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by 0xcde4c3db
3476 days ago
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Based on my experience as a patient (not at a UHS facility, as far as I can tell) I'm pretty confident that the stuff reported in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. These facilities are structured in a way that makes people doubt their own memories and feel powerless, even before the neuroleptics come out. Treatment "progress" is predicated on -- if not synonymous with -- submission. I was put on suicide watch after having a bad night's sleep and complaining that my experience had been harmful rather than helpful. I found out later that the psychiatrist had written in my file that I'd had psychotic episodes, which never happened (I'm torn on whether to attribute this to error or falsification). I've thought about challenging this, but I wouldn't even know where to begin, and I'm fairly certain it would just end up being my word against his and not actually doing any good. Basically, the playing field is heavily tilted against reporting misconduct. For every person Buzzfeed was able to find, there are probably ten who didn't feel like they could speak out about it, or convinced themselves that they were just being irrational since, after all, they were literally a mental patient. |
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I'm glad that I was able to get appropriate treatment (15 years later) but how I was treated as a teenager in a mental health facility was atrocious. Misdiagnosis, over medication, and only keeping patients as long as their insurance held out was par for the course.