Phew, that was close. It took place this evening, I'm still a bit stunned. I'm telling this story mainly for venting purposes and not because I think my life is genuinely interesting, but I still reckon the whole situation was rather ludicrous so maybe worth sharing after all.
So, for the context, I've had persistent depression with suicidal ideation for about 15 years, sometimes manageable, sometimes really horribly bad. And this summer, it's been really really bad with overwhelming suicidal thoughts.
I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis and she's really nice, but she (rightfully) wanted to go on vacation for a bit. As she knew about my suicidal thoughts and freaked about "letting me alone", she thought it would be a good idea to schedule for me daily calls with a suicide "helpline" (spoiler: they're not a helpline, they're a healthcheck line).
So the healthcheck was up, and last week, out of pure bad luck, I missed two consecutive calls from the (so-called) helpline. I wasn't on my phone at the very moment they called, and as I deal with ASD and APD, calling back was really not an option for me. After their second attempt, they left me a voice message stating that the "incident" will be reported to my psychatrist. Like, seriously, what about dropping me an email or a text message? I'd respond in a minute but whatever, procedures I guess. I got no news from neither the helpline nor my psychatrist since that voice message (last week).
On sunday, as my mother was worried for me, she decided to come visit me at my place (without my consent, as usual, because when you're depressed nobody cares about how you feel and what you really want). She planed to stay for at least a few weeks with me.
Today morning, I received my SN from Poland. (Not sure if I really want to go with SN BTW as it doesn't look peaceful enough to me, but that'll be another option at least)
Today, at around 5PM, heavy knocks on my door. 6 firefighters and 3 policemen, diving all at once into my tiny appartment
. I thought I was done. I had read a few threads on SS about people receiving wellness checks in EU after ordering SN, I really thought that police would ask me to surrender it, maybe even press some charges, and firefighters would bring me to the psychiatric emergency for a "checkup" (which in my country means game over regarding your human rights). My assumption was wrong: they weren't there for the SN, they had just been called by a third-party (that they weren't able to name) because of an alledged imminent death threat (that I did not make). At some point, they pretended my mother was the third-party who called them, which was obviously wrong because I spent the afternoon with her, plus she had no reason to do that. They even checked on our phones that we weren't lying. So, I'm still not 100% sure about what happened exactly that made them come, but I highly suspect the """helpline""" made the emergency call for whatever reason. But I didn't receive any call from them today, WTF?
Although nobody could make any sense of that situation, after checking my vitals, they decided to bring me to the emergency (because procedure). I was freaking out because from previous experiences, going to emergency with firefighters and police + suicidal ideation on the report means 100% probability of being coerced into a psych ward. They'll pretend they listen to you, but it's all written in advance.
So in this first emergency unit, they forced me to undress and wear their humiliating pyjama. I then had to give up on all my belongings except for my mobile phone (horray). They weren't able to explain to me why they made up such rules. I suspect that if they were able to, they'd realize how inhumane all this theater is, and psychiatry wouldn't be psychiatry, right? Then they realized that they had no psychiatrist in the unit, so I waited 2 hours for an ambulance to bring me to another hospital where they would have a psychiatrist available to check on me. I used this spare time to verify whether I was legally allowed to sign a discharge and leave the service on my own. Turns out leaving is always an option *except for mental illnesses* because you're considered unsound by default
(until you've been checked up by a psychatrist that will officially and arbitrarily declare you unsound anyways). Thanks legislator, always nice being legally sequestrated, deprived of basic human rights, and treated as a sub-human because of having done… absolutely nothing. Even rapists have more rights lol.
So I was eventually driven to this other hospital, waited for another 2 hours, and was finally able to see a psychiatrist whom I lied and minimized to a lot, in the hope he wouldn't imprison me. I reminded him what the law said about coerced psychiatric hospitalizations, stated very precisely all the previous diagnosis and treatments I endured (proving I was not delusional or in denial), reiterated that there was absolutely no imminent threat of harm to myself. By the law, this should be largely sufficient to get you out of the trouble, but in practice it's wasting your breath. They do not care about anything you say, because remember, you're unsound by premise. You can say all you want, that's worth nothing. The only thing that saved me from the ward tonight was that I brought my mother with me all along, and begged her to not, under any circumstance, sign for a forced admission. That's ironic because I was pissed she came visiting me at my place, but her decision turned out saving my ass this time. Very lucky.
I'm still a bit bitter though because she used manipulative rhetoric and pro-life sophisms against me all night long. She said that she would take all the blame should I committed suicide now, because she would consider she should have signed the admission to prevent it from happening. Obviously this is biased and illogical in so many respect, but I can symapthize she's unable to think rationnally under such circumstances. Yet she only focused on her, her feelings, how much she and my dad would suffer from my death. She was unable to consider the perspective where, as much as they'd miss me, it would also be a relief from suffering for me. She blamed me for not "trying everything" to heal. I can understand her perspective, but she didn't make a step towards me at all tonight and that was heartbreaking. I feel so misunderstood. I mean what's even the point in life if I'm just supposed to live to mitigate my parents' sadness? And when they die (possibly after years of sickess, alzheimer, cancer and whatnot), am I finally allowed to rest or do they invent another ad-hoc rule to force me to live?
Well, that was my uninteressting today's story, sorry if you lost your time reading to this point. Note that I may have written another very similar story in one of my previous posts, because I've already lived a very similar quiproquo (except it ended way worse for me because my mother was absent, therefore I ended up spending some happy time in the ward). Just disgusting to see how powerless we are against psychiatry. Let alone how many "facts" they reported from my medical file tonight that were just plain hallucinations on their part. God, they're draining me energy I don't even have.
Feel free to share your thoughts, appreciation, similar experiences if you have (hope you don't). Also feel free to tell me how you think I could have handled the situation better (maybe not talking about my suicidal thoughts to my psychatrist in the first place, but what's done can't be undone, and I think it also kinda helped me at some point
). And compassion with American fellows who may have similar stories, but ended up with medical expenses as the cherry on the top. I'm relieved to have social security.
Good night.
So, for the context, I've had persistent depression with suicidal ideation for about 15 years, sometimes manageable, sometimes really horribly bad. And this summer, it's been really really bad with overwhelming suicidal thoughts.
I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis and she's really nice, but she (rightfully) wanted to go on vacation for a bit. As she knew about my suicidal thoughts and freaked about "letting me alone", she thought it would be a good idea to schedule for me daily calls with a suicide "helpline" (spoiler: they're not a helpline, they're a healthcheck line).
So the healthcheck was up, and last week, out of pure bad luck, I missed two consecutive calls from the (so-called) helpline. I wasn't on my phone at the very moment they called, and as I deal with ASD and APD, calling back was really not an option for me. After their second attempt, they left me a voice message stating that the "incident" will be reported to my psychatrist. Like, seriously, what about dropping me an email or a text message? I'd respond in a minute but whatever, procedures I guess. I got no news from neither the helpline nor my psychatrist since that voice message (last week).
On sunday, as my mother was worried for me, she decided to come visit me at my place (without my consent, as usual, because when you're depressed nobody cares about how you feel and what you really want). She planed to stay for at least a few weeks with me.
Today morning, I received my SN from Poland. (Not sure if I really want to go with SN BTW as it doesn't look peaceful enough to me, but that'll be another option at least)
Today, at around 5PM, heavy knocks on my door. 6 firefighters and 3 policemen, diving all at once into my tiny appartment
. I thought I was done. I had read a few threads on SS about people receiving wellness checks in EU after ordering SN, I really thought that police would ask me to surrender it, maybe even press some charges, and firefighters would bring me to the psychiatric emergency for a "checkup" (which in my country means game over regarding your human rights). My assumption was wrong: they weren't there for the SN, they had just been called by a third-party (that they weren't able to name) because of an alledged imminent death threat (that I did not make). At some point, they pretended my mother was the third-party who called them, which was obviously wrong because I spent the afternoon with her, plus she had no reason to do that. They even checked on our phones that we weren't lying. So, I'm still not 100% sure about what happened exactly that made them come, but I highly suspect the """helpline""" made the emergency call for whatever reason. But I didn't receive any call from them today, WTF?Although nobody could make any sense of that situation, after checking my vitals, they decided to bring me to the emergency (because procedure). I was freaking out because from previous experiences, going to emergency with firefighters and police + suicidal ideation on the report means 100% probability of being coerced into a psych ward. They'll pretend they listen to you, but it's all written in advance.
So in this first emergency unit, they forced me to undress and wear their humiliating pyjama. I then had to give up on all my belongings except for my mobile phone (horray). They weren't able to explain to me why they made up such rules. I suspect that if they were able to, they'd realize how inhumane all this theater is, and psychiatry wouldn't be psychiatry, right? Then they realized that they had no psychiatrist in the unit, so I waited 2 hours for an ambulance to bring me to another hospital where they would have a psychiatrist available to check on me. I used this spare time to verify whether I was legally allowed to sign a discharge and leave the service on my own. Turns out leaving is always an option *except for mental illnesses* because you're considered unsound by default
(until you've been checked up by a psychatrist that will officially and arbitrarily declare you unsound anyways). Thanks legislator, always nice being legally sequestrated, deprived of basic human rights, and treated as a sub-human because of having done… absolutely nothing. Even rapists have more rights lol.So I was eventually driven to this other hospital, waited for another 2 hours, and was finally able to see a psychiatrist whom I lied and minimized to a lot, in the hope he wouldn't imprison me. I reminded him what the law said about coerced psychiatric hospitalizations, stated very precisely all the previous diagnosis and treatments I endured (proving I was not delusional or in denial), reiterated that there was absolutely no imminent threat of harm to myself. By the law, this should be largely sufficient to get you out of the trouble, but in practice it's wasting your breath. They do not care about anything you say, because remember, you're unsound by premise. You can say all you want, that's worth nothing. The only thing that saved me from the ward tonight was that I brought my mother with me all along, and begged her to not, under any circumstance, sign for a forced admission. That's ironic because I was pissed she came visiting me at my place, but her decision turned out saving my ass this time. Very lucky.
I'm still a bit bitter though because she used manipulative rhetoric and pro-life sophisms against me all night long. She said that she would take all the blame should I committed suicide now, because she would consider she should have signed the admission to prevent it from happening. Obviously this is biased and illogical in so many respect, but I can symapthize she's unable to think rationnally under such circumstances. Yet she only focused on her, her feelings, how much she and my dad would suffer from my death. She was unable to consider the perspective where, as much as they'd miss me, it would also be a relief from suffering for me. She blamed me for not "trying everything" to heal. I can understand her perspective, but she didn't make a step towards me at all tonight and that was heartbreaking. I feel so misunderstood. I mean what's even the point in life if I'm just supposed to live to mitigate my parents' sadness? And when they die (possibly after years of sickess, alzheimer, cancer and whatnot), am I finally allowed to rest or do they invent another ad-hoc rule to force me to live?
Well, that was my uninteressting today's story, sorry if you lost your time reading to this point. Note that I may have written another very similar story in one of my previous posts, because I've already lived a very similar quiproquo (except it ended way worse for me because my mother was absent, therefore I ended up spending some happy time in the ward). Just disgusting to see how powerless we are against psychiatry. Let alone how many "facts" they reported from my medical file tonight that were just plain hallucinations on their part. God, they're draining me energy I don't even have.
Feel free to share your thoughts, appreciation, similar experiences if you have (hope you don't). Also feel free to tell me how you think I could have handled the situation better (maybe not talking about my suicidal thoughts to my psychatrist in the first place, but what's done can't be undone, and I think it also kinda helped me at some point
). And compassion with American fellows who may have similar stories, but ended up with medical expenses as the cherry on the top. I'm relieved to have social security.Good night.
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. And as far as I know, yesterday, they didn't even try to reach me before escalating to emergency which is something else.
. Note that this is only proven in my own country (France). However, I suspect it's roughly the same bullshit in most countries, when not worse.
