A new study published in BMC Psychiatry uncovers the harrowing experiences of those subjected to involuntary psychiatric hospital admissions. Led by Gergely Bartl from University College London, the research details racism, discrimination, and lack of support in the mental healthcare system, calling into question the humanity and efficacy of current practices.
The authors report:
“Our findings suggest that the experience of involuntary treatment and compulsory admissions is an often predominantly negative, at times traumatic experience for service users and carers, not always achieving the expected therapeutic benefit.”
The researchers systematically reviewed research on service user and carer experiences of involuntary psychiatric admissions. The findings are stark: many service users report negative and often traumatic experiences compounded by systemic racism and discrimination. Carers, too, face emotional distress and frustration with a system that frequently dismisses their insights and needs. This comprehensive analysis highlights the urgent need for reform in mental healthcare, advocating for a more humane and context-sensitive approach to treatment and support.
It’s ironic really, because mental illness is the result of the trauma of social and familial life, and the forms of treatment are either productive of physical trauma, i.e. psychiatric drugs and previously, neurosurgery and ECG, or else emotional trauma as in incarceration. So we try and treat social trauma with social trauma. Nice. Fitting for a society where we throw our kids under the bus by destroying their Earth and futures out of our greed and pretending that somehow we’ll fix it when any sane and rational person ought to confess we’ve missed the boat. And for what? What triumphs have there been actually besides a dystopia of shops and businesses and private dwellings with private miserable lives and a sea of cheap mass produced goods? Well worth trading in the perfect unspoiled Earth for eh. Don’t worry – I’m a madman and you’re a sane society. Go sleep with a lemon flavoured psychiatrist with hexagonal hair and take her antipsychotic injections in your butt.
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I agree.
My own experience from 11 years ago left me permanently hopeless.
I will never trust another human being again.
I was forced to be locked up in the institution for 2.5 weeks till the judge released me straight after the hearing.
Judge reprimanded the incompetent clinic staff for petitioning me without real proof of concern. On top of that, they poisoned me with lithium as they had to reach therapeutic level before court hearing. My body is not able to regulate heat any more, even after 11 years.
Judge didn’t order any monitoring nor court ordered meds.
I had severe ptsd and after that experience, ptsd magnified exponentially. I didn’t leave my apartment since.
Now I have to have a witness with me any time I see or speak to the clinic personnel and even my pcp or any other professional,
medical and non-medical.
Not being able to trust anyone, except just one close family member, is a miserable way to live. I am in my own prison and cannot have therapy because last therapist also contributed to my petition being realised. I will never attempt suicide but I pray universe will end my suffering.
I have no friends!
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I’m really sorry to hear this – it makes me so mad. Your suffering is part of the huge sea of unacknowledged suffering caused by a brutal, barbaric and stupid system and society. If I knew you I would say you can trust me. What you can trust, however, for sure, is your own eyes, your own awareness. And what you’ve gone through is the truth, not what other people say. Thank you for sharing.
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As Some-One who has what society terms “depression”, all I can say is smoking a joint helps more than the handful of pills prescribed to me everyday. When I told my psychiatrist this she told me I needed ECT.
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Hahaha! That’s funny.
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Lol. I like your thinking. It’s hard to stand up like you do.
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I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward.
I was left in withdrawal from my clonazepam and trazodone, which helps me sleep.
I was awake for 3 days.
I was given 1 clonazepam the day I was discharged.
I saw horrors in the ward which traumatized me futher.
I needed help…but NOT that kind of help.
The ER doctor was so hell bent on sending me, I refused to sign the papers.
I was sent anyway.
If I had spoken to a psychiatrist or psychologist in the ER, I never would have been sent.
It’s a trauma I still deal with on a daily basis.
Thank God, i have a wonderful therapist.
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Who is actually concerned to measure all this appalling suffering produced by psychiatry and society? Only our own awareness grasps it, and only our own testament exposes it. Thank you for sharing this, but who besides the actual sufferer is really listening? You give it lip service, but love demands action, and no-one is doing that. We talk about it but we do nothing, and the psychiatric trauma and pharmacological abuse and ruined lives mount up day in day out, swallowing up all of our children. And still no-one records this suffering or acts. What a f*cking brutally selfish society we live in eh.
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Having been in one of these centers the problem is they are being used as a first step in drug rehab. You have a bunch of people going through withdrawal who are there because they were arrested for drug possession (they get placed in phyc wards becauseits their 4th, 5th, 6th time and sware if they just got some therapy they can beat thier addiction). Then you have homeless who have been arrested usually for drugs but have severe mental illness ( they get treatment for thier illnesses and are in withdrawal). Finally you have the group that volunteered to be there or thier family put them there because of thier severe mental illness.
Phyc wards need to be phyc wards not rebilatation centers. This would take care of most of the problems in the wards.
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My daughter and I were attacked by a phoenix fireman in our home after he forced his way through the front door, he refused to leave our home. We didn’t know the man. He lives near our neighborhood and possibly was stalking me and my kids prior to attacking us, or he was payed to do it for my ex because they are all the same age and grew up in az. He was also intoxicated while forcing his way through our home. He was charged but only minimal charges and never actually arrested. He only was charged because I took it up with the fire department he worked for so they had to hold him accountable. He later retaliated a year later by hacking into my accounts broke into my home, and also possibly poisoned and killed my dog. I was blocked from working and lost my vehicle as a result. I reported everything and the police department allowed this abuse never looked into anything because they all stick together. I was also possibly being attacked by energy weapons that caused skin blisters and horrible pain in my ears. It felt like air blowing into my ears along with ear ringing and vertigo
I had no idea the extent he would take to retaliate. I went to the hospital to find out why my skin had Burns on my neck close to the ear canal, and was held against my will and injected with psychotic drugs but
Never showed any signs of psychosis. I was being framed and accused of having psychosis when I was actually being attacked by this man and the technology he was abusing. I’m a single mom, no history of mental illness no other reason to have been treated so badly by medical staff. It was pure retaliation for turning him in. I’ll never be the same since they traumatized me from ever trusting medical Dr or fireman or even police now that I found out how innocent people are treated for speaking up about abuse. He still works for phx fire and has also done this to another single mom prior to attacking me and my kids. There needs to be stricter laws for the people that work in the justice system and alike due to the abuse of power and lack of mental evals done regularly to prevent this type of abuse on innocent people. This has completely ruined our lives as a result.
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My experience was so horrific I’m not able to talk about it much. I was taken by force by 10 cops who pulled me out of my shower/ all men. I was dragged naked into a van, strapped down and that was an obvious ploy by my ex-husband as he used it against me in court. There was NO female cops on site.
I was given weird medicine that made my heart race, locked my jaw, and had to write on paper that I believed I was having a heart attack.
I couldn’t shower for 10 months, leave my house, and had become a ward of the state.
I did eventually sell some things to get a new attorney; but I was left 100 percent broken.
First an abusive husband, then an abusive police force, then the nut house.
When my jaw locked eight of my teeth broke.
I, a victim of domestic abuse was pulled put of my shower, hand cuffed, dragged out of my house.
I never owned a gun, I was never a threat to myself, or anyone.
I too will never trust anyone.
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Me too.
Domestic Violence, adverse side effects from mind altering drugs – and then psychiatric / insurance fraud (chapter 13 in Rob Wipons book “Your consent is not required” – I was there, I wondered how many people they killed – when the investigation began. Thank you Rob, for documenting this abuse)
I will never trust anyone, ever again. I have no reason too.
I am facing the offending electronic health records – today (ironically).
I have spent 7 years in hiding. Thus the records date back 7-9 years ago.
Why are we still talking about this?
I am not afraid (though, I probably ought to be). I need a thyroid script or I will sleep 14 hours a day. I have also made an appointment with a domestic violence legal clinic for next week. I have the evidence that my domestic abuser was telling everyone “how crazy I was”. I am thinking the best I can hope for is a legal review of my documentation, and a lawyer written letter documenting the abuser. The abuser is no longer in this country, and old enough – he is likely dead.
Why are we still talking about this?
As for the past 7 years … I believe Medicare has the records that there have been no further incidents (supporting my view that the drug was the problem).
I can see clearly, from the distance of time – oh my, how did I ever survive that? And I wonder why I couldn’t see it at the time? Likely – because psych patients are not believed, even when we are telling the truth.
I am old. I fear an abusive guardianship. I have no reason to not fear this. I am vulnerable.
Yet – I want to live!!!
FWIW – my local domestic violence non-profit told me outright – it is very common for the abusers to claim their spouses are crazy. I am going to stand on that. I am not mentally ill.
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Wow, my heart breaks for all these ppl and what you all went through. I suffer from severe depression and panic and a few times taken against my will. Psyche drugs make ppl worse. The best thing is to find a kind good therapist. Also the stigma of being a mental patient is bad, even tho there are many in Los Angeles ca. The most cruel corrupt place on earth. There is still hope for everyone. It’s very individual.
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I accidentally overdosed, my family called 911 and my X husband made up a story that I was trying to kill my self and I was always yelling and acting inappropriately, they locked me up in a psyc ward for 14 days. It was all a. Ploy o get me out of the house for awhile. Well he succeeded I was given 2 big shots of haldol by a laughing nurse and when I woke a day or 2 later I was bruised from my shoulder down both arm and my bed was. All turned around. To this day I do not know what happened to me but the room was all dicombobled. Now I need serious depression help, and I’ll be damned if I go to on of those places. I’ll / I am suffering.
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As someone who was pulled over and dragged out of her car head kneeled on, choked,screamed at and cursed out like a damn dog because my ( now ex) husbands divorce lawyer – do what I didn’t know i was getting divorced- some lawyer I never heard of told the cops I “threatened suicide in his office” they gaslit me. The worst part was that a couple of voluntary admission’s were used against me when they really showed that I am proactive with my depression, caused BTW by the deaths of my children! Anyway I started commenting cuz I have a issue with the “racism” unless it’s referring to white patients being treated very badly by the almost 100% African American staff in these places!
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I’m surprised they needed a study. I thought it was common knowledge. Actually, I thought the purpose of forced hospitalization was punishment.
Why do I bristle at the word “career”? Who identifies the carer? I know many situations where family members colluded with psychiatrists (formally or not) to scapegoat and dehumanize the person. This is a dangerous combination, having two powerful systems (family and the mental health system) working against a person.
Add me to the long list of people who’ve been through this and is now completely isolated. I can’t afford to trust anyone.
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Allot of these comments are detailing the appalling suffering caused by psychiatry and an ignorant society, and we are talking about lost years, decades usually. We are talking of profound social and emotional harm, ruined brains, ruined lives. I have had lost and miserable, isolated years – probably 15, completely as a result of receiving mental health treatment and a diagnosis. And one can only deteriorate, obviously, when one undergoes this kind of suffering. But there is no literature on this suffering: there is no studying of it, no recording of it: it is uncounted, voiceless suffering that is so enormous in it’s scale it damages the whole of society. We are so stupid now as a civilization that we will never even become enlightened enough to recognize the importance of uncovering and measuring all this human and social carnage. As such each new generation of children get swept up into the trauma that is psychiatric ‘care’.
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I was involuntarily hospitalized in 2007 at Akron General Psychiatric floor for 2 and a half days. I have the highest regards for them. They treated me with respect. They gave me the help and care I couldn’t get from so-called family and friends. I am eternally grateful to them. Maybe other facilities should learn from them! Akron Ohio
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The system is broken.
What are we, the loved ones of those who are living with psychotic episodes, to do?
We are given no choice.
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I agree that the system has broken, and that society offers no other choices besides psychopharmacology and incarceration, both of which actually harm the human being. How can you possibly hope to heal through inarceration and medication? It may or may not keep you technically safer for certain limited periods of time, but does nothing to help your actual problems, because the approaches are not based on an understanding of these problems. Rather it is based on a myth of a spontaneously dysfunctioning brain, usually in the guise of the chemical balance hypothesis. The American Psychiatric Association admitted that there is no convincing evidence of the chemical balance hypothesis over 20 years ago, but still society and psychiatrists repeat the lie, because without it, given the fact that no biological marker has ever been found to be associated with a non-organic mental health disorder, there whole intellectual empire and their whole social grift is shattered, and society is left to face the enormous scandal and miscalculation that is psychiatry, a psuedo-science responsible for destroying the health and minds not just of the billion or so people who have taken the drugs, but the 7 billion people who believe in the entirely fictitious and totally deluded concept of mental health. There is real psychological, physiological and environmental damage caused by a blind, mechanical and violent social process, and to call this mental illness is itself a mental illness. So what does a parent do?
First, recognize that we are all damaged by psychiatry. You are too. Your suffering has been shaped and exacerbated by psychiatry. You have agonised about your loved one but have been told repeatedly and have been conditioned to believe that other people, so called experts, can help, but only understanding and love can help, but if we think the psychiatrist alone can help we are afraid to get involved because we don’t know what we are doing. But if the lie of psychiatry did not exist, we would seek to understand the problem both as a sufferer or as a loved one. So my advice is simply to observe and understand yourself and your life and your loved ones and your society as it is, and allow that understanding to act. Society doesn’t understand the problem at all.
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They do this to people and then accuse them of “malingering”. Yale turned me into an outcast basket case and now tells me I need to prove I’m not “malingering”. I have zero support, anywhere. I finally stopped begging for it and accepted that it doesn’t exist. My family all abandoned me. I still speak to my 87 year old mother (who moved to the other side of the country when I was practically dying from ECT, trauma and decades of psych polypharmacy. Trying to explain to her why I need a lawyer when I’m being accused of criminality in the form of “malingering” (when I’m so terrified of the entire health care system because of what I experienced that I have no way to get a “medical review”. I’d probably be risking more forced treatment/harm anyway). She just laughs at me. It’s all so funny when it’s happening to someone else.
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I love hearing all these wonderfully HONEST comments from people who have had bad experiences.
My brother died from suicide 2 years ago. He was; manhandled, drugged, on often 7 dangerous drugs at a time, half his brain was gone from unauthorised ECT, bullied, sleep deprived, spat on, raped, and all from the care system – THE MENTAL HEALTH INDUSTRY.
To say I am sad, is an understatment. I have lost my best friend, an honest and loving brother who would have given his life from the likes of me or indeed anyone else. He always seemed to meet old women in distress, with dementia wandering the streets, 2 different times he took them in his car, carefully speaking calmly to them. He fed them in his house, then, only then, took them to the police station.
He helped many people actually. I don’t know many people as good as my brother.
It’s time the MENTAL HEALTH INDUSTRY stops training nursing and doctor students to be cold & aggressive. It’s high time we take stock, and start being kind and caring. There is a lot more to be gained in being a loving person, a whole lot more.
I created this website for people like my brother.
I love you all.
Here you are:
thecatholicism.wordpress.com
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