Eden1919, thank you for starting this thread. Its a topic that's never even come up in all my counselling sessions. Pushed so far down just adds to subconscious pain.
Theze stories... ... oh how i wish there was a better way for a us.
The remembering - my heart skipped beats, jumped into my throat and I broke into a cold sweat just now reading here.
Forced confinement is not pretty.
Youre right. people dont want to talk about this touchy subject (a shame thing maybe as they punish criminals this way for deliberately doing something wrong).
To be honest, for me, such mental health treatments have been harder to come to terms with than the illness itself.
Perhaps the anonymity of the forums seems a safer place to put aside shame, open up and hopefully heal a little.
You're so not alone with this
My first involuntary confinement was in my 20's, for a total of two whole months. It was horrible, I felt ignored by staff, surrounded by people more interested in if I had smokes than the way they dress, and worse of all - I was trapped. Not just physically but in my head (looking back), I was not well.
Siblings came once but so bad it was they never returned. Mum & dad tried but mum made it about her. A couple if friends came once, to tell me I was an embarrassment... abandoned the faith (going to hell)... that the place was a beehive of demonic avtivity... and i had to get myself out if there pronto... Yeah, right, fat lot of good they were.
Reality was - I didn't care about anything and had lost all hope and had actively tried to take my life. Guess it shocked family and friends who only saw me as the successful independent career woman of faith and music. Still don't know what broke me, ? a man i think.
The psychiatrist there told me 'there wasnt much they can do for people with my diagnosis' (anxiety, maj depression, dissociative disorder - now known as cPTSD), which was all beyond me at the time. Fortunately I was appointed an excellent psychologist there who talked with me every day, and two years after discharge - she saved my life.
A decade+ later, triggered by loss, a major relapse, I asked for help and came in as a voluntary public patient, but a few days later found out I was made an 'involuntary' patient by a letter from hospital administration left on my bed during lunch break. Words cannot explain how 'betrayed' I felt by my psychiatrist and all the staff. I had no idea it was coming. I shut down, switched I think, closed off to everyone and 'getting out' became my primary objective - not recovery. It was soooo hard and I think I'd rather die than go back there.
