In a place where I should have been safe, where peace should have been present in every corner and human kindness permeating the atmosphere, I was instead deeply traumatized in the name of control, safety—or more honestly, teaching me a lesson. The experience plays like a Muzak loop in a grocery store or a GIF in my memory. Each time it replays in my mind, it causes me sorrow and emotional pain and further hurts my heart. The place of which I speak is a psychiatric hospital. The hospitalization occurred one autumn and lasted 30 hellacious days and nights. I arrived in the hospital because I had attempted suicide.
In my childhood, being “put away because I was a liar” was one of many threats my stepfather used while he abused me over a period of 10 years. The specific threat was that I would end up in the “nuthouse” if I ever lied about him. This person had been sexually abusing me from the time I was seven and he did not leave my house until I was 17. The threats I received about “locking” me “away in the nuthouse,” were terrifying and confusing. But I knew the exact meaning of his words, and that was to be quiet and not to tell. This man would reinforce this point by driving me by the Clinton Valley Center, a gigantic Victorian-style “mental hospital” nearby. Today, when I look at photos of it, I am reminded of the house in the movie “Psycho.” To a child, the thought of being placed in the “nuthouse” like that huge, frightening building, where my mother “would forget me and not even miss me,” where soon, “no one would even remember where I was,” was horrifying.
It makes perfect sense, then, that actually finding my adult self inside a “nuthouse” was frightening. One of the most dreadful fears of my life was happening. Nevertheless, there I was. I had been battling thoughts that I did not deserve to live since I was 18. I knew they were a result of the disgusting memories I carried with me of the abuse. But in my mind, I began applying what I’d known about sexuality as a teenager to myself as a little child and wondered why she “let that happen.” My rational mind knew that in my innocence I had been constantly manipulated and intimidated, but my emotional mind and my heart blamed me for being “stupid” and falling for his duplicitous kindness time after time—promised ice cream or a new toy only to end up tortured and abused.
So, there I sat in the hospital. A wall of barred windows lined the unit beside a door that led out to a smoking patio. Near those windows there was light, and I could see a sliver of blue sky, and through a small area in the wall I could see through the bars a bit of grass and a tree off in the distance. The sliver of sky, the green velvety grass, and the big shade tree were all keeping a spark of hope alive in me. It was also quieter there next to those windows. I was about 10 feet away from the room where people were watching television, listening to music, and playing foosball at a table in the middle of the room. The activity and noise there that felt overwhelming to me.
I was sitting there and drawing a picture of a little girl. In my hand was a small pencil I’d been given, and which I treasured throughout my confinement. Inside my sad and scared mind, I was working hard to comfort myself. I was silently trying to convince myself, “I am an adult now. I will not be locked in here forever. I have a job and I am going to school. I have friends, so no one will just forget about me. I know I need help and maybe they can help me get better.” I was repeating things like this over and over in my mind so that I could stay calm and be OK. Every inch of my being wanted to run around screaming and crying, but I sat there and comforted myself as best I could, quietly, trying to become small and not be noticed.
After perhaps 30 minutes, a woman in what looked to be a nurse’s uniform looked at me through the glass-enclosed nurse’s station. She spoke to me abruptly: “You! You need to go sit over there.” She waved her hand in the direction of the noise, the people, and the television, where there was no sunlight.
I said, “May I please stay here?”
She said, “I said move over there, now!”
I sheepishly replied, “Please, I won’t bother you. I am just sitting here drawing, and I will be quiet.” I did not understand the rules of a mental hospital, having never been in one before, and the rule is you do as you are told without question. My bravery strikes me now, because as a child, I did exactly as I was told all the time. It was a way to stay safe. So, it took all my courage to ask to stay sitting in that chair, 10 feet from where the nurse was telling me to go and sit. It was as if I was no longer a person to her, just a patient, or number, or bed, or crazy creature that she had the right to order around. The memory always reminds me of the scene in Oliver Twist when Oliver asks, “Please sir, can I have some more?” He is swiftly reprimanded for asking a reasonable question, just as I was going to be.
She leaned forward and yelled at me, “You [my diagnosis in slang], I said to get over there and sit down.”
I had never had my diagnosis yelled at me before like an insult. I had never even been told that was my diagnosis, and it hit me like a weapon. It was hurled at me like a missile and was intended to hurt me and crush my spirit. In complete contrast to my usual obedient way of being, I was then standing and, in a flash, running for safety, straight out the locked door at the very moment my doctor was walking onto the unit. I ran out the unit door and out the front door of the hospital as fast as I could. I was running back to my house (about 10 miles away) and planning to get into the closet and hide behind my clothes, thinking no one would find me there. Hiding in the closet for safety was a tool I’d used when I was a child; it was what I knew best.
This behavior was contrary to everything about me. I follow the rules. I never skip the velvet ropes in the bank just because no one is waiting in line but me. The ropes are there for a reason, so there I traverse, forward and back, until I arrive at the place to wait. Or I’ll walk half a block to get to the crosswalk and stoplight to make my way across the empty street lawfully rather than risk breaking a rule by jaywalking. I would not run away from a place I was supposed to stay. I had learned not to break rules long ago, and even when I no longer had to face repercussions from breaking a rule, I still lived within the emotional confines of my trauma and abuse.
Yet here I was, running in a dangerous neighborhood, wearing a sweater on a sweltering day in the desert. I did not feel the heat, I did not need water, I was not tired from running, and so I kept on going. I ran about three miles before a police car pulled in front of me at a corner. My heart beating rapidly, I began to shake. I was sure I was going to be arrested for having broken the law of “you have to stay in the hospital.” I relented and climbed into the car’s backseat. I thought of my mother and grandmother and wondered what they would think of me riding in a police car. I was enveloped in shame and disgrace.
Tears fell as we drove. My head hung low, and I resigned myself to the thought of going to jail. I had given up. So, I was surprised when they did not take me there. In some ways, though, the hospital became a jail to me. I would learn quickly to do exactly as I was told. I learned that for us unlucky people who enter the hospital, choice is lost to us, and questioning why about anything is a dangerous undertaking. Patients who have walked this path know that one must never appear too happy or too sad, and that laughing too much or crying become evidence of insanity and reasons to keep you locked inside the doors.
The police walked me through the door of the unit. I saw my doctor standing in the area where I had been sitting. I noticed the nurse and was preparing to say, “I will sit wherever you want me to sit.” But it was too late. I was not struggling. I had given up hope, and a part of my soul had died while riding in that police car. Still, immediately, four gigantic men came and took me down. I weighed about 105 pounds at the time, so likely none of them were ever needed to put me on the floor. I was so low in spirit that moving me a few feet lower could have been accomplished with a simple request for me to lie down and do as I was told.
There I lay on the floor, and the memory from here on out is the loop that still plays in my head. I was dragged to a room and hoisted up onto a table that was devoid of padding. It was like a table used for an X-ray: hard, cold, and flat. It hurt to lie on it, my bones cutting against the slab. I was still crying. Before I knew what was happening, a strap went across my chest, two were clamped on my wrists, and two more were slapped on my ankles. Nothing was done gently. Why should it have been, for me, at that point? I had no value. I was a thing, a thing to be despised. Another piece of my soul perished and my heart began to crumble into pieces, and as I lay there in that position I was seven again. My stepfather was on top of me, holding me down, crushing my wrists as I lay dying with no one to help me while my mother made pancakes in the kitchen downstairs.
I felt the needle sting for a moment and was trying to ask for help when my mind shut down against its will because of the heavy dose of medication. This drug cocktail is sometimes called a “B-52,” I have since learned. A B-52 bomber is a warplane designed to carry nuclear weapons that are dropped upon enemies far below, blowing them into oblivion. The war words often used in the mental health system cast those of us needing care in the role of enemy to staff who work on us from a superior perspective, and so we remain subjugated and broken, unworthy of concern.
After being slammed with the B-52, I came around while I was still on the hard table. Even while unconscious, I remained strapped down and locked in place like a beast. I hung in that place between awareness and oblivion, disconnected from what might or might not be real, long enough to understand I needed a restroom. There was no way to get help. I was alone, and I found I could not speak or even remember how to talk. I wet myself, my dignity voided, unable to even ask for help.
I have no idea how long I was in the room. But if it was for five minutes or five hours, the humiliating degradation was the same. When I finally found myself in my hospital room, I awoke in the fetal position. I stayed in my room for what seemed like days— not eating, not talking. My doctor would visit each day and ask me to get up, but I could not respond. I remember thinking it was like being in a glass box, observing but not be part of the world in any way. I wanted to reach out and say, “Help me.” But I was not able to make myself speak.
At some point, I got out of bed and wandered again among the living. I went to meaningless groups and did what I was told. It was so familiar, to do what you are told so no one will bother you. Say what needs to be said to keep yourself safe, and don’t expect anyone to care about or come help you.
It should have been safe and healing for me in the hospital. Instead, it was like being at home with my stepfather: abused and invisible, just trying to protect myself. I was in that hospital for 30 days. If it weren’t for the other patients that I finally met when I took up smoking so I could go outside, I believe I would have closed down and gone inside myself for good.
The biggest challenge for me about this experience is that none of it had to happen. The nurse near the window could have asked me why I did not want to move. I would have been able to tell her exactly why, and if I still needed to move, she could have asked me from a place of compassionate understanding. It would have taken a bit of reflective listening from Patient Care 101: “It seems you do not want to move; can you tell me what is happening for you?” Unfortunately, she was viewing me as “crazy” and therefore not deserving of understanding, not worthy of concern. I was just a mad person who should know to do what they are told when in the hospital.
The world of mental health services must change. It must offer real care, given in kindness, with compassion and concern. People who seek mental health care are often people whose hearts are broken and whose sadness is sometimes immeasurable: endless and deep. Without compassion as an explicit and necessary tool in mental health care, there can be no treatment, no healing—only dulling, numbing, and shrouding symptoms, responses to life’s traumas.
My experience of restraint was unnecessary. It only served to reinforce all the traumatic events in my life. My life did not change after I left the hospital. My stay only confirmed that I will never seek help if I think the result of that help-seeking will land me in another psychiatric hospital. It is sad to know that despite my ongoing depression, which has been life-threatening on many occasions, I have never felt able to seek the physical safety of a hospital setting again. The reason is that I no longer trust that I would be helped and cared about during a hospital stay. Rather, I have seen the hospital clearly as a tool for social control rather than a place of healing and peace. You might be thinking, “Well, times have changed. It is not like that in hospitals anymore.” I will not be finding out, because I know that while hospitals are a place where peace should be, they are anything but peaceful.
I now work in the field of mental health care at RI International. As the Vice President of Peer Support and Empowerment, I work with our teams to help create healing spaces. In our crisis and short-stay Crisis Recovery Centers, we understand how to care for people. As individuals seek care as our guests, we help them understand that there is hope. Our team of peer supporters bring hope and connection with someone who “gets it.” Our clinical excellence brings expertise in psychiatric care. We use the Fusion Model, aligned with the National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care from SAMHSA. In the Fusion Model, crisis becomes an event to be resolved and stabilized, versus a diagnosis to be treated. We do not turn anyone away and in so doing significantly reduce the use of jails for people with mental health challenges that bring them in contact with law enforcement. In addition, we take the burden off hospital emergency departments where psychiatric boarding may occur. The goal: Getting people the right care from the right people, at the right time.
Relative to psychiatry, the society is divided in three groups:
– we, the people who know that psychiatrists are quacks and psychiatry a hoax
– the psychiatrists
– their fools, the large majority of population who falsely believe psychiatry is a science and a branch of medicine
Now, the quacks will not repent. We, the aware people already know pretty much everything that can be known about this pseudoscience.
The fooled majority is the people that CAN BE CHANGED. We should focus on opening their eyes. Lets look together and individually for the best ways of doing this
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Very much agree. It seems many people still believe the earth is flat.
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Hi Lisa, thank you for your story. I am sorry you met the real side of psychiatry, although possibly you get to see a “better” side since you are involved in “clinical” settings, where if you do bump into a Doctor of the personalities, they are usually on their best behaviour, because they have things to hide.
It does insulate one to work in the “mental health” arena.
I’m glad you have a chance to intercept hopefully a few. Do you ever warn them about psychiatry or would that threaten your job?
I would hate for you to be in another position where you would feel threatened. The big bad bogeymen run the “nuthouse”.
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“The experience plays like a Muzak loop in a grocery store or a GIF in my memory.”
Yes indeed this is the way it is.
Peter Breggin talking to Jim Gottstein with info of where people can find important information:
https://drpeterbregginshow.podbean.com/e/the-dr-peter-breggin-hour-%e2%80%93-072920/
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Recovery Innovations International.
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”
(Dylan)
What contribution does justice play in recovery Ms St. George?
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The purpose of psychiatry is social control; the idea that it “should” provide a sanctuary for peaceful contemplation of one’s troubles is based on an inaccurate conception of its purpose. Not that anyone can be blamed for misunderstanding that psychiatry is “doing its job poorly,” however it’s doing exactly what it is meant to do.
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Jesus! Lisa is too much. 30 days and 30 nights of #FAKESCIENCE torture was her “punishment” for being visibly traumatized by her 17 years of sexual abuse. Her family deserved every insult, death wish, and damning criticism she could hurl at them. Same for her quacks. Instead, she focused on reform within the psychiatric establishment, as if that were a realistic goal.
While I admire Lisa’s self-discipline and unshakeable decency, I’m sure I can’t begin to comprehend it. And, few of us possess her level of self-awareness. She knew she would not break one of the “rules” for speaking openly about Madness: Take it easy on your family, even if that means taking it hard on yourself. This obedience might keep her true to who she is – a follower of rules. But, it cuts a break to so many abusers. It’s appalling to know they’re still getting ahead on the strength of Lisa’s integrity.
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The satisfaction I get out of it, is the fact that psychiatry is aware. Being aware that one is a liar and not able to escape it but constantly remain in that lie is a kind of yucky life. I derive satisfaction from that. How badly would a lot of shrinks like to “come out”, yet they want it without the shame factor and loss of income, and the nasty realization that they can’t be employed, save for the selling of faulty inventions.
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Very much similar to my experience. Thank you for writing this. I actually overheard the Chief psychiatrist of the facility tell his staff to “make sure the beds were filled up tonight.” Financials of these institutions, the pharmaceuticals companies and the insurance companies are behind the lack of real help and recovery. I very much appreciate this website. It has given me much to think about and how to activate.
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“make sure the beds were filled up tonight.”
That is the policy of the State government where I live, published in the newspaper during the reign of the previous government. Beds are to be filled no matter what. Which in some ways explains why Community Nurses are being enabled in snatching people from their beds after arranging to have them incapacitated. It brings in ‘new blood’ to the system when the revolving door clients are no longer providing the financial incentive for kidnapping and torture.
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For me too, “the experience plays like a Muzak loop in a grocery store or a GIF in my memory.”
I have great difficulty understanding the rationale behind further traumatizing the traumatized and considering this to be an effective treatment modality.
But I think what makes it even worse, is the expectation that one must then turn around and pay their abuser, and is powerless to do anything but, as society, in this case (with the exception of MIA, etc…), stands in support of the abuser.
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“It should have been safe and healing for me in the hospital.” “The biggest challenge for me about this experience is that none of it had to happen. The nurse near the window could have asked me why I did not want to move.”
I am sorry that this was your experience. Mine has been the same. And most of my experiences never had to happen.
One thing about being in a hospital whether that be in the psych ward of a hospital or outside the psych ward is it is never a safe or a healing environment, I have learned. If you point out in society that the nurses were mean to me in the psych ward everyone thinks no that is not possible. Nurses are not capable of not being kind. Over the years I have had 6 psych experiences and 3 non psych experiences. Most nurses though do not care about the patients. I have had a few good nurses but overall my experience is overwhelmingly negative. I am the good patient. I am the quiet patient. I used to do as I was told, then my condition would get worse. I suffered being the good, compliant patient. Then one day, I learned that I must learn to lie. Yes. Healthcare has taught me no good thing comes from honesty with them. I am a sensitive individual. I am not comfortable with the lying. I learned I must hide most of my physical pain and suffering. It only gets me sent to Dr. Freud. I hide most of my physical symptoms. Luckily for me, people in medicine have poor observation skills. They can be pressing on my abdomen and I am totally wincing in pain and as long as you don’t vocalize they don’t notice and even if you do they don’t notice. I seriously lost 50 lbs from the time I saw a gastroenterologist in January until they saw me in September. But they didn’t even notice that I had lost weight. I even mentioned that I was concerned that I was losing weight but still nope “Patient is not losing weight.” Now I live on IV nutrition and I am told I get such “GREAT CARE.” I think they may be trying to brain wash me. Truth be told they sign the order but never talk to me. My doctor knows nothing about me. I had this evil person call today. Now when I say evil I mean I have no idea why she called me. I expected a call for an appointment. She tried to push off her concerns as my concerns and keep telling me she didn’t want to waste my time, ironically all the while wasting my time. If you don’t want me as a patient either just say so or better yet don’t ever call me. Not calling me would have been far kinder than some person lying to herself telling herself that she is calling me because she cares. She said they may take over my nutrition if I move 2000 miles and am closer. So I am supposed to blindly move not knowing if I will starve to death or not. That is the definition of insanity. Anyway this person didn’t think her request was in anyway insane. Like most people in healthcare they live in some delusional fantasy world. Plus I kind of want to meet me doctor before I say yes. If I am going to have to work with this person, I would like to meet them before I make some crazy commitment. And yet they think I am the one with mental health problems. I think everyone that works in healthcare has mental health problems. They have delusional expectations of patients. We are supposed to think of them as HEROES. They ripped my feeding tube out without deflating the balloon but yet I am supposed to call that doctor my hero while I was screaming involuntarily in pain. They refuse to help me when I ask. They are not my hero. A thorn in my flesh maybe but hero nope. I had depression problems because all my physical problems were not believed. It is normal for females to not be believed. It is also very normal for patient with dysautonomia to see 50 doctors before one figures out they have a form of dysautonomia and they are not “mentally ill.” Most dysautonomia patients are given a mental health label before they ever get an accurate diagnosis. It is so much easier to say oh you have anxiety or you have depression then to figure out what is wrong. It took me having one foot in the grave before I got a diagnosis. But with a diagnosis did not come a cure. Nor did it come with treatment. Everyone of my problems is someone else’s problem. My gastroenterologist think my neurologist should treat my GI symptoms. My neurologist points back at my gastroenterologist. Same with ophthalmologist or any other speciality. Go get help from someone else. Just not me.
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