Three stories of involuntary commitment

[EmptyTimCup]

Lost in the madhouse: Three stories of involuntary commitment

“What responsibility does an institution have to the wider community when it has identified a deeply disturbed individual?” Asked psychiatrists Jeffrey Geller and Sally Satel in a USA Today editorial. Their answer: quite a bit. Satel and Geller argue that schools and businesses should be legally required to report potentially dangerous employees or students to “the medical director of the appropriate public health jurisdiction” for analysis, and — if necessary — “involuntary commitment.”
[snip]
The day before he was committed, Erik took acid for the first time. “The next day it made me think about stuff. I was a general business major and new to the U.S., and I started getting really down about where my life was going,” Erik said in a phone interview.

“I think it was a natural, day-after-you-did-acid kind of feeling, but I guess my friends were worried about me. So after I went to sleep, they called the school psychologist and asked, ‘Hey, our friend’s depressed. What should we do?’”
[snip]
“It was in and out. I went in and the guy had a notepad ready. One or two questions in, he asks, ‘Why are you here?’ I told him, ‘I don’t know! Can I go? I think I’m normal.’ He told me, ‘Alright, I’ll see what I can do.” Erik would not see the doctor again.

Ignorant of how long the facility could keep him against his will, Erik tried to make conversation with the nurses and other patients. “I pretty much talked to everyone you could talk to,” he said. “A few people were like, crazy-crazy, but most people were just kinda crazy, like you could talk to them. And then there were people who had a wild night, blacked out, and woke up in the center.” While Erik was making his rounds, he witnessed a blonde woman run out of her room and scream, “Where the #### am I? Where the #### am I? I was partying in Daytona last night, and I wake up here? What the #### is going on?”

“She was clearly normal,” Erik said, “but totally disoriented.”

[snip]
Luckily for Erik, the same college counselor who’d taken him to the hospital also called his mother, who hopped on the next flight to Daytona Beach and drove straight to the facility. Nearly 24 hours after he’d been involuntarily committed for feeling a little depressed about his choice of major (and 48 hours after he’d taken acid), Erik was going to be released. But not before the center’s administrator could chastise him for leaving early. “I finally got a call to see the head of the center [after my mom got involved]” Erik said. “It was this lady. She said, ‘You’re obviously here for a reason, or else you wouldn’t be here. But the doctor says you’re good to go.’ Then she told me if it weren’t for my mom raising hell, I’d be stuck there for several more days.”

For two other people who contacted me, the intrusion was ultimately welcome, if disorienting and degrading.

once "THEY" get a hold of you ...... are you in denial if you say your normal and just want to go home ?

 

[Annoying_Boy]

once "THEY" get a hold of you ...... are you in denial if you say your normal and just want to go home ?

The elephant in the room: do they have ahold of your for profit or for your own good in these type of places?

 

[EmptyTimCup]

I would imagine the county is picking up the tab ....

self justification ..... see we had x cases last yr ... we need more money


for the Collage Student ...

the Former LEO .... recovering from injury ... might have had insurance that could be billed ....

 

[ImnoMensa]

I would imagine the county is picking up the tab ....

self justification ..... see we had x cases last yr ... we need more money


for the Collage Student ...

the Former LEO .... recovering from injury ... might have had insurance that could be billed ....

Uhhhh Maybe taking acid isn't a good idea?

 

[Annoying_Boy]

Uhhhh Maybe taking acid isn't a good idea?

It's not, but opening a nonprofit organization to treat people that do (not saying this one is doing such a thing) and paying yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to treat such people can be quite lucrative.