This weblog will be unmonitored for the next several days. Any comments will be held in the moderation queue until our return, some time around the 16th of July. Come again!

Our last trip to the psych ward was in November of 2006. This was when Rome was still around and in charge, and things were a lot different for us then. We’ve brushed up against this before, but to be honest this is a very painful topic, this whole incident and the month we spent in the hospital. A lot of unhappy things went down. This is just part of it.

We were taken to the hospital because Rome was not speaking. We’d been out of contact with friends and family for a couple of days, and someone was dispatched to check on us. That someone got freaked out and called an ambulance when Rome did not respond to his presence. We had attempted suicide before and no one on the scene was sure this wasn’t that. We were taken to the emergency room. A laboratory error with our blood sample made them think we had overdosed on lithium, and we went from there to Intensive Care, where it was discovered we hadn’t overdosed on anything (we weren’t even taking lithium then). Rome did not speak or respond to speech, and we were transferred to the psych ward.

She was not speaking because she couldn’t, nor could she understand what people were saying to her. This had happened before. It’s a dissociative response to stress. It always eventually passed on its own. Unfortunately no one contacted our psychiatrist, and though we had been to that psych ward in the past and shared our diagnoses with them, they had made it clear they did not “believe in” DID. If it couldn’t be dissociation, it had to be something else. And so.

And so, we were held in the hospital. Bit by bit Rome came back. After several days she was speaking again, though no one could understand what she was saying. And then came the commitment hearing.

Why was there a commitment hearing? That’s an excellent question. In this state, a person can be held in the hospital on a “hold” for up to five business days before further action must be taken. We happened to come in on a weekend before a week with a major holiday in it, so we had in fact been on the psych ward for over a week by the time our hearing came.

However, in this state a person must be a danger to self, a danger to others, or unable to care for one’s own basic needs in order to be committed. Rome was not suicidal, had no interest in other people let alone intent to hurt anyone, and when left to our own devices we were eating, drinking, sleeping, and using the bathroom — just as we would have been if we had been left in our apartment in the first place.

More practically, we weren’t banging on the door screaming for release, either. Rome was lying in bed all day and all night, mostly lost in her own confusion. No family or friend was on the scene wanting to take us away. We were effectively stranded.

Whatever the reasoning, the hearing came. A policeman appeared in our hospital room and a lawyer sent to “represent” us at the hearing, and Rome followed them down the hallway to another room where the necessary people were awaiting us. When she spotted the mini-recorder on the table, she realized what was happening. She yelled at them that this was not just — but they did not understand her. She sat, unable to understand what was being said but knowing what this meant, what it could mean in future, and she sent very urgently for me.

I did not want to come. I was in my own distress, and our presence in the hospital once again filled me with despair. But I came. Rome did not allow me control of the body, but I was there, and I heard everything.

As we have mentioned before, the principal actor in the commitment hearing is the “commitment investigator” — an employee of the county who is supposed to investigate the situation and present reasons for commitment to the court. The woman acting in that capacity that day was known to us. She had been “our” investigator over the course of several hospitalizations in the previous two years, and based on that might be expected to know us, or at least know about us. So the judge listened carefully to everything she said, and I’m sure he thought it was the truth. She was, after all, under oath.

Since we were patently not a danger to anyone, the basis for our commitment was inability to care for self. Specifically, the judge was told that we would or could not handle the injections of insulin we required four times each day to keep our diabetes under control. Other things were mentioned: Rome had not been eating much, for one thing. We had a history of being “self-destructive.” It was also mentioned that we had been part of a class-action suit against the state hospital system several years before — surely if we were not committed, we would sue the hospital! Our “assertion” that we are Multiple was brought up (and dismissed), as was the fact that we have had multiple psychiatric diagnoses.

The investigator mentioned our past stay in the state hospital and then segued into her experience on another ward, many years before, at another state hospital, where she said she had been in a supervisory position. She mentioned that there had been several completed suicides by former residents of that ward.

But despite any implications as to our future dangerousness, the only thing we could by any stretch of the imagination be held for was the alleged inability to care for ourselves, based on our refusal to inject our insulin. This is hardly a compelling argument. Most people are “allowed” to be as reckless with their health as they like.

But even that is not the real issue here.

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We are not diabetic.

*

We are not diabetic. Through some kind of records screw-up, the doctor had ordered that our blood sugar be tested frequently: four times a day, in fact. This was very irritating to the nurses because it always tested normal. Insulin injections were not required because we did not and do not have diabetes.

The entire basis for committing us was simply not factual.

Our personal physician was in the same “health care system” as the hospital. Her office is less than a block from where we were being held. She could have cleared up any questions about our health, if anyone had asked her. We have a letter from her that states no one ever did.

The commitment investigator, in her testimony that day, told the judge that she had been to the psych ward several times in the preceding week to check on us. She remembered the very day and meal at which Rome had begun to eat again, four days before the hearing. So presumably she was looking at our chart and our records. It seems like an awfully big mistake to make, doesn’t it? Diabetes is not something they get to choose to “believe in” or not. It’s not a theory. One needs insulin shots four times a day or one does not.

The hearing proceeded, with his honor and two psychologists asking questions of Rome she could not understand (a special thank you to the psychologist who shrieked at us, as if volume could force comprehension, or at least provoke a useful display of temper). Rome clung in great fear to physical control, and did not speak again. I listened. “Our” attorney presented no defense. His honor committed us to the power of the county and the care of the hospital for a period not to exceed six months. I left and Rome returned to the hospital bed in bleak dread. She was wordless, not stupid. We knew what this all meant, what it might mean for our future. What it had meant in the past.

We were in the hospital for three more weeks before we won free. We would have left ten days earlier, but were refused release even though we were going to stay with a relative and were taking all prescribed medications. The doctor and social worker cited “red tape.”

Rome never recovered from the repeated insults and traumas of the experience, and four months later was gone.

Tell me this was done for our good, or for the good of society as a whole. Tell me it was necessary. Tell me we were held involuntarily in that place by understandable accident. Tell me it wasn’t so bad, no harm done.

Tell me I should remember there are good mental health professionals out there. Tell me not to be angry. Tell me pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional.

Tell me the people in charge of the “Mental Health System” don’t just manufacture the reality that suits them as they go.

Tell me again how hard it is to commit people involuntarily.

Lots of people are talking about the current Newsweek article about a boy diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder… at the age of two. Max Blake is now ten years old and has been on 38 psychotropic drugs in the past eight years. Because drugs are what you do with bipolars, of course.

It’s a distressing thing to read about, and the entire issue of pediatric bipolar disorder is horrifying and complicated.

Our friends and neighbors at the Treatment Advocacy Center have also contributed their two cents of reaction to the article. After an attention-grabbing headline and a single sentence referring to the article as “disturbing and heartbreaking,” TAC gets down to their real business.

“The Blakes may have a rough road ahead,” TAC wants you to know. “Max has not yet reached the age of majority, so his parents have control over his treatment plan. Unfortunately, the Blakes will face even more hurdles when it comes to getting treatment for their son Max when he turns 18.”

There it is. That’s what the Treatment Advocacy Center is all about. The problem isn’t that Max is in big trouble, or that he himself certainly has a rough road ahead. They don’t give a crap about Max, or anyone like Max. That’s not their constituency. This entry is for parents of kids like Max. They want you thinking ahead to that horrible, horrible day your sad/mad/bad child becomes an adult. Adults are so inconvenient, with all those legal and civil rights, including the right to tell mommy and daddy to piss off. TAC says every day that what they do is “work to eliminate barriers to the timely and effective treatment of mental illness.” The barriers they are talking about are those very legal and civil rights.

Oh, but not your legal and civil rights. Just “the sickest of the sick.” And if the system isn’t so good at figuring out who should be in the category of “sickest of the sick”, well… oops. Wrong patient. Of course, once you (or your kid, or your grandkid) have been stripped of your legal and civil rights, there’s no way to get them back. TAC is awfully sorry about that. What do you want? They did say “oops.”

With this particular blog post, the Treatment Advocacy Center is hoping to rope in a few more converts. Fear is a great motivator. Ask President Bush. People will let you get away with a lot if you can scare them badly enough first.

“Many times the law leaves parents with no voice in the treatment of their son or daughter,” writes TAC. Not your two- or ten-year-old son or daughter, of course: feel free to drug them as much you as you wish when they’re pre-schoolers. But when they reach their majority? Uh-oh. Somehow the stupid laws of the nation automatically cover everyone, even the mentally ill. Clearly this must be stopped.

“As it stands now, many states require that a person be immediately dangerous before they may be involuntarily treated.” Please pause for a moment to consider if you think this is a bad thing. Involuntarily treated. As it stands now, you don’t even have to break a law to be involuntarily treated; all that has to happen is a doctor somewhere thinking you may be a danger to yourself (suicide) or to others (physical violence) and you can be involuntarily “treated.”

My father was recently in a hospital for problems with his heart. The doctor wanted him to stay for observation and then be transferred to another hospital, an hour away, by ambulance. My father refused this as unnecessary. My mother was so angry with him she picked up all his stuff and left him there, thinking it would keep him from checking out of the hospital (it wouldn’t have). When a second doctor agreed that dad was right, then and only then did mom settle down enough to “let” him get dressed and go home.

I told him he is damned lucky he’s never been diagnosed as mentally ill. Refusal to comply with a doctor’s orders in that situation could, if desired, be viewed as being dangerous to self, and dad could have spent the night (and, legally, the next several days) being “involuntarily treated” on the psych ward. If the Treatment Advocacy Center has their way, and protections are weakened, my dad might have been held involuntarily simply because his immediate family — his wife — decided he was being “crazy.”

Again, the Treatment Advocacy Center says over and over they’re not talking about you. Not your rights, just the rights of that pesky kid or aunt of yours always making with the crazy. They only want to disenfranchise those people. The “sickest of the sick.” Why should those people have rights and protections? Shouldn’t you, the sane one, be able to force them to take psychotropic drugs even if they don’t want to, or put them in a hospital ward involuntarily with no pesky legal niceties? If not you, then a doctor? If not a doctor, then a lawyer, or a special counsel, or TAC?

When Max Blake turns 18 (if he makes it to 18), should he have rights like a real person? Isn’t that scary and dangerous and bad? It’s too expensive to keep him locked away, too visibly cruel. But forced involuntary treatment, that’s just making him take substances into his body that can make him sterile and diabetic and stupid and tired all the time and, most importantly, easy for the sane ones who know best to direct and control.

The Treatment Advocacy Center: forward thinking visionaries who only want your kid’s civil rights erased so you can control him. Never allow him to be an adult, that will solve the whole messy business.

Intelligent response to the Max Blake story can be found here and here.