Discussion What's the worse that can happen should you tell the Psych Ward staff that you will kill yourself regardless of how much time they keep you in there?

[Neurodamaged2]

Canada is one big, fascinating dystopia. Jesus.

In a hypothetical situation where one fails to commit suicide and ends up hospitalized and has regular therapy sessions while in there, what will they do if you up front tell them that you are hell bent on taking your own life and you will give it another try as soon as possible?
That they will keep you in there for a longer period of time it's no surprise, but can they take more "extreme measures"?
Permanent encarceration of a suicidal person is very unlikely to happen, as suicide is not a crime and they probably don't have the means to keep people there permanently.
But i was thinking can they force certain treatments upon you? Maybe electroconvulsive therapy? Even if you refuse to be submitted to such treatments?

What's more is they've got heavy meds that long term cause loss of grey matter and a decrease in overall cognitive ability. At least lobotomies were obviously barbaric, no one bats an eye if you say "I've got brain damage from meds". It doesn't register for most people and just makes them think less of you not concerned about the system.

Further, once the system has fucked you up so bad with their "treatments" that not even your family will put up with you, you can look forward to either homelessness or community housing where they cram 20-30 mentally ill people into a small home. They take all your monthly support money and give you $100 spending money. There's one or two "nurses" on hand who hate their job and, by extension, you. Poverty level meals three times a day, one tv for everyone and that's about it. Not even enough privacy or free money to CTB unless you want to go hang yourself in a local park or forest. ODing is out of the question because they dole out your meds daily and do safety checks on all your stuff and (shared) room. The ONLY hope in one of these places is maybe one of the fellow inmates is/used to be a junkie and can score you some cheap fentanyl to OD on. In Canada it's freezing half the year so with enough fentanyl you could potentially walk to a forest late at night, OD, die of OD and hypothermia and hope that when the community housing calls the cops at curfew they take too long to find you until you're a popsicle.

Basically, TLDR is stay the f**k away from the psyche system because they've got alot of tools at their disposal to screw you up while living in the delusion that their meds and ECT actually make you better. And if you don't like their treatments, they'll take your rights to treatment decisions away and give em to you anyways.

 

[BandAddict]

In one of my stays, I simply told the doctor that I had no interest in recovering. I said that I would attend the groups as advised, but that I was beyond fixing and frankly I didn't want to be. He stared at me for a moment and said "okay" very nonchalantly and ended our session. I was discharged two days later, I believe.

 

[Hotsackage]

I would.love to die in the hospital. I like a challenge

 

[Sweet emotion]

In a hypothetical situation where one fails to commit suicide and ends up hospitalized and has regular therapy sessions while in there, what will they do if you up front tell them that you are hell bent on taking your own life and you will give it another try as soon as possible?
That they will keep you in there for a longer period of time it's no surprise, but can they take more "extreme measures"?
Permanent encarceration of a suicidal person is very unlikely to happen, as suicide is not a crime and they probably don't have the means to keep people there permanently.
But i was thinking can they force certain treatments upon you? Maybe electroconvulsive therapy? Even if you refuse to be submitted to such treatments?

Sweetie they're going to make you immobile so you aren't able to hurt yourself. I was under suicide watch a few times when I went to the hospital for headaches. It wasn't a mental hospital. It was a hospital that tried to cure me if headaches and just because I was in so much pain for so long and said I wanted to die they had someone sit with me day and night they watched me eat and sleep but I told them there was no way they were going to watch me go to the bathroom. I said if you hear the mirror shatter then you can come in but otherwise get the hell out. Just don't do that. Give yourself enough time that no one will find you still alive. And don't ever tell these people what you're really thinking unless your decision is to get better and to want to live.

 

[toomuchgrief]

Following this thead, this whole psych ward thing is what make me chose violent way of end my life. If I survive a 12 gauge shotgun slug to my head, I bet they still throw me in the psych ward, then I will have to go through the same thing like everyone else.
Hell, in fact, to avoid psych ward place, it give me more courage to go through my method.

Thank you though to everyone who share their experience.

 

[deadalready]

I had said that psychiatric ward is a waste of time and nothing could change and they kept me in anyway, wasting everyone's time and money

 

[CrushedHopes]

They'll detain you for a longer period of time. You'd want to pretend to be normal if your goal is to CTB as soon as possible. You'll have much more freedom in CTB when you're outside of a restrictive environment.

 

[Kotochan]

I literally did this. I was inpatient for 40 days in the US. We pretty much never do that anymore except for patients with acute and persistent psychosis or something equally terrible. I attempted suicide twice in there. I told them both times I was going to do it as soon as i was given the opportunity. Eventually I got off of one to one again and didn't immediately attempt and so they released me.

Pretty much you can tell them whatever you want, they will monitor you more closely (one to one), but eventually they will take you off if you're good and are quiet. If you attempt again or tell them you will they will again place you on one to one. If 3-5 days goes by and you haven't attempted or told them that you might then you get released. I was released and I was literally planning to kill myself in 2 weeks - but i guess that was so far away they weren't concerned as much. Which makes sense considering it's hard to maintain suicidality for long periods of time.

The next time I was hospitalized that hospital didn't take me and cited one of their reasons being that I had attempted in the hospital.

This is a good way to get yourself labelled as a "problem patient". I'd recommend not doing that even though it can makes sense. You want treatment, you want that pain to stop and you want to force the doctors to do it right while you're there. Except they can't do anything for you - or not for me at least.

If you do decide to do this just know that you a pretty much burning a hole in your medical record. People will label you as bpd or a problem patient where ever you go if you let them know that happened. Even if you're a really nice and fun person they will stretch and stretch the dsm v to find some way to pathologize even the best parts of yourself so that they can feel like they "truly" understand what went wrong with you. This did a huge number on my psyche for a while - i thought i was a terrible person. When all I was really doing was not hiding my will to die.

 

[Ironweed]

UK is massively different from the US. Electroshock has been out of practice for years. Getting stuck in a ward though is very much in practice.

I'm American, and this is contrary to my personal experience. I was sent for an outpatient evaluation for ECT in 2012, by a psychiatrist. The place where the eval was conducted was ridiculous, like something out of Dante's Inferno. The waiting room was overflowing with patients, and I got to see one patient -- an older woman -- wheeled through the waiting room just after getting her eggs scrambled. (Apparently this wasn't a HIPAA violation?) Seemed to me business was booming, at any rate.

FWIW, this was at one of the oldest and most prestigious psychiatric hospitals in the USA. A fair number of celebrities have been through it, books written about the place, etc. The very definition of mainstream, at least I've always thought. Since I'm new here I'm not certain about naming names in terms of hospitals, etc. But if it is allowed I'll happily do so. I just checked their website and they continue to have a dedicated clinic for ECT.

As an aside, I couldn't do it, because I was about to lose my health insurance once my divorce was final, was about to be completely on my own (no way for someone to drive me to and from treatment) and the psychiatrist didn't think I was a good match for the treatment once he interviewed me. Probably because I was temporarily in a good place over the whole divorce being behind me. We kept getting interrupted and getting sent to different conference rooms during the evaulation. The psychiatrist actually blew up at the staff over this, which kind of surprised me. He seemed like one of the good ones.

 

[a.n.kirillov]

The only way for powerless people to gain some leverage in a power struggle sometimes is lying, so; there is first of all nothing morally reprehensible about lying in to a coercive power and secondly you would act against your own interest.* There's no law preventing you from lying to authorities in this case.

*Now, in case you might actually rather would like help than to kill yourself, sure, tell them the truth. But know that you are giving yourself over into the hands of those people who can probably forcibly medicate you, detain you and judge your "sanity", i.e. decide over your legal status.