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Beatrix's avatar

My mom is schizoaffective.

It’s very strange for me to go into bipolar support groups (which I am as well) and hear them talk about how they were “forced against their will” into involuntary commitment.

My mom can be roaming the streets telling people god wants her to die and there’s no help. She’s run a car into a wall because god says so and there’s no help. She’s been homeless and starving while ranting and there’s no help.

It’s a simple question, one that they ask the person with the mental illness, not witnesses. “Do you plan on harming yourself or others?” And when they say “no,” they take them at their word—bloody head and wrecked car in the back.

Even once admitted, you are given the same questions again, if no, back on the streets you go.

And if you ARE admitted, it’s a measly 72 hours, then where shall they put you? Oh, back on the streets.

I don’t trust the tales of involuntary commitment trauma. They had to answer yes multiple times. If you say “yes I plan to hurt myself” and then talk about the helium tank in your closet, that’s what inPatient is for, and what is more traumatic: a hospital stay while awake or a three month coma and explaining to your friends and family why you made a makeshift helium mask?

Fucking enrages me when these people try and make it even HARDER for people like my mom to get help. This is exactly why schizophrenics and the like commit violence. Before the act of violence, their loved ones had likely been begging for help for months or years. The system won’t help until violence has been committed, and that help is jail.

Thank you for your piece.

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Feral Finster's avatar

"You think involuntary treatment obstructs freedom? Schizophrenia obstructs freedom. You think involuntary treatment tramples on autonomy? Bipolar disorder tramples on autonomy. You think involuntary treatment denies personal choice? Schizoaffective disorder denies personal choice."

Romanticism is perhaps the ultimate Luxury Belief.

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