Involuntarily Committed, Then Forgotten

G.J.

 

We both see eye to eye on this one. There are times that we need to exercise our rights as families to do a short involuntary stint for our loved ones.  But in the cases you provided, excluding your sons case…Where are the families??? How is $2500 going to give them back 10 years of their lives of usually being heavily medicated causing sedation? Where are the patient advocates?

 

I have a personal story in that my wife held the status for 2 1/2 weeks of voluntary status until an incident. Since then she has been in an acute unit that is next to worthless in care and over drugging is used as a way to deal with patients.

 

I have tried for the past two weeks to get her over to a state run facility that I did visit and seemed a lot nicer. The point I am trying to make is that I have had to since day one advocate for my wife.

 

For heavens sake, don't just go along with things and put your loved ones care totally in their hands. The thing you need to understand is there are a number of these places that some if not most of the people that are left to watch your loved ones need constant monitoring.

 

Your loved one looses a voice and is discounted for everything by saying their crazy and it never happened. Great control mechanism huh, for the people left in charge.

 

About twice a week I am running their ***** over the coals for something stupid that should never have happened. This week...wife is too heavily medicated and fringes on an over dose (eyes rolling up toward the forehead) nurse comes in and agrees that they need to back it down a little. They refused to give her a hormone patch saying they didn't have any even after I explained calmly that I had brought them in the following day... a week ago.

 

So again...where is the advocate?? We the families are the advocates and need to demand good treatment of our loved ones. I want mine home as soon as possible and the thought of them keeping her one day more than they need to is unconscionable.

 

Some families have found it too unbearable and used these facilities for a dumping ground. I would much rather have those in outpatient residential housing than involuntary committed.

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In the old days those with Bipolar were very often institutionalized either in a phospital or a sanitorium.  Bipolar folks were not recoverable.

 

It wasn't uncommon for families to just drop Janey Doe off at the hospital and drive off never to take a backward glance.  Down the road they'd not speak of her and if so they would just whisper.

 

It doesn't surprise me these particular patients were left nor had any review and if the hospital is a "for profit" someone was paying the big bill to keep them there.  The non-profits generally kick folks out.

 

Sad thing is, these folks were never given the chance all those years to live life.  Not uncommon and the scary thing is - there are probably more of them.

 

I feel that one should be involuntarily committed if one displays a blatant danger to one self or others.  Not necessarily because "we are tired of Janey Doe". 

 

Course there are those that are frightened of the word "Bipolar", think we are all insane and deranged, shouldn't be allowed to look at small children much less care for any, and would want to commit someone to gain custody even if the parent isn't commitable.

 

Oh, and most phospitals are notorious for over drugging patients to make them more easily managed for the staff.  Most, are only boarding houses until they get the drugs in to you good and hearty.  Most just roll their eyes when patients want things or demand things cause we are all "mentally ill".

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This post really touched me deeply, I know that often we are termed PARANOID well gee i wonder why.....it is like we aren't fully human to some of these places like that

and trust me when my father was ill in the hospital there were numerous times i had to rake a few over the coals (my mania helped me to get the nerve to do so for in places like hospitals the docs and nurses are portrayed as Godlike and their decisions written in stone....NOT!) also just to get BASIC and i mean BASIC needs met and he wasn't in a mental institution but in a regular hospital for a physical illness he had no mental illnesses at all but...the compassion is no longer there people, i really don't think it is.

 They look at us as mere deficiets to society and don't realize or seem to remember the Lord Byrons, Edgar Allen Poes, Robert Lowell's or Nash's of the BP world....they only see what is convient for themselves at times i believe...and no one will watch out for your family they way YOU will, we must be advocates for each other and keep getting the word out that these reports like on 60 minutes and Oprah are NOT atypical of our illness.

The media is definetly not an advocate for us....

I feel so deeply for the man who is trying to help his wife get through this time in her life and only hope he is given the strength to continue his vigil...keep up the good, loving work dear sir....

And GJ thank you for keeping us all up on what is going on for in this media/fastpaced/internet world it is frightening how much MISinformation is being shared/shown about bipolar disorder.  This post scares the dickens out of me....it is my nightmare that i too will one day need to admit to the hospital and be forgotten there among the masses, however, i have the best family support system i could ever ask for so like the man who spoke of his wife i can only hope that my family would be as insistant as he on treatment procedures and "professional's" behavior toward me. 

This is a NIGHTMARE scenario....thank you for making us aware of this...by the way is there anything we as advocates of other bps can do?? someone we can write to??? something we can do to help these poor souls dropped and forgotten and who probably feel the world is their enemy...IF they don't have them so drugged up that is....scary stuff...scary!!!

ctrygirl

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Hello G.J.,

 

I just came upon this thread and thought I would throw my two cents worth into the pot.

 

I used to be a staunch advocate against involuntary commitment.  That was true until I found myself in an untenable situation with my own husband.  He was out in the world, floundering, homeless, a total bum who did not bathe and who had lost his car, his life and his apartment.  He desperately needed some kind of intervention to help him recover some sort of life with dignity and humanity to  it.  I could not bear to continue watching him the way he was going.

 

So, I went to the courthouse and had the papers drawn up for an involuntary commitment.  The judge granted my petition, they located my husband and had him hospitalized against his will.  While in the hospital, my husband received psychotropic meds that he sorely needed and, slowly but surely, he started to come around and return to his "old self".  When he was discharged, we resumed our lives with our son and things began to look better for us.

 

After my husband was discharged from the hospital, he did not speak much about what I had done to him - IE:  having him committed.  He did agree that the meds had caused him to come out of his manic state, but he never commented on the fact that I had him committed.  Since things were going along pretty well, we just dropped it and didn't talk about it.

 

All in all, you could say that the involuntary commitment was a success.  And for the time being, it was.

 

Then, my husband went off his meds (feeling he no longer needed them).  He did fine for a period of time, until my son started having some minor problems with his boy scout leader.  I felt like the problems were something my son could work out on his own, with his leader, and I did not talk to the leader about the problems.  My husband felt very differently about what was going on, but rather than talk to the boy scout leader to work things out, he ranted and raved about the situation to anyone who would listen.  Eventually, the stress got to him and he spiraled up to another manic state.  All too soon, his behavior of being a bum, destroying his vehicles, starting fires and a host of other things, began all over again.  This time, though, my husband had something different in his arsenal of verbal attacks.  This time, he lashed out at me, screaming at me about how I could have had him committed and how he would never trust me again and how I was the devil incarnate.  He went on and on until I just couldn't deal with it anymore.  I made him leave my apartment and told him to go back to his own apartment (we lived in separate apartments at the time). 

 

I could not forget the sting of my husand's words about the fact that I had had him involunarily committed.  This time, when he became manic, I could not have him committed again.  This time, my husband ended up committing a crime (he started a fire in is own apartment) and ended up in jail.  Once there, they give him his meds and he eventually got better again.

 

I am not sure where I am going with all of this, but I do know that by having my husband committed:

 

1)  For that one time, he "got better" and came around to being himself again;

2)  He never let me forget that I had betrayed him by doing something against his will - he claimed that he would never trust me again, although he did not verbalize this fact when he was "normal", only when he was manic.

 

My husband is dead now, so I can't say whether or not I would do it again.  I probably would not.  I would probably wait for him to commit some kind of crime and get jailed, whereupon he would be forced to take his meds and eventually "get back to himself".  At least this way, he could not blame me for what happened to him.

 

Today, I am neither for nor against involuntary commitment.  I think each family has to weigh the pros against the cons.  I do know that my trust with my husband was destroyed because of what I did, and to that extent, I don't know if it was worth it or not.  In the short term, I got what I wanted - my husband returned to "normal" if only for a short period of time.  In the long term, I destroyed the trust that we had together as a married couple and, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get this back.

 

I suppose each person has to ask themselves if it is worth it or not.  That is a question that each person has to answer for themselves.  For those of you grappling with this decision, I wish you the best of luck,

 

Kay

 

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G.J.,
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i was going to a mental clinic for 8 year s they never dianosis me with bipolar until i was admitted i volunteere d admitted mine self because mine brother came in mine house and put his fist in mine house i told them i would killed them and mine self so i knew why then i need him where mine family is hateful and jealous so i have send up for mine disbility with other problems and had to go to court so they telling me all the reason i went was to get the check mine was a nervous breakdown i was mistreated at a child and me trying to take care of mine 87 years old mom who other 5 dont want her just her money andit very hard but i still having got over all of it i try to forgive it but mine family wont do it and i get so upset i dont really want to do nothing to hurted mine self so i just pray to god to help me an d going theraprist will might help ty for sharing  sue
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whenyou dont have insurance it very hard to get your medicines or any help they are so many overdoses and things in mine comments because of people cant seeth help sue
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and I can tell you it is a painful place to dare look. As you know from my blog--my daughter is currently 'ITA'. Though I always knew her and she always asked me to take her for help to a hospital.So when she became very gravely disabled and stopped traffic with her body--I also had to save her life. What a contradiction.I believe in civil liberties and I hate hospitals. From experience with her. The best thing that can be there for a person who is sick and needing this kind of care--and I did not file the report to detain her, so I would gain what I needed, to be her voice as a temp guardian for a 19 yr. old. I have much more I could say here, but yes, it is a malfunctioning and drop-off system--I have met so many patients in locked down wards--and if I could be there advocate, I would be, and one day I will be. What ppl. need to understand is this does happen. Worse--it happens by hospital discharge plans and inpatient psychiatrists. This is why I am in a fight for my daughter's right not to be sent for warehousing at the state institution per the hospital's desire. I'm doing everything in my power as her mother and advocate and voice to stop that. The ppl I have met who do not have a voice---I cry nightly for--seriously I have witnessed more than anyone can imagine. And anyone who reads this who was placed somewhere against their will with non-concerned ppl behind it--I understand, and I am here. The fact that state institutions have graveyards,is one of the worst things I ever had to witness. --soulful sepulcher
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The stories shared in this thread are chilling and painful to read.  My late mother spent a year in an asylum (circa, 1963) in California.  State of the art 'treatment'; Thorazine, etc..  She had chronic depression and schizophrenia.  She had numerous electroshock sessions, and was actually on the waiting list for a lobotomy!  And she was a 'self-commit'.   I never knew of a time during my childhood when she was 'normal' for more than a few days a time.  She ended her life in 1976.  Just picked up a copy of The Snake Pit (1946) at a used bookstore (it later was a movie).  Though a novel, it described what mental hospitals were like long ago.  Obviously from this blog...not much has changed, and many BPs (I is one too) wind up trapped and forgotten.  It's so darned complicated, but involuntarily committment should be the last course of action, and I believe the state should appoint a peer advocate and an attorney to look after the interests of the patients.  Family should be first-line advocates, but they should be guided (if there is one available) a psychiatric advanced directive that is legally binding on all parties.  Except in the 'danger' circumstances, patient rights must be paramount.  It's good that this discussion is taking place.  Hopefully, talk will lead to corrective action.

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