a sensation of pressure.
Eventually, a paramedic approached me, and for the first time that day, I was treated like a person. She tried to comfort me and assured me that I was not the only person to whom this had happened. She made jokes and even looked up famous people with mental health diagnoses. I asked her to take the catheter out, and she obtained approval to do so. Even though it felt humiliating and painful for her to do this procedure, I was relieved to have it out.
I was soon taken out of restraints, only to be transferred to a psychiatric ward for seven days. I did return to school, but the entire experience haunted me and continues to haunt me.
For the next two years, I felt that I could not tell anyone about my forced catheterization. I felt like no one else would treat it as a big deal. After all, it was a medical procedure done for my own good. I was worried that it wasn’t a real abuse that I had the right to feel angry or upset about.
I was also beginning a career in mental health advocacy. I was worried that speaking out about my experience would be seen as criticism of mental health treatment and discouragement from seeking help, and I felt that my credibility as an advocate would be ruined if I spoke about it as abuse. I felt pressure to reframe my forced catheterization, as well as my forced hospitalizations and restraints, as positive experiences that occurred for my own good. For these reasons I remained silent.
In 2016, I became involved with the psychiatric survivors community. I attended the Alternatives Conference, and although I was still skeptical of critical psychiatry ideas, I began to educate myself and engage with that community. Eventually, I told my story of forced catheterization, and for the first time, my pain was validated by fellow psychiatric survivors. One person responded that it was a form of sexual assault. I suddenly realized that it was okay to feel violated by what had happened; I wasn’t making a big deal out of nothing.
I started sharing my forced catheterization on social media and at local presentations. Although I was met with criticism, I felt empowered enough to not let that silence me.
Forced catheterization — and all forced treatment — needs to be stopped. This is a prime example of how the healthcare system rushes to take someone’s rights away based on the perception that a person is mentally ill. This is how the healthcare system treats people who are isolated, scared, stressed, anxious, and vulnerable. This is how the healthcare system treats veterans who are dealing with the trauma of the military, college students who are under pressure to be successful academically, and people dealing with all sorts of life hardships.
My experience taught me how different things would be if I had been treated in a humane, compassionate way. If I had been able to talk to a friend or a therapist, or even just given the permission to isolate myself in my room and be unresponsive for a short period of time, instead of being put in restraints and having my bodily autonomy violated, I would have felt free to express myself and do what I need to do to get through my crisis. Instead, I was further traumatized, and I still live with the fear that I will be hospitalized, restrained, and violated again.
Christina’s Story
As the founder of the Everyday Psych Victims Project, I’ve been a psych victim myself multiple times. Typically, even just recounting the story or the background of why it happened can make people think I am “crazy” or having a “relapse” — which is not true. It’s full of shame. One of the most shocking abuses is the “legal” sexual assault I have experienced — twice with catheters — which felt like rape. No one seems to believe it’s possible to forcibly catheterize someone during an evaluation, but I’ve written about it online for 1 ½ years. I also reported it, but no health departments have ever substantiated any of my claims.
The first time it happened to me, I was restrained in an emergency room in Kirkland, Washington. I had been feeling physically ill for the past two weeks, with symptoms including a burning and pulsing sensation in my blood, as well as swollen feet and hypersensitivity to light, air pressure, and temperature, and breathing issues. I began to have some fears that I might have carbon monoxide poisoning. Someone eventually called an ambulance, and when the paramedics arrived, I made the mistake of admitting that I had a psychiatric diagnosis. This led to me being put in restraints immediately.
At the emergency room, I had forgotten to pee into the cup for the urine test in the bathroom or into the bedpan that had been repeatedly shoved beneath me. “Pee or we will use a catheter! Pee or we will use a catheter!” yelled the ER worker. When I didn’t urinate, they decided to forcibly catheterize me. Two ER workers held my legs open while another one shoved the catheter in.
The experience felt violent and terrifying. I felt like I wanted to die due to their force and asked them to kill me, while screaming no. They ignored my pleas and desperate attempts to escape the situation by any means possible. I screamed that I felt like they were raping me. One of the women paused for a second but then continued anyways.
Before my second experience of forced catheterization, I had almost passed out from the sun at a gas station, which led to the ambulance being called. When the EMTs arrived, they decided to conduct a psychiatric evaluation. This resulted in me being detained in the emergency room in Los Angeles, California for hours, even though I was just dehydrated and needed some water.
Again, three people forcibly catheterized me, even though I was totally able bodied and able to use the bathroom myself. I didn’t bother protesting, since I wasn’t listened to the first time and I knew my voice would not matter this time, either. The procedure was for the purpose of drug testing me, even though there was no sign I had taken drugs, and the results came back negative. It is absolutely appalling that healthcare professionals do this forceful procedure to those accused of taking illegal drugs, while they also are able to force people to take legal drugs (i.e. psychiatric drugs) that are just as harmful.
I have also experienced other sexual violations while locked up in psychiatric wards and detained for psychiatric reasons. I was once watched while showering when I didn’t want to shower. The psychiatric hospital staff claimed I had lice, even though I only had dandruff, and used this as grounds to label me as “gravely disabled” and unable to care for myself, and said I therefore needed to be held in the psychiatric ward longer. They then forced me to shower using lice shampoo while three mental health workers watched. I felt like an animal.
Moreover, everyday people are subjected to sexually violating injections in the buttocks, and I experienced this myself. It was incredibly humiliating to have my pants pulled down on top of receiving a harmful injection. I can’t help but wonder whether this specifically is done for the purpose of inspiring fear, intimidation, violation, and control in order to scare patients into taking pills, agreeing to take drugs before their competency hearing, and being compliant. If professionals wanted to make the procedure more humane (not that any forced injection can ever be humane), many drugs can be injected in a patient’s upper arm.
Another aspect of my experience with forced hospitalization that felt especially degrading was when the hospital somehow lost my underwear and I had to wear either their underwear or none at all.
One of the worst aspects of all of this is the fact that the professionals who violated me in this way make a profit from these kinds of abuses. Insurance companies pay for drug tests, even those that require forced catheterization. I have thousands of dollars of debt from my involuntary holds, emergency room visits, and ambulance rides.
For anyone who has been “legally” sexually assaulted by “medical professionals,” you are not alone. The feelings of anger, shame, and violation are possibly worse when it is done legally than when it is done illegally by non-professional perpetrators. This perpetuates silence and victim-blaming. I will stick to Motivationology — a new initiative I am founding — as well as my own goals, ideas, and more positive pursuits instead of so-called “mental health” and its brainwashing and abuses.
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We hope that one day, mainstream discussions of sexual violence will include the types of abuses and violations that are currently legal — the acts that occur at the hands of “medical professionals” just because an individual has been given a mental health diagnosis. We hope that survivors of sexual violence in the mental health system will one day no longer suffer in shame and silence but instead be encouraged to speak out and share their stories, and stand with those who have said, “Me too.”
The psychiatric survivors community and critical psychiatry community need to work toward stopping these sexual violations from happening to anyone else. More survivors and critical psychiatry advocates need to speak out about this issue by writing op-eds, holding protests, and engaging in political and social action. The time is now.
I have never heard of forced catherisation before. It sounds very degrading. The whole experiences that you two describe sound like police state activities. Very shocking indeed.
Thanks for saying that it is wrong, but it definitely happens! I’m really glad that Rudy’s story is there too, so then people see that it doesn’t happen to a single person only. It also happened twice. Once in EvergreenHealth in Kirkland (I guess delete the name if I’m now allowed to say where), WA in Jan 2014 after those about 2 weeks of IMO 24/7 like torture and traveling around. Then in Cedars Sinai, Los Angeles, CA Oct 2016. There’s so much shame in speaking out. It’s either called a ‘relapse’ for just admitting the truth, or ‘crazy.’
OMG, that is just AWFUL! I can see no rationalization, even in the crazy rules of the psychiatric world, for restraining a person who is not violent, and this catheterization is just plain abuse. I can only imagine the rage I would feel after having this done against my will!!!! You are kind not to have beaten them to a pulp at the first opportunity. The shame you felt should be THEIRS! THEY are the ones who deserve to feel awful about the violence they perpetrated for you!
Hard to fight back when restrained, with false paperwork that claims a ‘danger to self or others’ and unable to leave the facility. The shame comes from the label. Also, no health departments ever substantiate claims. Upon that, for medical board reports, they want the doctor’s name. I tried reporting Cedars Sinai from the 2016 one, but I think I got no reply. Also, I never have a clue who any of these people are. Just random strangers that seem to be ‘attacking.’ There’s absolutely no one who will hold them accountable.
I agree. Shame in our culture is heaped upon its victims to protect the powerful from accountability. Such shame, is in my opinion, the result of repressed RAGE against the powerful using their power for evil. It’s not safe to express the rage, so it turns into shame. It is also true that there is no obvious target for the appropriate rage, so it ends up that we turn it on ourselves. Which to me makes the violations that much worse – there is not even an opportunity to fight back!
I don’t turn rage toward myself – I externalize. That’s a huge part of Motivationology theory. However, I did get in trouble not only at 1 university, but 2 for “mental health” related/”behavior” BS. It’s not allowed to say it is wrong especially when connected to MH (victim is always wrong), and then for many, the sexual things are also not allowed bc oooooh it must really wreck a person. But I think MH is worse…
Thank you for this article. I am also a person who has shouted “Rape!” while 4 to 5 people rushed into a room where I was kept in isolation, to bring me to the ground and hold me down while forcibly removing my pants and underwear to inject me. This happened repeatedly, all while I was under evaluation and before I was ever admitted to a hospital. Once they locked me in, they also locked the door to the adjoining bathroom so that I had to urinate on the floor. They had locked me in after I left the room (like a normal doctor’s office room) to walk down the hall and look out the window – not because I was dangerous, but because I didn’t realize that, as a non-normal person, I wasn’t allowed to leave. I was surrounded (by men; I am a woman) and forced back in. The violence followed. I can see no justification for any of these actions except for the convenience of the staff. Some time later, I wrote to my local Omsbudman to report physical abuse of a sexual nature, also stating that being forced to defecate on the ground like an animal was an abuse of my basic rights. I stated that I had previously experienced sexual assault and that the actions of the mental health staff had retraumatized me. In response, I was told that the county facility responsible had since been privatized, and so an institution that did not exist could not be held accountable. I feel continued rage that unethical sexual violence against me is seen as justified in the eyes of the law, and terror that it could happen again because I know just how powerless I am as “the other.” I would also like to mention that the medication I was forcibly injected had no discernible effect – only a very few medications are effective for me, and that wasn’t one of them. However, I will now have a lifelong fear of mental health intervention.
Hi Valeriandreams, I added your story onto our Psych Victims website at: https://www.psychvictims.com/stories/view/unethical-sexual-violence-against-me-is-seen-as-justified-in-the-eyes-of-the-law
It’s repulsive how people are treated as lesser humans due to this. You’re equal and deserve to be treated that way, not frightened like an animal.
Even with mainstream organizations, victims may not have a say. RiseUS just created their FIRST ever “Survivors Town Hall” at the United Nations General Assembly in NYC, this 2019.
“unethical sexual violence against me is seen as justified in the eyes of the law” – I hope that we can continue to push these problems into the mainstream. I’m active with the Free Britney Spears rallies and movements. It’s pushing it into the mainstream. I see nothing about it here – but it’s changing, slowly.
I’m sorry you were both subjected to such horrible sexual abuse, by for-profit “medical professionals.” I absolutely agree, forced treatment needs to end, and no one should be forced to pay for forced treatment.
I was able to get a hospital that wanted a $5000 payment for an unneeded forced physical – I had been lying in a park, minding my own business, watching the clouds roll by, I apparently missed the announcement that relaxing in a park is now proof one requires medical care – to agree that I shouldn’t be required to pay for their unneeded physical. I pointed out the hospital neglected to get HIPPA forms signed, and I had politely declined medical care. This unneeded physical resulted in a “medically clear” diagnosis, but then they illegally shipped me in the middle of the night to the exact same psychiatrist who’d “snowed” me three years prior, despite the fact she was NOT my psychiatrist.
That psychiatrist’s partner in crime was finally convicted by the FBI because he had lots and lots of patients medically unnecessarily shipped long distances to himself, then he “snowed” the patients until they stopped breathing, so he could perform unneeded tracheotomies on the patients for profit. I had been medically unnecessarily shipped a long distance to him, was admitted with a non-existent “chronic airway obstruction,” then was “snowed.” Today’s medical community has lost it’s moral compass, and truly should be ashamed of themselves.
Just an FYI, today’s “bipolar” drug cocktails, particularly combining the antidepressants and/or antipsychotics (aka neuroleptics) can create both the negative and positive symptoms of “schizophrenia,” or the mania and depression of “bipolar.” The negative symptoms (or what may seem like depression) can be created via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome. And the positive symptoms (like psychosis) can be created via antidepressant and/or antipsychotic induced anticholinergic toxidrome. The antidepressants are well known to cause mania, even according to the DSM-IV-TR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-Induced_Deficit_Syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
But, of course, the doctors claim ignorance of these known psychiatric drug induced illnesses, because they’ve conveniently been left out of the DSM billing code “bible.”
Likely the lying in the park being illegal part has to do with homelessness. People who are homeless basically can be medically trafficked. Let’s call all this medical trafficking. For example, I tested it out once in Sacramento to ask some people about shelters. One worker at Walmart’s reaction? “Why don’t you go to a hospital?” “No, they would kill me!” So he agreed and backed off, again, has NO idea about ANY shelters in their city of what, 400,000 people? Same ignorance by the desk staff. Also, imagine having ANY idea of getting there. People also won’t let people inside because they have dogs… or if they DO… they can call 911 on you, just like when I was tired while driving in Washington at night that Jan 2014.
But how creepy is it… mind you that they had NO IDEA OR ANY WAY of knowing ANY ex-diagnosis during this test. So what is it? Hospitals are the new torture centers? Seems like it. Meanwhile, forget finding a TEMPORARY PLACE TO JUST CHILL OUT AND GO HOME LATER.
What is “snowing”? Is that drugging so much that people have terrible physical effects? Yes, it is for profit. It’s medical trafficking. And it’s like our version of being trafficked from network to network. All assault, even sexually violating, is ‘legal.’
I was sexually assaulted by a male co-patient in the Psychiatric Intensive Care unit at the Royal Jubilee Hospital. In my view, locked wards should be segregated.
At Colony Farm, the forensic psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam, I was stripped and thrown under a shower in full view of a male nurse.
Awful! I just wish it were surprising or unusual. I’m glad you’ve found a pathway out, though I understand you’re still working on escaping, at least you have that as a goal. Hang in there, and thanks for sharing!
It is really more common than people think. Though no one wants to believe victims. Then you read and hear about sex in wards.
Christina and Rudy, you both have my deepest sympathies. What you went through was not even #fakescience. It was simply TORTURE.
My quacks needed only their prescription pad to perpetrate sexual violence. Their narcotics caused me to suffer numerous debilitating “side effects”, including “sexual dysfunction”. For years, I was poisoned to the point where I couldn’t reach an orgasm. By destroying that function, my quacks had greatly reduced my quality of life. And it took me over a year to build up the courage to ask my quacks for help. When I did, they just laughed in my face and told me to “cope”. Of the MANY, MANY abuses that repelled me from psychiatry, that one is still the hardest one to talk about. Fortunately, though, it DID compel me to decisively bail on psychiatry. And after months of abstinence from the psychiatric narcotics, my sex drive had returned. I am very, VERY glad that I’ve put myself ahead of psychiatry. #MeToo #JustSayNo
#JustSayNo is a good one! Though as seen, saying “no” still causes it to be forced. Daryl Brown does a lot about PSSD (sexual dysfunction from psych drugs), and he works with us on Everyday Psych Victims Project! Feel free to ask him for an interview 🙂 He uploads podcasts onto our YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/c/everydaypsychvictimsproject. Message and follow us at http://www.facebook.com/PsychVictims.
There’s some kind of “mental health” enabling/victim-blaming reaction in society to sexual violence or violations.
For many the sexual dysfunction rape from psychiatric drugs is permanent. This is what a lot of people call PSSD.
Despite being off the drugs thousands are still raped by PSSD. In just the UK alone the ‘drug regulator’ the MHRA put this number of irreversible cases of induced sexual dysfunction function to more than 20% of all the antidepressant-induced sexual dysfunctions reported. It is about 60%, more than half of all antidepressant users that are generally reporting induced sexual dysfunction while still on the drugs. Both Antipsychotics and Antidepressants unbeknown to ‘mental patients’ are actually used to chemically castrate sex offenders!
Some people do not get to go back to normal, and the sexual violence inflicted on them is a lifelong irreversible damage. I do a lot of interviews for the Everyday PsychVictims Project on victims of PSSD on youtube. I have just interviewed a victim of the open eugenics sterilization board of North Carolina, with me a PSSD victim. That will be uploaded anytime now.
I am also running a marathon campaign called ‘Run Against Castration’ in support of the rxisk.org prize crowdfunding campaign to cure permanent sexual dysfunction and other persisting harms from psychiatric drugs.
Please support it too
Thanks so much for commenting here, Daryl 😀
Thanks for everyone’s posts on here. When saying it, it’s either ignored or causes an attack. It’s as if the person always deserves the restraints, lock up, and forced “mental health” because just being forced into it must mean that “you have a problem.” They cannot think that “professionals” could ever not be trusted or make violations, despite like 450,000 deaths per year or something from medical mistakes.
Actually, those are not all or even mostly from medical “Mistakes”. The majority of those deaths are from properly prescribed and properly administered pharmaceuticals. Visiting a doctor is dangerous, especially a psychiatrist!
The 450,000 thousand is an optimistic guess. The profession trust that is embedded in the US culture prevents any actual hard numbers from being generated. Also, this figure applies only to death and not the millions of other injuries caused by poorly performed procedures, unnecessary procedures (many cases of biopsy, radiation, chemo and removal of benign “tumors”/epithelial lesions) and drugging people without a therapeutic component in doing so (psychiatric drugs but also statins because it has been known for decades that dietary cholesterol does not influence blood level cholesterol in people with good liver function). It is little wonder to me that we spend more on “health care” now than we ever have and we are a far sicker society. Overall cost is not an accurate way to measure positive outcomes.
If you had a “heart attack risk test” “prior” to statins, the cholesterol levels would only be a fairly small feature.
I sympathise with you.
I had a catheter inserted following one suicide attempt in the early 1980s in Ireland while under observation. The doctor was quite irritated at me being in the ward – but he was respectful.
I had experienced a number of suicidal hospitalizations in the early 1980s in Southern Ireland while on “medication” suitable for SMI ( – and none since).
My Main Violation in the Irish “MH” System was the ignoring by qualified staff of extrapyrammidal drug effects and neurological drug damage.
First time that I’ve heard it happening to anyone else (other than since writing this story)! Was it when restrained also?
It seems more like punishment. It certainly seemed like that the first time.
I wasn’t restrained at all.
When I look at my Records I see that every hospitalization I had bar the first one was a suicidal event (Akathisia). And on my first hospitalization in 1980 in Ireland I was judged to be quite well.
My Psychiatrists objection to me had been my inability to Function, but I could only function when I came off the medication in 1984. I explained this to my Psychiatrist in 1986 after I had recovered, and I also described my suicidal drug reactions.
Shortly afterwards he registered in Ontario (Canada) License no. 57892
Speciality: Non Specialist.
I think this demonstrates the impact of violating a person very clearly. It can also be used to convey, in some small way, the sexual abuse of children who cannot place words to the things that happen to them or defend themselves intellectually.
Any profession that aims to improve health and ignores the sheer magnitude of sexual abuse is unethical and dishonest. That would sum up psychiatry in a few words. They are not about helping anyone but rather demonstrating their power and authority regardless of the impact on the people they come in contact with. I remain unhopeful about the current conversation actually translating into resolve to reduce the sexual abuse. We have become a nation known first and foremost for our lip service to all issues.
Thanks for your courage and determination to make waves and make change!!!
Thanks for the comments that this is wrong. Indeed, each time psych victimized, and we are violated like this, it sticks a long time. IMO it could be worse than when illegally done, because it is ‘legalized’ as if it is your problem. It makes one fear urine tests. The point is that it is always forceful when involuntary too because they want insurance money and judge permissions. Judges seem to go to psych facilities just to process people.
I am a doctor. I don’t think any patient should ever have anything done to them against their will. A forced catheterization is an assault. Placing someone in restraints is an assault unless circumstances require it. Forced medication is an assault. A forced psychiatric exam is an invasion of privacy. I don’t think psychiatric treatment should be forced on anyone. Any patient should be able to say no to any unwanted treatment. These stories illustrate some serious problems with medical care in the us and it needs to change.
That is nice, though the worst, and most intense situations were in emergency rooms. Even though shorter, there were far more people crying, screaming NO once in other rooms, restraints, and forced catheters. It almost feels like it is done to break you, so then you are forced into a psych hospital, and have to pull it together to just leave. Freak you out on purpose.
Since I was never in an ambulance before becoming a psych victim (victim of psych industry), I actually don’t know personally if the restraints on the ambulances were not supposed to happen. Also, Los Angeles goes even further with 5 points, like over the chest too. Seemed like it was all just an instant psych hold. I don’t exactly travel anymore, so no more impounded cars, or any ‘almost pass out from sun’ things, called FALSELY catatonic, etc, when just leaning on a trash can in the SHADE, not saying much.
Even at my first ‘official’ involuntary psych hold at Contra Costa, Martinez (where I think I heard the woman in the other room screaming no, stop?! it gets blurry), even though a “real MD” noticed maybe some chest/heart area pains from me (like I made motions with my hands bc as I said, my blood/cardiovascular whatever had REAL ISSUES), did he stop the psych hold? No. Those days I could still laugh at it though.
I will just state the violation of someones mind-brain with involuntary electroshock is wrong.
Supposed doctors induce a seizure on the brain.
Voluntary VS involuntary electroshock patient is the critical point here, as patients did seek “paroxysms” .
From 1953 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13179226
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/paeb9k/doctors-created-vibrators-after-growing-tired-of-masturbating-hysterical-women.
Today they directly “stimulate” the brain with electricity (instead of stimulating the genitals, nerves in genitals give sensation to the brain) , and then the “medicinal” treatment can be applied to both male and female “patients” in the guise of science.
From a book of the year 2010 on the seizure in electroshock.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=mdZgigRi2OUC&lpg=PA184&ots=qtgst9-i_I&dq=electroconvulsive%20therapy%20how%20to%20tell%20seizure%20occured&pg=PA184#v=onepage&q=electroconvulsive%20therapy%20how%20to%20tell%20seizure%20occured&f=false
In 2014 at Connecticut’s New Britain general hospital the staff would have security guards forcibly “escort” me to their freezing cold seclusion cell, then strip me naked “for safety sake” and refuse me either a blanket or any covering, even tHough i had done absolutely nothing of any nature to suggest that i was a danger to self or others and seclusion was simply retaliatory or punitive…but in any case they refused point blank. I was so afraid of being left to freeze in that room, locked in alone, for hours naked, that i made a point of knocking my head mildly against the wall so they woukd come back. I told them i needed a blanket but they said if i did not stop hitting my head they would restrain me. And they came back with a restraint bed, threw me on it, and put a towel over my face and head and turned me over and held me face down so i couldnt breathe while the nurse injected 3 punishment drugs as they were known into my buttocks. Then they turned me over andn spread eagLed my legs sTill naked while they restrained me, the four male guards, with my arms above my heads and my legs fullly apart. I tOld them i felt like they were raping me and they said it was just their job. When they were through, i was naked in restraints and i had to beg them screaming for a thin sheet to cover me. A nurse came in to do the Face to Face eval and she shivered in the cold….i begged her for a blanket but she said no, it is unsafe! They all left me alone and locked the door. I have not gotten over this, and yet no body in Connecticut will investiggate, even though i wrote up a formal complaint, went to protection and advocacy, wrote to rhe attorney general and even SAmHsA …Connecticut apparently will have to kill more of its mental patients before they investigate again….
What happened to you is so disgusting, wrong, and I totally can see it happening. Other psych victims have said that they’ve been naked and isolated in rooms, or even restrained while nude. It’s dehumanizing, horrible, and infuriating when no heath departments, or any advocacy group, or ‘rights’ groups even care.
Because you were somehow falsely called a ‘danger to self or others’ (this never made sense to me bc self-defense is a ‘danger’ to who you are defending against, but NOT yourself, so I guess self-defense doesn’t exist either), they can humiliate and wrong you. I guess they only take the notes which are written, and of course they don’t write these details.
If you get your records, it will be totally different most likely than your experience or really really short. And their words take preference over the victim’s.
It’s horrible and I hope Everyday Psych Victims Project can do something… It’s not easy to start, but gathering stories and being on the ‘extreme’ end of abolishing/exposing all ‘mental health’ is a good way to get things said that otherwise wouldn’t be.
All of this is so wrong and infuriating. It also is awful too because exposing it makes people think there is something wrong with YOU. I, also, since psych stuff happened in 2014, haven’t been able to get recommendation letters from anyone, when it used to be as easy as pie pre-2014. Once somebody sees a conspiracy, or you are gone bc INVOLUNTARILY HELD, they don’t care. I also have no clue if teachers knew what for or not. Lying it was car accidents, but clearly no broken bones or anything. Then they then blame you. Try saying “anti mental health” barely on FB, then trolls attack your profile.
IT IS THEM, not us.
Yes, my chart was enormous at 1000 pp but the details of each of many episodes of seclusion and or four point restraints use were minimal and scanty. Sometimes one episode simply copied verbatim the details used against me in the previous episode to justify the use of seclusion—- but they knew no one would ever investigate or see the chart so why bother making up new false details when it was just as easy to copy older ones?!
When I told the doctor what they were doing to me he was incensed, said “my staff would NEVER treat a patient in such a fashion ! No. you are a liar!!” But i did not lie then and I had not lied when I told him they invented a reason to restrain me in the ER…. saying I had assaultrd s nurse, which I was not even aware of until much later… so how could I defend myself ? I thought they told him I was a danger to myself — another lie but not the one i needed to defend apparently ! The problem was that I came in completely mute and he would not even permit me a crayon to communicate with so I was utterly helpless … and so things only went from bad to worse
Yes, I even heard a nurse say in Sacramento (forgot the name of the place atm :P) that they TURNED OFF THE CAMERA as a person was being restrained.
Yes, they write very very little. However, they will write tons of misconstrued lies in order to argue it in front of a judge and rationalize. Being quiet will turn into ‘catatonic’ (like how they LIED to get my on a psych eval by those psychs). Also, the EMTs claimed I ‘denied’ ‘mental health’ history and was ‘erratic.’ More BS garbage. I was called hyperverbal in the ER, and I was saying stupid political stuff bc I was nervous, really. They wouldn’t let me leave when all I needed was water at Cedars Sinai. Blocked my door as well.
Just don’t travel alone… because an ambulance is there to exploit you.
After they restrained me spread-eagled naked, raping me aith their eyes, and strangled me in order to inject me with their punishment drugs, which they never denied WERE punishment, and after they denied me a blanket, only threw a draw sheet over me, they not only left me alone and unattended in that room but i heard them say to turn off the intercom so “we dont have to hear her scream…” it was horrendous, becauase i was freezing cold and bitterly traumatized and in pain with my arms tied above my head and my legs anchored to the edges of rhe bed so i could not move. I begged them to reposition me but of course they paid no attention and since they had turned off thenintercom and left me locked in alone, no one heard me. So i did scream, bloody murder, in the hopes that i would awaken the entire unit to what they had done to me! But no one came ans no one bothered with me…as usual. And fhe doctor just called me a liar the next day when i told him what they had done. Oh, he registerd how despicable the behavior was they displayed, but he simply blamed me and told me they woukd never do such a thing to a patient of his…hardy har har ha! What a bastard. His name was Michael E Balkunas, MD and i am still trying to get justice for everything that they put me thru there but the attorney general refuses to look into it ans so does the dept of health…in CT you are screwed if you are a psych patient in a city hospital. No one but no one gives a good goddam!
Robinwren217, I completely believe what happened to you and that it was wrong. We’ve heard many stories of people getting restrained naked now, and also even left alone while forced to be naked in isolated rooms. They of course won’t write any of this happening in records or it will be simply one line.
It is screwed worldwide and in any state! They don’t believe psych people as it is the epitome of victim-blaming. Investigations don’t work and won’t.
I commented earlier, but I forgot to mention – I requested my medical record, and yes, the violent actions I experienced (and my response to them) had been omitted. That is true to my experience – I’m glad you pointed out that this happens to people as a way to preemptively discredit.
The victim’s voices are nearly always omitted.
All of the famous men who sexually preyed on others and who’ve been revealed for the predators we now know them to be will be held accountable for their actions against others. Unfortunately, the perps who did this to you will never face any accountability at all because you, and me, and all the others who post here in this community are not seen as true human beings with rights. We are seen as “less than” and therefore become fair game for anyone who wants to assault us. We are called liars and manipulators because of the labels forced upon us.
Luckily the worst thing that I ever experienced in my one “hospitalization” was having to strip naked in front of a staff person, bend over and cough, and then turn all the way around so that I could be totally scrutinized. I know that this doesn’t hold a candle to what you two went through but I didn’t enjoy it one bit. In the state “hospital” where I was sent after being held in a private facility I was put on “one on one”. This means that a staff member has to stay within one foot of you for the entire time that you are deemed a “danger to yourself”. I was required to take a bath in front of a staff person but I was lucky and the person assigned to me was a man. In this facility we don’t require the staff person to go with you into the bathroom when nature calls but this is required in many other facilities. I would have found that to be very humiliating. It was bad enough to take a bath in front of a total stranger since I’m not much of an exhibitionist in my old age.
The second night I was there I wanted to take a shower and was told that if I wanted to do so I would have to have the staff person assigned to me as an observer to watch me while I bathed. I immediately balked at this since the person assigned to me that evening as a woman. I said that I would do no such thing and started getting vocally loud about it. But the young woman assigned to me was so intelligent and so respectful of my 62 year old dignity that she arranged to trade off with a male staff person to go with me while I bathed. I always appreciated her quick thinking, which averted a disaster for me since I would have gotten the good old shot for my trouble. I saw her six months later after I was discharged and working in a store. I thanked her for her kindness and intelligent manner in resolving issues. Unfortunately she was the exception rather than the rule when it came to staff.
That is really disgusting and violating to go through. Being watched naked makes a person feel like an animal, shamed, and as if the watched victim is wrong. Also, I hate how they do bathroom checks. Recall that Alhambra Hospital in Los Angeles/around that city. Like really? Then they go and rationalize it like (not to me but in general at the brainwashing/programming ‘group therapy’ sessions they require or get punished with not increasing levels/called ‘not getting better’/not ‘complying’) that “you want to kill yourself, so I have to check on you in the bathrooms.” Weird.
Yes, I’ve been trolled online endlessly (and in person) for being “anti mental health.” They don’t know that it was “mental hygiene.” (you know, like racial or social hygiene/eugenics).
Apparently, all ‘medical professionals’ just EXPECT everyone to be on drugs, even at eye appointments. Put allergies down, and they will ask if on any drugs. “I guess nearly everyone is on drugs these days.” “yes.” (pretty much?) And we know those probably are often psych drugs or silly things. It is wrong for EMTs to ask psych drug history, than say you denying it when say no. It is really medical trafficking.
Viewed from the perspective of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, destroying one’s sex-drive (libido) is destroying their very essence as humans, their life-drive; it forces those subjected to such treatment to become a sort of living dead, i.e., zombies. One may or may not like or agree with Freud and his theory, but certainly neutering people with psych drugs is a devastating violation of a fundamental human right and a crime against humanity, even perhaps moreso than involuntary sterilization. Those who support institutional psychiatry might say that loss of libido is just an unfortunate side-effect of the drug “therapy,” but so is death just an unfortunate side-effect of too much heroin. The fact that the drug is not prescribed to destroy libido makes it no less wrong to destroy or damage a patient’s libido.
I think you have a good point here. One of the biggest things that I’ve noticed while working in the state “hospital” is how many of the “patients” do not have significant others and have never had any close relationships with anyone. This is disturbing to me since most of us need some kind of intimate human contact to keep us healthy and balanced.
The other thing that I’ve noticed is that the staff act and talk as if the “patients” are not sexual beings. They are highly indignant any time that someone does or says anything sexual in nature. It’s as if people are expected to quit being human and drop their sexually at the door of Admissions when they are forced in here. I think that’s rather strange. But then, after all of this is said and done, the staff are always on the lookout for any kind of creating of relationships between two people. This is written about negatively in their charts and they’re basically punished for such behavior. when you sit in morning report you will hear staff say, “Watch out for so and so and so and so because they’re getting much too ‘close’ and we’ve got to watch them.” It always makes me wonder who the truly “sick” people are on the units!
Too bad that is still happening. Patient boyfriend or girlfriend relationships are very natural. Staff working to stop them can be harmful, as James Taylor describes his experience of it in his song “Fire and Rain.” I guess the staff maybe worries about jealosy, breakup pain, etc., but wouldn’t a setting with therapists on site be one of the best places to deal with those difficult emotions?
Add.: Perhaps “zonbie” is too strong of a term; “eunuch” might be better for what psychmeds that kill sex drive turn people into.
Stephen says: “All of the famous men who sexually preyed on others and who’ve been revealed for the predators we now know them to be will be held accountable for their actions against others. ”
That’s optimistic. A few will be paraded out. Many of them will be convenient (we wanted to get rid of him anyway). A tiny percentage will be “caught.”
This is so obviously a culture, and the boys protect the boys. But in this you are right – at least it is something.
Those who are buried in “mental health” get blamed for being harmed.
But I am encouraged because more men are being tackled and brought down than I’ve seen in my entire 70 year old life. I think this also encourages more women who’ve been violated by men to step forward and tell their stories because of the old adage that there is strength in numbers.
True, not everyone that needs to be brought forward for pilloring will be punished, but I bet that what’s happened in the past month has made a lot of men begin to shake in their boots, wondering when their little sexual escapades will be brought forward into the light.
I’ve never ever seen anything like this happen before and I think it’s a good thing. Perhaps we are beginning to turn this big ship of our culture in the right direction. It just takes a long time and much prior planning to turn a large ship in the direction that you want it to go. Call me an optimist if you want and I’ll embrace that title gladly. I think this is a good move in the right direction. But my biggest point in making that statement is that nothing will be done about the things done against us as “mental patients”.
It is good that this is happening, otherwise, I doubt that this article would have EVER been written or formed, honestly. (Me too/Us too).
However, as you say, I don’t think many will be exposed. After all, “mental health” is there to exploit victims. You’ll see tons of ‘abused’ people in psych wards or forced into psych. Definitely ‘sexual’ anything is thought as highly damaging, when really, it is the reactions to it which seem more ‘damaging’ and the blaming. Then, this negativity sets in, the push for dependency, the horribly shocking restraints that freak a person out and mess up for a while, and then of course, the drugs.
Yes, nothing will be done for us. This is the first time ‘forced catheters’ and other issues is even being taken seriously. Perhaps, never again. Once diagnosed, you aren’t human. Say you’re normal and somebody finds out forced ‘history,’ then you must have a problem. Always the problem, and ‘medical professionals’ cannot do wrong. Worship them.
After all, I tried ALL KINDS OF REPORTING!! Oh, endlessly. Did anything happen? Nope. It all started with Texas Christian in 2014. I was anti-psych always. Turns out, psych is in all medical fields and in 2015, added to the MCAT.
“Don’t psych me out” doesn’t get said anymore. Instead, people think ‘health’ is ‘wellness’ instead of normal emotions. People can have emotions. Doesn’t make it ‘sickness.’ Also, it isn’t just here. Try other sexual exploitative things like rumors. Nobody will do anything, especially if it is from certain relations.
Thanks all for sharing your stories.
I’ve been thinking about this for the past hour (editing too late)
I’ve had medical catheters for surgeries – and I believe (nobody believes me) that my ureter hasn’t been the same since, that it “damaged something.” “Oh poo,” say the docs, “we do this all the time and have no complaints.” (I guess I’m just a cranky Yank in an Australian system, then). I don’t think highly of the procedure, even when it is medically necessary.
But what I’ve been thinking about most about the **forced** catheterisation is – what is driving this?
Apparently it is drug testing. Hello drug wars. Hello war on the poor and marginalised. Even more so.
Recently in California I had a urinary tract infection. The California doctor, who took a urine sample, seemed to feel it was well within his rights to drug test my urine, just because. I only caught him running the test because they didn’t have a hand-washing facility at the toilets, and I had to go to a lab sink – where I found him with a chart and my urine, and he looked up and asked me, “What are you on?” (oh I had forgotten to report the Low Dose Naltrexone, was that it?) I didn’t raise a stink because I needed antibiotics in order to travel. But I was angry, and felt violated. And I imagined how violated I would’ve felt if there had been something else – something psych – or if I were a minority to begin with (this was a Spanish speaking neighborhood).
What if I had tested positive for codeine (which was still legal in Australia) or cannabis (which is legal in California)? What was the purpose of his “fishing”? Why did he even think it was his right? I was not asking for narcotics, but antibiotics. I was a white, middle-aged tourist, from Australia, with my husband in the waiting room.
So – now – drug testing is more important than the dignity and human rights (and privacy, in my case) of the individual?
Is forced catheterisation a recent phenomenon? Or is this something which has been going on for 40-50 years, and folks have been to ashamed to speak of it?
I’m sure you can’t show statistics of increases in this new form of human violation (only of the rare **reported** cases) – but I’m suspecting that it is more common now than even 20 years ago. Because we have to stop the “illegal drugs,” right?
Do we have reports of it from the 90’s? 80’s? 70’s?
You are both young people – and what I’ve seen from reading the comments is that the older survivors are APPALLED! Many of us have been wheeled in, restrained, shot, drugged. But this? How new is this?
One of those rare instances where I want an emoticon on MIA, with my frowning angry red faceand steam rolling out of my ears!
I don’t know how long, but one poster said they were catheterized in 1984, but they didn’t say if it was forced or not. I just assume that it has always been happening. Things tend to be worse before they get better.
I think it also has to do with insurance, getting paid for tests (e.g., a test in cash at LabCorp costs $100 EACH for bloodwork), and calling a person falsely ‘gravely disabled’ or a ‘danger to self.’ Disabled like you cannot take care of yourself.
Those people at Evergreen in Kirkland Washington also laughed at my pain, at my screaming, and my wishes for wanting it to stop. I remember now. I kind of forgot. But also said I was like some fighter women or something… ‘some woman.’ Weird, and disgusting. But it isn’t the first time psych people have laughed.
This whole thread just infuriates me! We are HUMAN BEINGS! At one hospitalization, 8 weeks pregnant and stopped all meds cold turkey for my baby and had severe withdrawal and suicidal thoughts, I ran into a doctor who saw me as nothing less than a thing. I was severely constipated and requested an enema that I could take to my room and administer to myself. They were all aware that I was a child sex abuse victim/survivor, but that didn’t stop the doctor’s refusal to allow me that dignity. He said I could not only not administer an enema to myself, I could not have one at all. The only option I was given was for this 70+ year old man to digitally stimulate my rectum and “break up the stool”. I cried and refused. I was then given zyprexa (Satan’s drug) and 20 minutes later I was on the exam table crying while a nurse stroked my head and this man dug his fingers in my body for well over one minute. I was in shock, drugged and humiliated. And I still didn’t have have a bowel movement. I ended up on the floor of my private shower for the next 2 hours crying. I then got dressed, walked to the nurses station and filed a formal complaint. Worst mistake ever! The comments and treatment I received from the male techs after was enough to make anyone not wanting to die to begin with, want to be die. I survived only because of the other “inmates” compassion and support. One of which was a veteran that spoke up on my behalf when being mistreated. I will never forget how he put himself in danger for me, not once by going to actual war, but twice by going to battle for me in those walls. I suffer from complex ptsd now from not just the abuse I received as a child, but the torture I received because I was a victim. Thank you for speaking out. I hear you! I believe you! And I am so sorry you had to suffer at their hands too.
Enemas seem to be very disturbing procedures in any sense. It may be liability that he wouldn’t allow self-administration, but it is very wrong to simply drug a person with psych drugs like Zyprexa (not even a sedative) and force their hands into you. Why a psych drug? Sexual violations are always wrong.
It’s always disturbing to have ‘hands held’ (or in this case, stroked) while in a violating procedure against one’s will… as if they actually have any ‘compassion’ and honestly, it is another violation of personal space/privacy.
I wouldn’t use any psych terms to describe yourself though, including the heavily desired ‘ptsd’ as it is another way to psych a person out, and label them as ‘mentally ill’/’damaged’/going to self-death etc. Of course a person is affected negatively from experiences, but that doesn’t have to be a disorder, but a natural reaction.
Carry on! Also, please check out Everyday Psych Victims Project and Motivationology! Motivationology as an alternative to so-called “mental health” and EPVP as a platform for anti-psych and cataloging victimization.
I want to thank you both for doing what I never had the nerve to do and share your stories.
Almost two years ago I was taken to the local hospital ER by ambulance and police escort after being confronted by a mall security guard for sitting on the raised concrete guard rail of a two story parking deck. I guess he thought I was going to jump and notified police. A plain clothed officer in an unmarked car was the first on the scene and without making any verbal contact with me he put me in handcuffs. I was confused and upset. He wouldn’t identify himself or tell me what was going on and I began to struggle against him. He took me to a waiting ambulance where they shackled my feet to the stretcher. Once at the hospital I was asked if I wanted any help. Help? Yes! Help out of these handcuffs and shackles! Help understanding what’s going on! Help would’ve been great.
A nurse came in the room, while still being handcuffed and shackled to the bed, and asked if I could provide a urine sample. I said that I had no urge to urinate at that moment. She left the room only to return a few minutes later with a small bag of supplies and two male police officers lurking in hallway outside of the open door. She never said a word. She walked up to me, lifted my skirt, pulled down my underwear and inserted a catheter. I felt a pinch followed by discomfort. The nurse then removed the catheter, pulled up my underwear and tugged my skirt down. Tethered to the bed, all I could do was lay there…humiliated and disgusted. Oh but she wasn’t done. She returned to the room, grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off my tank top, leaving me exposed from the waist up and then gave me an injection in my backside. She eventually got around to tossing a hospital gown overtop of me like a blanket and walked out with a smile on her face.
I spent several hours cuffed to that hospital bed unable to call anyone, use the bathroom or access water. Eventually, two sheriffs deputies came to transport me an hour away to a psychiatric hospital. I was so heavily medicated that I don’t remember the first two or three days out of the week I spent there.
I posted your story Luna on PsychVictims.com at: https://www.psychvictims.com/stories/view/medically-raped-stripped-handcuffed-for-being-on-top-of-building
It’s all about dehumanization, punishment, and violating the person more in the ER, so that they emotionally (naturally) react more in the psych ward, so that they can use those natural emotions to being violated for their false imprisonment.
They especially rape the person more medically when they go to the ER with cops. What right does the “medical/psych field” have to punish people medically because police brought them there instead of a different way?
it’s disturbing. In fact, because of such events, the person may act out for years, which causes more problems for authorities and order. It is AGAINST their best interest to violate people like you and others… But they won’t see it because victims have to hide.
I know nurses like the one you describe, Luna Llena, the kind that are so burned out that they would cut off your tank top not because it was necessary but because it is purely a sadistic thing to do…Why else would she do it, after all there was NO reason for it, except to dominate and humiliate you. But that is the sine quo non for psych patients in any ER and you needed to learn that ASAP, as you surely did by the time the Haldol hit your system ( I betcha twenty to one the injection was HAldol By the way … an older antipsychotic that ER staff tend to use for “difficult” or resistant patients but a very problematic drug indeed, and one that can make things much much worse.) In any event, even though I have been through such things myself and often, I was still horrified to tears on your behalf. It always makes me cringe, screaming inside when I hear the lengths and depths to which human nature can and does sink in efforts to humiliate another human being, and i do not understand why…I feel so sorry for you, and I hope you someday get either peace from these memories or some kind of justice or both. Blessings, RObinwren aka Pamela Wagner