They Called It Psychiatry – I Call It Punishment

In 2024, I was forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric institution — not because I was a danger to myself or others, but because I spoke out.

I am a Libyan doctor and entrepreneur. I built my company from nothing. I believed in freedom, human dignity, and the right to think differently. I shared my ideas on social media: I criticized terrorism, religious extremism, and what I called the “Gaddafi ideology” — a toxic legacy that turned many minds into closed fortresses of fear, hostility toward the West, and blind obedience to authority.

But in Libya, challenging the system often makes you the problem.

One day, I was staying at a hotel in Tripoli when it began. My brothers and father suddenly arrived — with a psychiatrist and a team waiting downstairs. They didn’t come for a family visit. They came to silence me.

I felt it immediately: something was wrong. I slipped away before they reached my room. My heart was racing. I exited through a side door and disappeared into the city. That night, I hid. I knew they would come again. I was right.

The Raid on My House

Days later, they came to my private house. Not the family home, but the one where I lived independently, away from their control. This time, they brought muscle — a coordinated team, an official psychiatrist, and my father’s signature on the involuntary admission papers.

I tried to reason with them. I tried to tell them that I wasn’t sick — just vocal. I was held down, injected with sedatives, and transported to a private psychiatric clinic.

There, I was stripped of my phone, isolated, drugged, and — worst of all — subjected to Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) without my consent. My only “crime” was thinking freely. My “diagnosis” was nonconformity.

The Second Arrest

You might think it ended there. It didn’t.

I fled to Tunisia for recovery, hoping for space to rebuild. But the nightmare followed me. One morning, the Libyan Consulate in Tunisia intervened — not to help, but to detain me. I was forcibly taken again, this time to a clinic in Tunis. They treated me like a criminal, not a patient.

I was then forcibly deported back to Libya and transferred to a public psychiatric hospital. No legal hearing. No judge. No independent medical review. Just silence, coercion, and stigma.

A System Built on Fear, Not Healing

In Libya, psychiatric care — whether public or private — is often built on coercion, not compassion.

In public hospitals, patients may receive adequate meals, but what they are denied is dignity. Many are kept in locked wards, with limited or no access to the outside world. Physical restraints are used not just in emergencies but as routine discipline. Patients are rarely listened to. Instead, they are ordered, threatened, or ignored. Consent is not a process — it is a checkbox signed by family.

In the private sector, the environment may appear more civilized — clean beds, painted walls, better food — but the treatment is no less oppressive. Staff often act as if they are in control of prisoners, not caregivers to people in distress. Patients are belittled, silenced, and given heavy psychiatric drugs without discussion. The psychiatrist’s word is absolute; disagreement is labeled as “noncompliance,” and noncompliance is punished.

Many patients leave with deeper trauma than when they entered.

What I Was Really Fighting

I was never violent. Never suicidal. Never detached from reality. I was fighting something far more dangerous than madness — I was fighting a culture of fear and suppression masquerading as mental health care.

I had used Facebook to question the authorities, to speak of freedom, to dream of a Libya that respects minds instead of medicating them into silence. That alone was enough to put me in handcuffs.

This isn’t just my story. It is the story of many dissidents, artists, reformers, and free spirits across the world — from the Soviet Union to the Middle East — where psychiatry is used not to heal but to erase.

A New Beginning

I will not be silent. That is why I’m launching an advocacy platform for psychiatric survivors, reformers, and critical thinkers across the Arab region. We need a space to challenge forced treatment, restore human rights, and reclaim psychiatry from the hands of power.

I am calling on the global community — from Mad in America to the UN — to listen to our stories and support the struggle for dignity in mental health.

My name is Mohamed. I was forced, drugged, and shocked — but I will never be silent again.