*This story contains pseudonyms in order to protect anonymity*
Hospitals and help facilities are places where people are supposed to go for help, right?
Hospitals decline to help some people. Health facilities are there for people to go and confide in someone if they are afraid of hurting themselves.
“According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, adults with any mental illness; 60 percent were untreated.”
Carla’s Story
Carla Graham was declined help when she went to the hospital.
She had been having a few bad days.
She knew something was different inside of her, something that scared her. Carla decided she would go to her parents and sister for help.
“I said that there is something wrong with me and I need help. [My mom] asked if I thought I should be hospitalized and I said yes. The next afternoon we went to an emergency room to see where they’d send me,” Graham said.
She talked to five different people there and she felt that it was a helpless thing to do and after she spoke to the second person, she felt she knew she was going home that night because they were all telling her the same things.
“I do not feel that one of them actually cared about what I said. I was told I am just tired, that it is my birth control doing it to me, the worst is over, I will be fine and that it is not as bad as I think,” Graham said. “I felt stupid for even trying to get that kind of help because I was told it’s ‘completely unnecessary’ and ‘there’s absolutely no reason for it.’ They gave me a prescription for nine anxiety pills, just to make me sleep and I went home and went back to this daily cycle that just feels like hell to me.”
She tried thinking of more actions to tell them that she did. She wanted to feel safe inside of her own head and when the professionals were telling her that she would be just fine, she started to get desperate.
She wanted them to listen to what she was saying and she wanted to be taken seriously since she felt that they were not doing that. Once they told her that she would be fine and to not worry about it, she shut down from everything and cried.
“The crisis team that told me I suffer from a mood disorder, anorexia, double depression and anxiety. Now that I think about it, I feel that they chalked it up to me being a moody teenage girl and that I am being overdramatic,” Graham said.
A crisis team is a team of people that give urgent care to people with a mental problem. The crisis team is meant to help people get better, not turn anyone away.
Healthcare cost and utilization project did a research study on hospitalization for people with a mental illness and research found, “In 2006, there were approximately 1.4 million hospitalizations specifically for MH [mental health] conditions.”
Carla has gone back two other times to see if she can get admitted into a health facility and each time she has been denied.
Kevin’s Story
Kevin Stark was accepted into a health facility a few months ago.
“I hurt someone I loved more than anything in the entire world and it caused me to go into a period of self hate. I couldn’t even look in a mirror because I would break down because I hated the person who I became. That period of self hate and hopelessness lead me to first self harm, and then a technical attempted,” Stark said.
According to Healthy Place, “Each year, one in five females and one in seven males engage in self harm.”
“Some days I could not feel anything, I did not move. I felt numb and I honestly wanted to die. This is all while being in therapy for about a month. I feel that I was accepted into the facility because I was in therapy and was recommended to go by the therapist, as well as because I had a plan to kill myself,” Stark said.
He was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety. He attempted recovery therapy and found that it was not that helpful. He found that he was a danger to himself.
“I started the whole process by going to an emergency room and telling them I wanted to kill myself,” Stark said.
They gave him tests, tested his blood work and more.
“Then they had me change into a hospital gown and wait in a bed for the crisis counselor, who would determine if it was safe for me to go home and seek treatment or go to a clinic,” Stark said. “The counselor told me it would be beneficial for me to go to an actual clinic.”
Stark was taken by an ambulance to a clinic in Horsham. He signed himself in and followed their protocols.
“That morning, I met with a counselor, psychiatrist and social worker. They helped me work on my treatment plan and the psychiatrist diagnosed me and prescribed me Prozac,” Stark said.
According to Drugwatch, “In tests of Prozac, , Paxil, Celexa, Lexapro and Luvox on children with major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and other psychiatric disorders, about four percent of patients experienced suicidal thinking, behavior or attempts.”
“Everyday I participated in two to four group therapy sessions and one meeting with the psychiatrist. I stayed for about a week and I felt a lot better and more optimistic when I got out but recently I started to relapse and regress,” Stark said.
Susan Fitzgerald, director of Health Services, said, “Anything is worth getting help for if someone has a mental illness. There are a million reasons on why someone could be denied treatment. I think there are a lot of people that live in the world with a mental illness that do not seek the help they need. I think if someone has a problem, either with themselves or somebody else, that they seek care.”
She could not comment on if someone should take medicine for a mental illness.
If you need someone to talk to or know a person who is in need, there are hotlines available to call for help: Depression Support: 800-273-TALK (8255), Suicide Prevention and Depression Hotline: 630-482-9696.
If neither of them apply to you, go to this source and find the hotline that you need.
