In this piece for Medium, activist and survivor Louisa J. Harvey describes the experience of being locked in a psychiatric institution on an involuntary hold.
“This is not where healing lives. This is a holding cell. A stop-gap. A time capsule in which it is hoped that with enough medication and physical containment one will emerge ‘well,’ which cannot readily be defined (and nor should it, I suppose). The staff are tired, some mean well, few are well mean. They are too busy to tend to our tired lungs and ragged hearts and our weary legs, which have carried us so far. So far, and our arms, which may hang like they are weighted by our thighs, or gesticulate wildly for some interpreter to read them, are mere receptacles for medicine cups filled with colourful pills called treatment.”
