Woman evicted from NHS hospital ward after being stuck for 18 months

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897ew0ekp4o

It's quite interesting that the article features several academics with lots of qualifications calling for the abolition of the "label" of BPD, and then two people who actually have a BPD diagnosis explaining why they feel the diagnosis has been useful for them and they want less stigma around people with BPD, not a denial that BPD exists.

It's all very well saying it's not kind to label someone as having a problematic personality. It's also not kind to ignore the fact that someone's problematic personality can be ruining their lives and cause them to hit the self-destruct button at regular intervals whilst alienating everyone. They may well also have trauma, autism, or other ND which has led to them developing these personality traits, maybe as defence mechanisms or for the purpose of survival, but if we ignore the fact that it's these personality traits which are now ruining their lives, we aren't doing them any favours.

This is absolutely true. It is also true that it is often given to women who actually have Antisocial Personality Disorder, which does a disservice to others with EUPD. I think there are also a lot of men who have EUPD who get slapped with Antisocial PD as a diagnosis. Diagnosing is a very particular skill and is often not great.

And if you come across a man acting in the way she did, he would be seen as more than 'trouble', the descriptors for a man like that would be abusive, controlling, NPD, anti social PD, sociopathic, violent and he would be arressted.

Yep. This isn't a feminist issue. A man with the same disorder would have had a far less sympathetic approach taken. This is an area where women have the advantage, because they simply don't appear to be as threatening or as dangerous.

In fairness most women likely wouldn't be as dangerous because they don't have the physical strength of men.

Yep, during DBT groups, there was a man there. He turned up for the first session in a suit (had a court appearance). He never came again. Turns out he was in prison.

Women with BPD can be very dangerous indeed, maybe not intentionally and it might not be their fault, but some of the behaviours I have seen ruin lives in a far worse way than being punched by a man.

Sending intimate photos to someone's Mum, making malicious allegations of abuse or child abuse to police, hospitals and social services, spreading rumours, harming themselves and then accusing a HCP of doing it, using children as weapons, are all things I've seen when someone's fear/ rage is triggered, sometimes by something as small as not responding to a text message.

PS. For the poster who wrote about straight jackets and padded cell I thought people may be interested - I worked in acute care psychiatric wards for a decade. There were no straight jackets but we did have 'quiet rooms' - rooms with nothing in expect a bed which was cemented into the floor, a heavy heavy duty mattress and nothing else. The bed had fixings on it so that people could be fastened to it- there were padded ankle and wrist bands which connected up. People were often put into the quiet room without being fastened to the bed - the vast majority of the time actually. It was only used as a last resort - for example, someone who had slashed their throat, been admitted on a legal detention, and was pulling out their stitches. They would be medicated if they could not calm down by themselves (most of the younger patients just needed a little time when they were not so overstimulated), and someone would stand by the door doing direct observation. There was also a camera so the nurse could observe from the nursing station. We had patient advocates employed by the state (this was overseas) and they could also observe us during the process to make sure nothing else was going on untoward. As soon as the person was calm enough, they would be let out of the restraints if they were in them. Sometimes people would ask to go into the quiet room if they were getting overwhelmed and felt they might act out. My office was on the childrens unit, and we had a little girl at one point who acted out every night at bedtime. I had a brain wave and asked if she would like the option of falling asleep in the quiet room every night and then we would move her to her bed. That was exactly what she had needed to feel safe, and she never acted out violently again during her admission. If people could manage by going to their rooms, that was the preferred option. But sometimes people were seriously assaultive or harming themselves and we had to keep them safe. To make sure people were not being abused, every seclusion was reviewed with the State afterwards (we had a visiting judge twice a week). It was also part of your induction to be put into seclusion and restraint and left for 15 minutes so you knew what it felt like.

When I worked there, we had a few people who were similar to what this woman sounds like - they would go to the State hospitals who had similar ability to seclude and restrain people. I am not suggesting anything about this process is pleasant for anyone involved, but for people who have serious problems with self regulation, it is necessary. We need more capacity like that here.

I don't doubt it and don't mean to minimise the impact these women can have on the people around them. This women has probably left a trail of ruined lives and traumatised victims behind her. There will probably be loads more people yet to come into her orbit who will leave it exhausted and traumatised.
Men like her have all of that plus 40% greater upper body strength.

The thing is, what would "supported to have her back" look like? I don't know anything about the original care home but it is somewhere that is set up to look after people with fairly serious needs. I expect that they had got to the point where the majority of the staff were refusing to have anything to do with her and the other residents were being driven crackers by her. Once your most reliable members of staff are saying that no job is worth this then that is a real problem.

People who work in care homes do hard, thankless jobs for not a lot of money.

Realistically, if they took her back then the flat wouldn't be offered. It's expensive and, if she is in a care home, then the default thinking will be that is good enough.

This.
I was in a FB group for people with BPD. A man joined. His partner had BPD, and he was worried about her behaviours and asked they were normal/acceptable. She was telling him to put up with it all due to "her mental health". Basically, she was abusing him. And when he tried call her out on it, she would self harm and turn it round on him. He had kids (not hers) that he had joint custody of, and she would be sending him vile messages about them whenever he could not see her because he had them. She would hurt him, and he would end up in hospital with her hovering about and making excuses.

I can't remember his name (he deleted his account because his partner was tracking him), but a few months later, there was something in the press about about man who had suffered domestic abuse at the hands of his female partner to the point he ended up dying/committing suicide (I can't remember if I am honest), and I wondered if it was him.

That's awful.

A person with untreated EUPD leaves a trail of devastation and destroyed lives in their wake. But the person who often ends up the most destroyed is themselves. Often, they have quite good insight and, on the rare occasion they can manage to be honest with themselves, they can see exactly where they've ruined their own lives, but seem powerless to stop themselves from doing it over and over again.

Absolutely! I have good insight. I was offered a lot of NHS input for my EUPD, and I grabbed it with both hands. But I was alongside people who felt it a hassle to be there.. thought they were fine and the problem was everyone else. Proud to be abusive to staff etc.

You weren't there and I was. She wasn't "squeezing" past, there was plenty of room on the dockside. She was literally apologising for being boarded first.

Will people stop fabricating extra details that aren't there and that I didn't actually write! You are not the only poster who has done this and it is seriously boiling my piss now.

I always thank the bus driver as I get off a bus.

So do I, and that's not the level of grateful I'm talking about. If you are disabled and have to ask for adjustments, you will understand. If you're not, you never will understand.

@Kendodd had she just barged past, as is her right and as I suspect you would

No. I would say "excuse me, can I come through please?" because that's what I was taught to say to request passage. Not to apologise. Apologising is for when you make a mistake or upset someone. You devalue the word "sorry" when you use it inappropriately.

And people are shocked, shocked I tell you, when I say that I distrust HCPs.

https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/dsn-staff.html was written for a reason.

It was me who wrote about padded cells and straight jackets after seeing them in an urbex exploration channel on you tube.
I'm glad that there was supervision there, to check on the person to free them the minute they'd become calmer.

The little girl you mention..so sweet. 🥲

A friend who owns lots of Whippets sent an engraved pic of ''Bedlam'' where there appear to be Whippets acting as ''therapy'' dogs in Victorian era.

www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/pocock-brothers-padded-cell-haslar-psychiatric-block-nov-2014.93065/

Bedlam Whippet pic...

The Bedlam engraving {1830} currently waiting for review shows plants, birds, a cat and a couple of Whippets - it looks very restful and civilised in the image, with people well dressed and playing Chess.

@Hotflushesandchilblains

''My office was on the childrens unit, and we had a little girl at one point who acted out every night at bedtime. I had a brain wave and asked if she would like the option of falling asleep in the quiet room every night and then we would move her to her bed. That was exactly what she had needed to feel safe, and she never acted out violently again during her admission. If people could manage by going to their rooms, that was the preferred option. But sometimes people were seriously assaultive or harming themselves and we had to keep them safe. To make sure people were not being abused, every seclusion was reviewed with the State afterwards (we had a visiting judge twice a week). It was also part of your induction to be put into seclusion and restraint and left for 15 minutes so you knew what it felt like.''

The type in bold- that was a very good thing to have done as part of training , to be locked in the seclusion room.

As a teenager, I ended up in a cell in WC2 for a minor cannabis charge with boyfriend {conditional discharge} - He was in a separate cell- those were the days when police did arrest for small amounts of hash as it was then.

The shock of the door where there was no handle, that was flush to the wall, a window that was just a slit that you couldn't see out of, and a bed that was fixed to the wall with a short blue plastic covered mattress and grey blanket was a bit of a shock.

It certainly put me off ever wanting to go back!

One of the Custody police was lovely though...she gave me a Harpers and Queen to read - never forgotten her kindness.

Perhaps. Perhaps those diagnoses of ASD are actually incorrect and the correct diagnosis is EUPD, theories and practices change, it wont be the same in 10, 20 50 years time

Bluntly, no. ASD diagnostic criteria versus EUPD diagnostic criteria.

In my case, the behaviours that were blamed on EUPD diminished enormously when my mum ejected her skeevy BF after I showed her his browser history of stepdaughter porn on the house PC, and stopped completely when I moved into my own home and started living alone. It's almost as if having to live with a man who posed a threat to me, whilst having a disorder characterised by impaired social and communication skills so that I couldn't explain why, how, or even that he creeped me out, caused me a lot of stress that manifested as "acting out".

There should be a faster and cheaper legal framework for getting her out of the ward and a nationalised care service to discharge her to.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate Bloody hell...I just choked on my yoghurt reading about your foul mother's boyfriend and his disgusting searches.

I'm not kidding..a visceral response.

I hope he was sent down for that.

So this women is now in her own flat with carers, and the police have been called three times. If she wants to go back to hospital (as she has said she doesn't want the flat) she can just call an ambulance presumably? Can the ambulance service refuse to come out? Supose she's self harmed and is bleeding? Can the hospital refuse to see her?

If I'm really abusive, but need medical care, what happens?

I suspect she might be in hospital again soon.

From what I read in the article, she was not even hospital for MH reasons... it was due to infection and cellulitis. It seems she got way too used to the care there and didn't want to leave.

He was reading written porn on Literotica on the DSD theme and watching the adult channels on TV late at night without remembering to switch the channel back. We didn't see any history of criminal videos. To my knowledge, writing and reading about raping your DSD is not illegal.

But given that that, as my mother's BF, DSD is more-or-less what I was to him, I'm of the view that him just reading that kind of thing is evidence that he was a hazard to me. Luckily, my mother agreed.