Post Excerpt:
Even in involuntary psych, sighted patients still have some rights:
* You guys can read in a psych ward.
* You can write, including journaling.
* You can draw or color.
* You can tell time by means of the clock on the wall.
* You can consult paper where you may have written down important phone numbers and call people, even without access to your address book.
I want to be clear that staying in a psych ward itself is not the thing that upsets me most. It's that a Denver crisis counselor, due to a misunderstanding, recommended a course of treatment that put me at a disadvantage in comparison to sighted counterparts. My boyfriend thought there was something wrong with me, so I committed to staying in a ward for evaluation purposes. But think about this. When a parent punishes a child, that child at least has access to reading, writing, journaling, drawing, coloring, and consulting an address book for important phone numbers.
When this mental health professional, Amanda, from a Denver crisis center, did not identify herself as a mental health professional, she did not build trust with me. But, I decided to trust her when she recommended in-patient treatment because my boyfriend was telling me this is where I should be. My reward for trusting my boyfriend and a psych professional who never built trust with me was inaccurate records, wrongful interrogation about my supposedly suicidal thoughts for three days, and a suicide tank experience that is about the level of what we give to prisoners in the US. As a blind person, I was stripped of affordances that every other person in that ward had access to.
...
Respectfully, I know some of you who work in the mental health field will defend crisis counselor Amanda's authority to commit me based on her flashy master's degree. But here are the facts.
* When Amanda recommended involuntary in-patient treatment, I did not want to harm myself.
* I did not want to harm anyone else.
* My religion makes me feel mentally unsafe, but that has no bearing on my ability to function in the present. I was committed for discussing feelings which were based on past experiences.
* This experience has caused me to hate crisis centers and in-patient psych. I have 0 respect for these places, and I will tell my disabled friends that they should be scared if they end up in a place like the one I was taken to, based on my personal experiences.
* I don't trust any psych professional who offers me in-person help based on my experience.
* My partially sighted friend had a drastically different experience at the same in-patient ward. Why? Because she could see well enough to read, write, tell time, journal, draw, color, and consult a paper for any phone numbers she had written down. That's seven more affordances that a legally blind friend of mine had access to that I didn't.
https://www.annathebrain.me/2023/08/a-blind-psych-ward-experience-blowing.html
Rosalín /
npub1g2…46gsd
2023-08-24 23:12:16
Author Public Key
npub1g2gp6yyg7hahjz4c0453t357e4wyjplquzqh88m480znuz4c8fhqy46gsdSeen on
wss://relay.nostr.bandPublished at
2023-08-24 23:12:16Event JSON
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"content": "Post Excerpt:\nEven in involuntary psych, sighted patients still have some rights:\n* You guys can read in a psych ward.\n* You can write, including journaling.\n* You can draw or color.\n* You can tell time by means of the clock on the wall.\n* You can consult paper where you may have written down important phone numbers and call people, even without access to your address book.\n\nI want to be clear that staying in a psych ward itself is not the thing that upsets me most. It's that a Denver crisis counselor, due to a misunderstanding, recommended a course of treatment that put me at a disadvantage in comparison to sighted counterparts. My boyfriend thought there was something wrong with me, so I committed to staying in a ward for evaluation purposes. But think about this. When a parent punishes a child, that child at least has access to reading, writing, journaling, drawing, coloring, and consulting an address book for important phone numbers.\nWhen this mental health professional, Amanda, from a Denver crisis center, did not identify herself as a mental health professional, she did not build trust with me. But, I decided to trust her when she recommended in-patient treatment because my boyfriend was telling me this is where I should be. My reward for trusting my boyfriend and a psych professional who never built trust with me was inaccurate records, wrongful interrogation about my supposedly suicidal thoughts for three days, and a suicide tank experience that is about the level of what we give to prisoners in the US. As a blind person, I was stripped of affordances that every other person in that ward had access to.\n...\nRespectfully, I know some of you who work in the mental health field will defend crisis counselor Amanda's authority to commit me based on her flashy master's degree. But here are the facts.\n* When Amanda recommended involuntary in-patient treatment, I did not want to harm myself.\n* I did not want to harm anyone else.\n* My religion makes me feel mentally unsafe, but that has no bearing on my ability to function in the present. I was committed for discussing feelings which were based on past experiences.\n* This experience has caused me to hate crisis centers and in-patient psych. I have 0 respect for these places, and I will tell my disabled friends that they should be scared if they end up in a place like the one I was taken to, based on my personal experiences.\n* I don't trust any psych professional who offers me in-person help based on my experience.\n* My partially sighted friend had a drastically different experience at the same in-patient ward. Why? Because she could see well enough to read, write, tell time, journal, draw, color, and consult a paper for any phone numbers she had written down. That's seven more affordances that a legally blind friend of mine had access to that I didn't.\nhttps://www.annathebrain.me/2023/08/a-blind-psych-ward-experience-blowing.html",
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