We all know why she was attacked. She was attacked because she admitted that she had been diagnosed with bipolar and a personality disorder. To the cops and the hospital staff, she was seen as nothing more than an out-of-control crazy person. If she had not admitted any psyche history, she would have been considered an unhappy customer, or just rude and impatient. This is why I hide. I don't want their drugs and I don't want their BS. I'd rather just be nuts in peace. People are A-holes.

My daughter is petite, 5ft 3 and 100 or so pounds, 2 things have happened to her like this, one at age 19 in a medical hospital, she was deemed a psych patient and therefore "couldn't treat her dehydration", though she was an admitted medical patient.

2 armed security guards grabbed her, shoved her into a wheelchair after a nurse ripped the IV from her arm, wheeled her outside to my car.

The attorney couldn't do a damn thing he said unless her arm was broken, and tried to give me solace in a story that a homeless man's arm WAS broken by the security guards, and he won a court case.

This year at age 21, labeled SZ and being found on a walk, non verbal and vulnerable police were to bring her back safely to her residence.

Instead she was slammed to the ground, face down into gravel, and handcuffed and shoved into the back of a squad car.

There IS something wrong with how mentally ill people are treated in this country, and the injustice is intolerable. These people like my daughter are VICTIMS not criminals.

Sadly, they are victims of violence, discrimination and that comes from doctors too. Taking away a person's rights because they are deemed SZ is wrong, and anyone including doctors who believe in less rights and forced drugging of these patients needs to be removed from treating these people, and anyone who employees them needs to fire them, because if they are treating ppl w their own agenda on hospital property, it IS representing agency mission and statements.

Our society is a cold, heartless one. Any country where something like this can happen to my daughter, is a shameful place to live.

Thankfully, my daughter has begun to talk again and is telling us about the police incident, the police and others will now wish she was still non verbal. They took advantage of and terrified, and injured a human being who needs to trust people, think that will happen now?

I only wish this outraged more people than ones it has happened to or are in the psych world, etc. face it, anyone else reading these articles have no sympathy for "throw aways".

"There's something cops everywhere operate under and it's called the use of force continuum and, under its precepts, cops cannot hit or strike a citizen unless that citizen has hit or struck them"

How do we know she didn't?

Philip Dawdy responds: if she had hit them it would've been mentioned in the incident reports filed by the security officers.

This doesn't surprise me at all. When you're a psych patient you're not allowed to be angry. I saw people in the psych hospital who because they raised their voices they were then taken down and forcibly injected with something to shut them up. It's sick. They weren't threatening anyone so it did not meet the criteria for what the staff did. But, they don't record it in the patient's medical record, so nobody knows. I saw it happen more than once while I was inpatient for depression. What I saw happen was not treatment, it was abuse. And it happens every day in psychiatric hospitals. But it doesn't make the papers.

I've mentioned this before, but one day when I was sitting in the cafeteria (in the nuthouse) I started to get really dizzy. I hadn't eaten in a while and I was loaded up on a lot of medication, so that didn't make for a good combo. When it was time to go to "group" I didn't get up and go. My head was spinning and I was afraid if I stood up I was going to pass out. A psych tech immediately came over and started badgering me. He didn't ask if I was okay, he just started with his threats. He left and brought back his posse. They surrounded me in a "show of force" as if I were a threat. I said nothing. I hadn't made any threatening gestures. I just sat at the table with my head down. However, I was an inconvenience. They grabbed my arms and dragged me back to my room and threw me on the bed. At that point one of the a-holes started telling me that if I didn't learn to listen that it was going to happen again. At that point I screamed at him to leave me alone. He left. Surprise, surprise it's nowhere in my medical record. Why, it's as if it never happened.

I will never forget what I saw staff do to people and I will never forget what they did to me. I had hurt no one. I was sad and depressed. I did not commit a crime. There's a special place in hell for staff who hurt patients who are already hurting so deeply. People want to act like the abuse of psychiatric patients is anecdotal. It's not. It's rampant.

Stephany, when I read about your daughter it's almost more than I can stomach. It's so backwards. People should be surrounding her with love, not hurting her. I hope she realizes what they did to her is wrong and that she doesn't deserve it.

You know what happens in a regular hospital when you're angry and NOT a psych patient? They get the patient advocate who comes to try and diffuse the situation. They don't taken you down and beat you. What a different world.

To the first anonymous. I would have to say you are choosing very wisely by not mentioning your diagnosis should you ever enter an ER.

My friend had a bad reaction to newly prescribed blood pressure medication during the weekend. She was told she was in danger of a stroke and to go to the ER. She asked me to be with her as she was fainting.

The minute the staff learned she has a psych dx (PTSD) they lost all interest in treating her physically. I had to leave and asked for a sitter for her. The next thing I knew she was being marched down the hallway in her bare feet. The ER was filthy, by the way.

She fainted on the way down the hall (du-uh, that was her presenting sx) and all those nice helpful "professionals" in white coats literally turned their backs on her.

She was placed in a seclusion room with a guard outside the door! At that point she began to dissociate from the stress and fear. To be honest, I have PTSD myself and being in a rubber room with a guard at the door wasn't improving my mental health any.

I stayed with her for an hour or so, went out repeatedly, asking for someone from the mental health center. By now her presenting, potentially life-threatening complaint had been forgotten. I called her case manager from the parking lot (the hospital blocks cell phones in the building) and was told "All you have to do is go to the nurses' desk and ask for someone from MH to see her." When I answered "I've done that five times already" there was dead silence on the line. Obviously, there's a great gap between what's supposed to happen and what does happen.

Finally someone came from MH and I felt safe to leave her as it seemed someone might be able to get the ER staff to at least examine her.

Ha. She ended up in handcuffs in the back of a cruiser on her way to the state hospital. The SH staff took one look at her and said "What are you doing here? You don't belong here." and let her go immediately.

Her physical problem had to wait until her PCP's office opened on Monday. She was lucky not to have had a stroke.

Like Anon, I will never, ever tell anyone in the medical profession of my past mental health diagnoses or medications. I will never take a psychotropic again as long as I live, nor admit to ever having taken them. I don't know what the heck I would do if I were still taking them because admitting to that is to open the door to abuse.

This really sucks.

Rather proud of getting this one out...

Anyway one of the backstories here is OHSU administration sent their PR folks out to the media last Fall and their lobbyists out this Spring to be given the ability to carry pistols and rifles. Seems the Portland Police are either unwilling or unable to patrol this inner city teaching hospital.

Our organization was the immediate, and SOLE, opposition to this effort, believing people with mental illness, seeking acute or sub-acute relief, would be regular victims of gun violence, along with other hospital patients, hospital staff, and the family members of security staff. This based on news reports from dozens of hospitals around the country.

Now, according to news reports, OHSU has the weaponry and is just waiting for the training and some sort of certification.

Lisa, Sherry, Stephanie, your stories are horrific and why I am so anxious to get rid of the last psych med I am on. Unfortunately, severe rebound insomnia is holding me hostage and slowing up the process. But I will prevail.


Sherry, I think god forbid if I ended up in ER, I would lie about taking the med. No way I want to risk being mistreated. Since it is below 5mg, hopefully the risk of it clashing with any meds is low. Of course, I could be wrong but I just think that risk is less than being abused as someone with a psych label.

AA,
Yeah, you've got to weigh the risks and benefits. And, in the case of a mentally ill label, the outright danger. You're down low enough so the risk is well worth it.

FWIW, I quit Effexor cold turkey as a result of surgery. I was so addled by the surgery (another horror story, but at least I did benefit in the long run from the surgery, unlike the contact with the psychiatric profession) that I forgot to take it the next day. And the next and the next. It was several weeks before I remembered I was supposed to be taking the stuff. By then I felt so much better physically I wasn't nearly as depressed.

Most of my "psychiatric" problems have actually been the result of undiagnosed physical problems. Which is another, more subtle, problem. Once you're identified as a psych patient the physical MDs lose any and all interest in you. It's as if you cease to have a body.

Psychiatrists, despite the fact they're the ONLY mental health practitioners with medical degrees, consistently display a nearly total lack of awareness of the fact their patients actually have bodies. I've never understood that, really.

Sherry, thanks for reassuring me I would be doing the right thing.


Congratulations on getting off the Effexor and breaking free from psychiatry.

Great point about psychiatrists being clueless about the rest of the body. But they don't have to since depression is linked to every condition known to human kind. I am sure there is a linkage to the broken finger I suffered a few years ago.

"if she had hit them it would've been mentioned in the incident reports filed by the security officers."

Well maybe it was, we haven't seen the full report. Although even if it had been in the report, that might have been lies by the officers to justify their actions. I doubt the officers are going to have filed a report admitting on paper that they punched someone for no reason, even assuming they did...

Basically we have no idea what happened here so we shouldn't jump to conclusions.

Neuroskeptic,
You are... I will not even finish the sentence.
I'm sorry but I will lose all my education and leave good manners behind:

You are

No I will not because I will have to answer back.
I don't want any kind of discussion with such a character.
It's very good that people like this come here so that people can see one of the reasons Philip is bloging.
Fortunately there are many good blogs and I thank every one of them.
Thank you all blogers!

I have noticed that some people who are here for more than one year haven't start a blog.
Please do if you can. You don't need to write everyday of be very committed but the more blogs the better.

Me again.

I live in front of two mental institutions one of them the most important of the city.
There are policemen inside the hospital.
Once I talked to a woman who stays from time to time there and she told me that she was restrained by a person from the staff and a policeman.
She was at the ground and the policeman said:
"Let's drag her till the third floor."
Fortunately the person from the staff said:
"Do you want me to lose my job?"

They are treated like beasts and I can see it, I can see it.
Tomorrow I will go to the other mental institution.

This is the post I wrote about the half hour I was treated like an inmate on this hospice:

http://justana-justana.blogspot.com/2009/01/half-hour-as-inmate-on-mental.html

Again?

I only remembered how easy it is to make a person be diagnosed bipolar.
Give, let's say Seroquel, to the person for a period of time.
Stop giving.
Huge withdrawal syndrome.
Go to the luny and I'm sure s/he will be diagnosed.
I'm going to test it on someone.
Wait for the post. Does anybody here have a foe?

AA, yes you will prevail. I did it too quickly, and I paid for it. I wish I had taken it more slowly and saved myself some misery. Do what feels right for you.

Sherry, the story you relay sounds like the hospital where they ignored the woman lying face down on the floor dying right in front of their eyes. There are so many health care professionals who don't see those with the mental illness tag as human beings. We're just children who misbehave.

Lisa,
This is the large, middle-class faux "regional health care center" that sits like a cancer in the middle of our state. It's a suburban hospital and always will be because it lacks any affiliation with a medical school or teaching hospital, other than the usual fraudulent "use our name and act as a shunt for us" arrangement big city hospitals make with crappy suburban hospitals.

People in this area actually go to this dump for cancer treatment and open heart surgery because it's so "convenient" and also because of the relentless advertising and the fact they've gobbled up every PCP practice in three counties. I nearly died there of malpractice about 8 years ago so, needless to say, I just hate the place.

But even if I didn't, I can never wrap my mind around the fact there's a national cancer treatment center 90 minutes away, but people stay up here to be treated by (mostly) hacks without even bothering to go get a second opinion. I've seen more than one person die while the docs up here dicked around for months with no diagnosis. The Lahey Clinic is a 90-minute drive, but people are afraid to "offend" their doctor.

The bottom line is people are afraid. It's really sad. I guess what I went through at the hands of psychiatrists certainly taught me what was behind that Doctor God curtain. Good boy, Toto.