That poor woman, may she rest in peace. Her life was unbelievably tough and difficult, her blog and twitter page that are linked in previous posts paint such a raw picture of the sheer hell she had to go through everyday. Whenever a case like this emerges, I usually read the things the person has left behind to learn more about their story and who they were as a person, as news reporting never really delves into this.
Beth had been celebrated as a mental health advocate after a failed bridge jumping attempt, which left her severely disabled with enormous amounts of chronic health issues and pain. She was very candid and open about her experience with suicidality and disability on social media, especially in the her blog posts. She writes very detailed and vivid stories about her suicide attempt as well as the aftermath, including play by play recollections of the moments leading up to her climbing the ledge, and the turbulent emotions she felt when she realized she had actually jumped.
It is really harrowing and difficult to read, especially when she begins to talk about being sectioned once she had gotten out of intensive care. This girl was treated so badly, yet she kept believing that the staff in the ward were trying to help her, and that she deserved to be restrained, given antipsychotics, or locked up, because she was unwell. You can tell from her words that she feels immense guilt and shame about being suicidal, and that she has had to shoulder so much blame for something that she could not help.
I imagine being lauded by the media as a mental health advocate put extreme pressure and strain on her to overcome the insurmountable challenges she faced in life, regardless of the chronic health problems that resulted from her surviving the jump. There was a certain attitude that she was expected to have about it all which inevitably seemed to break her.
There are news articles of her shaking hands with the police officers who rescued her after her attempt, interviews with good samartins who restrained her during prior attempts, numerous words of admiration and praise for the paramedics who saved her life when she was in critical condition.. All of this must have made it so difficult for her to grapple with continued suicidality, because she was expected to be optimistic and grateful for what others saw as a 2nd chance at life.
Many times, she describes herself as selfish or wracked with guilt, and it's so heartbreaking to read. She never should have had to feel this way. When you see the photos on her twitter of her numerous surgeries and procedures that she's had to endure after her attempt for her permanently damaged legs, it's impossible not to feel devastated for this poor girl. She was so severely disabled and in so much pain, was sectioned in a ward for months on end, and yet expected to have a smile on her face and be a motivational figure in spite of all of this.
Her last tweet is just heart wrenching:
"I am struggling so so much. I can't eat, can't sleep, all I do is lie in bed crying. I'm so lost & broken.
I'm sorry I haven't posted much recently & I'm sorry for being so negative. I'm just in a really really dark place right now & I can't see a way out."
May she finally be at peace and free of the pain that plagued her in this life. The news articles and legislators are barking up the wrong tree and placing blame on the ward staff unnecessarily. Saying that they failed in their duty of care doesn't make sense in the context of Beth's story. She had extensive trauma from involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and hospitals in general, had endured years of forced treatment, none of their methods were helping her.. of course she would want to have freedom and privacy in what was essentially a prison.
Many commenters on these news articles think it is inhumane that she wasn't being monitored every five minutes and being forcibly restrained to ensure any self-harm was prevented. I don't understand how we can claim to be a compassionate society when forcing people to suffer for years with no improvement by using authoritian impositions of violence and forced drugging against them to keep them breathing at any cost is seen as humane.
What these medical staff did to her against her will for many years is what is truly inhumane.
