NOTE: This narrative is not meant to criticize or in any way disparage those who have found traditional psychiatry, including diagnoses, medication, and hospitalization to be helpful. I fully understand that these solutions are often helpful and necessary for many people’s recovery. I am highly pro-psychiatry. This story is merely meant to call the practice of forced psychiatry into question.
Like a lot of people, I’ve always struggled with my mental health to some extent. I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been bullied. I’ve always been the awkward, weird, uncool, socially awkward girl. In middle school, I was made fun of for being ugly and for being one of the only Jewish students. In high school, I was almost universally hated because I was a nerdy weirdo with a huge crush on her Spanish teacher.
A natural reaction to being bullied is to feel sad, lonely, worried, self-conscious, and rejected. Throughout middle school and high school, my natural reaction to bullying was diagnosed as a lot of different illnesses: major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, cyclothymia and dysthymia. Every mental health professional I saw had a different opinion of what the correct diagnosis, course of treatment, and medication should be. Not one of these included any mention of stopping the actual problem: bullying.
Things got better during college. I was still the awkward, weird girl, and I did struggle to make friends at first, but eventually I found a group of friends who I could be myself around and who liked me for me. I found my place in my college’s Reform Jewish community and theater department. I saw a therapist who validated my feelings and who saw my emotions as a natural reaction to a series of events, not as a diagnosis.
The few years of college were not without struggle, though. I experienced more bullying, my first heartbreak, and I even got raped. But none of that felt like too much to handle, especially compared to being universally hated during high school.
Then, my senior year of college, I started dating someone seriously, P. I had never met someone like P before - who treated me with respect and kindness, who made me laugh, who supported me, who stayed up all night with me talking about the plays I wrote and our philosophical ideas…who I loved, and who loved me back.
I couldn’t believe that someone I loved actually loved me back. It was incredible. It was like a dream.
But it was also terrifying. I became convinced that I would somehow screw it all up. I couldn’t believe that someone like him would choose someone like me - someone who has repeatedly been told that she is ugly, awkward, and weird, someone who had been bullied for most of her life, someone who was just not normal. I became incredibly anxious that I didn’t deserve P.
Coupled with this anxiety was the natural anxiety of senior year. What was I going to do after graduation? Would I get into a graduate school in a city where P would move with me? Surely the graduate school application process would be much more difficult for me than for someone who didn’t have all the problems that I had - someone normal.
I thought making a definitive decision about my post-graduate plans would help, but it only made things worse. P wanted to move to Los Angeles, so I decided to go to school in Los Angeles. I received a scholarship to attend a joint Jewish Nonprofit Management and Social Work program. But after the decision had been made, I became extremely anxious that I was doing something stupid. What if I moved to Los Angeles, hated school, and then somehow screwed up my relationship with P? Then I would be completely alone. I wondered if I would come to regret basing my graduate school decision in part on a boy. A boy who was, I thought, much more attractive, smart, and normal than me, and who would eventually discover that he could do better.
I was so paralyzed with anxiety and fear that I decided to see a psychiatrist. I was prescribed two medications.
Medication became a great way to numb some of my anxiety and self-doubt. I loved the feeling, and I wanted more. I began to develop a tolerance, and I was quickly taking more than prescribed.
During my graduation weekend, I was severely distressed. I got into a fight with my boyfriend about whether or not to say goodbye to an ex before leaving, and I was very anxious about my family coming in.
So I doubled my dose.
I woke up in the emergency room at the hospital, surrounded by my boyfriend and parents. Thankfully, the psychiatrist on call deemed that I was not a danger to myself, and discharged me from the hospital. As we were leaving, my mom made a hurtful comment that my grad school wasn’t “prestigious” enough. I felt so hurt, so I went back to talk to the resident on call about the anguish I was feeling. He asked if I had thoughts of hurting myself. I said that I did not want to hurt myself, but joked that “it would be nice to get hit by a car on my way home”.
Because of that single facetious comment, he sentenced me to an involuntary hospitalization. The hospital’s licensed psychiatrist had already spent over an hour evaluating me and declared that I was not a danger to myself. I had already signed my discharge papers. Nevertheless, a resident who had just recently graduated med school had the power to unilaterally decide to institutionalize me.
Getting involuntarily hospitalized was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Being in a psychiatric institution is a whole lot like being raped. Your body is no longer your own. It is some else’s to control, to do what they will with. They will strip search you, they will examine you, they will confine you, they will restrain you. They will decide whether or not you can wear your contacts or take your pain medication or wear your clothes or speak. They will shove things down your throat and force you to swallow. They will put their hands on you and force you to stay silent.
That was when the flashbacks began. I started having flashbacks to my rape and sexual assaults.
When I left the hospital, I felt such shame and sadness that it was hard to bear. I continued to take medication, which helped me numb the pain a bit, but not nearly enough. I started drinking too.
I moved to Los Angeles. I started school.
Grad school was awful. I didn’t fit in with any of my classmates. Yet again, I was the socially awkward, weird, ugly girl. I was skeptical of networking and fundraising practices, I spoke out about how Jewish youth programs sometimes promote hookup culture, I didn’t have the same level of involvement in the Jewish community as my classmates did, and I was terrible at small talk. I felt like such an outsider. There was no one I felt close to or found solidarity with.
It was like high school all over again.
On top of that, my classmates were hyper-sexual. They talked nonstop about their sexual escapades and hookups. The intrusive memories became more frequent. Many of my classmates did not stop when I told them that the conversations were triggering for me.
I wanted to become an emotionally numb zombie. I took a pill before each class. I also asked my psychiatrist to prescribe me a drug otherwise known as a chemical lobotomy. My psychiatrist refused but instead prescribed me another medication, which she instructed me to take daily in addition to the one I was already taking. She also prescribed me a higher dose of antidepressants.
I became cynical, apathetic, angry, and pessimistic. I spoke out in class, arguing against everything, with everyone. This, of course, caused my classmates to dislike me even more, which in turn made me hate myself more and take more medication.
I remember once, during an argument with a classmate about whether I could ever stop lookism, a cause that I am very passionate about, I began to lose hope completely. I remember thinking that I would always be disliked. I would always be an outsider. I would always be ugly and disgusting and weird.
I had, indeed, become emotionally numb. But emotional numbness does not just mean an absence of pain. It means an absence of passion, drive, and hope - all of the emotions that had up until that point been such a critical part of my identity. I lost my optimism and my enthusiasm for standing up for the causes I believe in.
The suicidal thoughts began.
Due to my previous experience with hospitalization, I didn’t want to tell anyone that I was feeling so depressed. The fear of being hospitalized again was paralyzing. So, instead, I took more pills. I drank.
One night, toward the end of the summer, I made the stupid mistake of combining my medication and alcohol. Looking back, this was highly irresponsible of me, and I take full ownership of this dangerous action. But that night, I had no notion of the consequences that were ahead of me. I took a pill, then a shot of vodka, then another pill, then another shot of vodka. One more round, and that’s the last thing I remember.
I woke up in the emergency room. I remember the sheer terror when the psychological technician told me I’d have to be hospitalized again. My whole body was shaking, and I was hysterically crying and begging for them to let me go. The emergency room staff didn’t believe that I wasn’t a danger to myself even though I told them, truthfully, that I was not actively suicidal.
This time, the psychiatric hospital was even worse. The strip search was forceful and aggressive, and I couldn’t relate to any of the other patients. The visiting hours were shorter, and there were no real therapy groups. The nurses forced us to open our mouths and would check the back of our throats to make sure we had swallowed our medication - something that is very triggering for an oral rape survivor. The bathroom doors didn’t lock or fully close. If the hospital staff heard patients crying or showing emotion, they would coerce us into taking medication (not taking medication would get you marked as noncompliant). I remember crying in the shower to hide from them.
The worst part of this experience was that my autonomy was not restored after I returned from the hospital. No one trusted me - not my boyfriend, my parents, my relatives, or even my best friend. My psychiatrist tried to put me in an inpatient program for 30+ days, and my decision not to go was not supported by anyone around me. My friends and family were constantly on edge, looking for signs that I was suicidal again, that I was dangerous. The phrase that kept being repeated was, “Emily is very, very sick.” Even my boyfriend’s therapist, who hadn’t even met me, told him that I was not well and needed intensive treatment.
My grad school’s administrators felt similarly. When I tried to come back to school, I was interrogated by the directors of the Jewish nonprofit management program about my psychiatric history, my diagnoses, my hospitalizations, and my medications. When I started seeing a psychiatrist who believed I was well enough to go back to school, the administrators interrogated me about why I had switched doctors. They suspended me from school for one year.
The next few months were hell on earth. On top of being treated as a wild animal that needs to be caged, I was haunted by memories of the hospitalization and terrified that it would happen again. There were some days that I felt too paralyzed to drive for fear that a stupid driving mistake would be perceived as a suicide attempt and give medical staff probable cause to hospitalize me. I constantly felt the need to censor myself around my friends and family, afraid that the mere mention of mental health or suicide could be perceived as a suicidal remark.
But I knew that I had to keep going. The only way that I could possibly regain the trust of those around me was to get through a long time without hurting myself or giving anyone a reason to suspect that I had thoughts of hurting myself. Every day that I made it alive was a baby step toward regaining their trust again. Every day I made it alive was a baby step toward proving everyone wrong who had labeled me as suicidal, as unwell, as sick.
I got off the medications. I joined a 12-step program to help me with my addiction and alcohol problem. I began to feel like myself again.
At that point, I reflected on what led to all this. It all started when my childhood classmates bullied me for not being “normal”. The teachers and administrators at my middle and high school could have responded by educating my classmates on how harmful it is to tease and ostracize an innocent child. They could have taught my classmates that we can all learn from each other’s differences and celebrate our diversity. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they punished me. They labelled me with a half-dozen mental illnesses and prescribed me a smorgasbord of drugs in an attempt to normalize me. They ingrained in me the message that the bullies did nothing wrong. I was in the wrong. I was very ill. They sent me into a lifelong spiral through a revolving door of doctors who would hear about my struggles, prescribe me drugs that made my problems worse, then give me more drugs to try to solve the problems that the drugs had caused in the first place. As my problems got worse, my doctors increased medication dosages. When overdosing sent me to a psychiatric prison, they increased my dose. At no point did anyone consider that maybe the drugs were causing my problems, not solving them. Yet, once I finally got off those medications, my life immediately started to turn back in a positive direction.
I found a job at a Jewish nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping individuals who are incarcerated in prisons and psych wards, including youth facing incarceration due to addiction and mental health. My co-workers are nothing short of kind, compassionate individuals who are passionate about giving others a second chance.
I started to get involved with mad pride, a movement that promotes individuals’ autonomy over their mental health and recovery. I began to surround myself with the voices and perspectives of people who, like me, refuse to give up their autonomy to psychiatric institutions, and who instead fight for their own right to define their identities and decide on their own recovery. I became a member of Mind Freedom International’s Shield Program, which makes me feel safer and more secure, knowing that in the case of another re-hospitalization, I would be able to call on a team of advocates to stand behind me.
My boyfriend began to trust me again and he now trusts me fully. He openly admits he was wrong to say that I needed intensive treatment or that I was a danger to myself. Just a few days ago, I had an amazing conversation with my mom, who has become more than willing to work with me on a recovery plan in which I can still maintain my autonomy and freedom. My father, a physician himself, has come to understand the dangers of over-medication. Less than a year ago, I had lost the trust of everyone around me; I now feel that I could not have a more supportive and understanding partner and family.
This is a story with a happy ending.
I am one of the lucky ones.
I found the mad pride movement. I had access to all the information I needed to successfully wean off medication. My parents and boyfriend ended up supporting my decision to choose my own recovery.
There are so many who are forced on antidepressants or other medications that only worsen their mental health. There are so many who are locked in psychiatric hospitals for weeks or months. There are so many who do not end up getting the support of their friends or family to choose their own recovery. There are so many who continue to be labeled as sick, ill, disturbed, abnormal - when in reality they are having a natural reaction to traumatic events.
Almost every person I have met in the mad pride movement has had a much worse experience than I have.
There are so many, too, who never find the mad pride movement or the critical psychiatry perspective. The only mental health movement they can find is one with the perspective that endorses traditional psychiatry and the false dichotomy of “mentally healthy” versus “mentally ill.”
And what about the people who don’t get any of the above? What about the ones who don’t make it alive?
I am one of the lucky ones, and that pisses me off. It makes me very, very mad.
On behalf of everyone who is still struggling to regain their autonomy, I am asking you to get mad with me.
Thank you.