I have been sectioned.

[lazyhazydaisy]

I have just got access to the internet. I am much less petrified than I was at first but definitely 0 out of ten. I have a tribunal and if that fails I think I will be here until July. I feel as though I am living in a nightmare. I have never felt so alone.

Yesterday I saw a different psychiatrist for a long consultation. I had been told that he was a SOAD (second opinion appointed doctor) but he was in fact just another psychiatrist from this county, giving a second opinion.

The SOADs are appointed by the Quality Care Commission and you see one after having been on Section 3 for 3 months, which was exactly yesterday. That is 105 days. The thirteen days previous to that I was on section 2.

The Ward Manager called me into her office today to tell me that I am no longer sectioned and there is no intention whatsoever of attempting to give me any anti-psychotic drugs.

I am going to my house tomorrow and will be back here on Monday as an informal patient; will see my own psychiatrist on Wednesday.

I am not assuming anything and I am just going to try and digest the latest developments.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been supportive in this horrific ordeal. I am going to make an appointment with a psychologist here to discuss how I am going to cope with what I have been through.

(Weeps)

Oh Daisy , ive been lurking i just wanted to say im happy for you , i hope you get the support you need to be at home after all this.
Have you got anywhere near a dianosis in the end ?

that sounds positive daisy! I would've thought a SOAD would be from another county/health authority though, as you suggest.

I hope you're having a peaceful time at home.

Congratulations Daisy! Finally.

So pleased to hear your news Daisy I'm glad you are meeting with a psychologist to talk through how you move forward. Please don't give up on therapy if you don't gel with the first psychologist. It can take time to get the right therapeutic alliance iyswim

I have 6 hours over six weeks. I will only be able to cover to the horror of the police brutality over those six hours. I cannot contemplate returning to my home, except in hours of darkness. I will try to stay here as long as I can because I need to put the house on the market and try and complehend some sort of future. No ideas. I also need to stay here as long as possible to to over the enormous untruths; too myriad to record but most are verifyed by staff here.

The other patients here are suffering from terrible side-effects; telling everyone their financial business, putting on loads of weight, hugely swollen ankles, manic laughter at other peoples' tragedies. Not sure what to make of it but I think I need to focus on medical notes inaccuracies first.

Thanksxx

I spent just over a month in a psychiatric hospital which was miles away from my home after the birth of my youngest dd.

It was the lonliest time of my entire life and I'll never forget the isolation I felt while I was there and the bewilderment. The staff were very kind but I felt like a child who was had no control over my life.

I'm happy to say that when I got out I found a psychotherapist who helped me so much, I have had no episodes for about 2 and a half years. I am also completely off my AP medication.

Good luck to you - I do hope you feel better soon.

It seems a lot of pressure on you to go through the rigamaroll of getting it on the market, looking for somewhere else etc. Could you fix the door and rent it out for a while until you're more settled and can take the horror of selling/buying? Either that, or getting it ready for sale may give you a focus..?

Hi LHD, how are you doing now?

yes i've been wondering how you are daisy

I am in a very bad way. I have a notice on my front door to request that people do not knock because I get flashbacks. I am in constant fear of the memory of that place.
I have started to write about it in an attempt to make sense of it.
It is a very negative piece of writing.

(forgot to say thank you to the kind mners who were supportive and humourous).

Since I was released I have barely left the house and I will have to sell the family home. Both doors were bashed in, I have rats, no hot water, a badly leaking roof; the water comes through two floors to splash downstairs. The only people I have spoken to are fellow survivors. It seems to be fairly normal to react like this.

I have a pair of drips who come round once a week and do nothing. They filled in a DLA form for me and tried to get me to sign it without reading it. I insisted (of course) on reading it and it said things like I couldn't use a hob without using concentration. This is absurd. I am a great cook and it is one of my favourite things. I refused to sign it and the latest drip told me that I was 'very honest'. I know that the drip who filled it in was trying to help but it was fraudulent. I could have got £100 pw if I had signed it.
I have terrible flashbacks about being dragged out of my house, down two flights of stairs, in handcuffs so heavily ratcheted that I still have the scars, bleeding hands and feet. Can't bear the idea of the door knocker. Several witnesses have emailed me with eye-witness accounts of my injuries, including staff from Rethink.
Every day I just wake up and realise that I am not in that hellhole anymore.
The staff were absolutely awful. Something from the Stanford Prison Experiment.
It was utterly dehumanising and there was no human dignity. The staff would order chinese food, borrow a radio from a patient and ACTUALLY DANCE in the dining room after their takeaways whilst patients would lie in bed and pray for death.

Perhaps I should have made the beans on toast? It is a mad tick box system.
They should spend the some of the £100k that they spent on my incarceration on giving some practical help when it comes to picking up the pieces, not only of me but of the half-dozen other released inmates who are also on the floor.

Maybe after 4 months and £100k there was supposed to be some sort of happy ending? I would give my left foot to go back to before this happened.

bump

bump.

Bumping for you.

I have just re-read the whole thread and I am very grateful to the people who have been supportive ( springydaffs ) and to Edam who I quoted in my interview with the 2nd opinion doctor.

The police had actually bashed in BOTH doors. The front door is irreplaceable unless I tour reclamation yards to find a 300 year old door.

The 'diagnosis' has been miraculously changed to 'traces of schizophrenia' and from what I have read from the hospital library the only symptom that they have to go on is my 'hallucinations'. I have never, ever had any sort of hallucinations but somehow it says in my notes that I have. I need to get my medical records amended. I don't know how that got in there except that apparently my partner said I had psychedelic dreams. The medical records are so inaccurate that they are a sick joke.

I knew within the first week that getting home (I hardly consider it home anymore) the most difficult thing, after surviving without going mad in that hellhole) would be the aftermath of this hell.

I am barely eating and I walk the dog at 5am and 11pm in order to avoid my neighbours.

I think of nothing except the hell of imprisonment, the threat of being pinned down and injected, the dehumanising, infantalising and terrifying experience of that place. I think after the first two weeks I realised I could never really go home after what happened.

I refused to pay for the back door, which they also bashed in. They said that they needed me to feel safe. I have never felt less safe than in that house. I would rather have no front door and take my chances with a passing murderer than be in that hellhole. Especially with another patient going around telling people that she had got hold of scissors.

I had no idea why I was in there and I only found out on 1 March when I finally got the records. I have no idea why any thing about that place could be helpful at all. It is worse than prison, and I have that from people who have been in prison.

Being patronised was unbearable. The whole system was unbearable and terrifying. Being assaulted was bad enough. Dragged down 2 flights of stairs with no explanation. I was more or less in solitary confinement for my own safety. I was flushing 800mg of quetiapine down the loo each night and the nursing notes were saying how well I was responding to medication.

I went home for 2 days leave to assess the damage to my house and I was meant to go back but I just rang them up to say I couldn't be arsed. If they wanted me back they could come and pick me up. But I did request that they didn't bash the blooody door in again. They didn't appear to want me back but picked me up a week later for a 'discharge meeting'.

I drove the 'discharge meeting' and asked, 'What about this bipolar crap?' They assured me I was not bipolar. Then why did I fail my first appeal that said that I was. What was the point of 4 months of incarceration at a cost of at least £100?

I did nothing in there except quake with fear. And learn quite a bit of a language but since then I haven't even had the strength to keep up with the language.

The only thing that is any help is to write things down. My medical notes say that I was over-intellectuallising (wtf?).

I was meant to have a tribunal in Jan and in Feb but I cancelled both until I received all of my notes, which I didn't receive until 1 March. I was urged and urged to have a tribunal and told I would 'get off'. But I needed to have my notes. It all became clearer and clearer after that. And when I realised that I had to go to bed by midnight and act euthymic.

When I saw the second opinion I wore twinset and pearls (really, sort of taking the piss) and was taken off section immediately. No meds. Just a devastated life.

I was also told that if I complained it could be taken as a relapse. Fancy footwork there.

At least I don't have those awful nurses suddenly hugging me. I don't miss that. The only people I have seen since I was released are 2 other survivors, the dog-groomer, the rat man and the man who helps me with my computer.

I think the three phases of this hell were equally bad. The police brutality, the living terror of the incarceration and now just waking up each day and realising that I have to somehow get through each day. Fortunately I had got used to more or less solitary confinement.

NB. Is it normal for staff to order in Chinese takeaways and treat the dining room as a nightclub when patients are lying in bed praying to die in the night? (not me, btw). 'Care and Treatment'? Orwell would have approved of that.

Final installment of 'Care and Treatment'. After the 'discharge meeting' I was given all of my possessions in plastic bags marked 'hospital property' and told to leave. I had to go 10 miles to pick up my dog, had no transport, and then had to do a 45 mile journey to my (severely damaged) house. No help was given. I was told to leave immediately. I trudged to the bus station, weighed down by bags, took a bus to the kennels who had looked after my sick dog for 4 months and the kennels found me a taxi who would be prepared to take me home with the dog. Having been imprisoned in that hellhole for 4 months and suddenly they couldn't wait to get rid of me.

'Care'? 'Treatment'? That is like the Japanese putting people in concentration camps for their 'convenience and safety'.

The roof is fucked. The water has come down to the ground floor. I lie in bed surrounded by buckets. The garden is an absolute jungle. The rats are all ove the garden anyway. I had to climb out of the kitchen window to reach the bins.

And 'aftercare' (how Orwell would laugh) is a pair of drips turning up once a week trying to get me to basically commit fraud by claiming dla on the basis that I am too unwell to use a hob and (it said on the form, filled in by the drips) that I need constant supervision. Significantly they tried to get me to sign the form without reading it.

(Thanks for the bump, Anna)