This post is a hard post to write for me. It's one that I have struggled with whether to write or not for quite a while, because I haven't seen this happen to anyone else I know but by doing research I know it happens. It is a failure in our mental health system, one that must be taken care of if we really want to help people with mental illness and lower the suicide rate. The issue? Blacklisting people or putting them on a "do not admit" list at a psychiatric hospital.
Why do I write about this? Why would I want to highlight this? Because I've experienced it. Multiple times. Today, there are 5 hospitals that have me on their "do not admit" list. One of those hospitals I haven't even been a patient there.
You may be thinking, can they even do that? Is that even allowed? General medical hospitals cannot turn away patients, that is known. However, psychiatric hospitals that are privately owned can. State psychiatric hospitals cannot because they are ran by the state. This is something that has been going on for a long time too. One article I read said this started back in the 1960's.
The next question that comes up is why. Why would they not want to help someone? What I found in doing research about this is that sometimes hospitals won't take patients who are physically violent or have been physically violent toward staff in previous stays. If a person had assaulted staff in previous stays, they may be put on a "do not admit" list. The other reason I found in my research was that if a person had a severe personality disorder and the hospital felt that they would gain no benefit from the hospitalization. The reasons I personally have gotten from hospitals have ranged from "I have reached my therapeutic maximum" at that hospital or "I need long-term care" that they cannot provide or "the doctors there won't accept my case". It can also be a combination of these things. However, this still doesn't really answer the question though, does it?
Why would a hospital deny a person the help they need? Unfortunately, I can't really answer this question. I can only say that this is one of the many ways that the mental health system fails people. The system that is supposed to help people leaves them helpless. The system that is supposed to give people hope leaves them hopeless. The system that is supposed to guide them through treatment leaves them wandering.
It's almost oxymoronic in a way, how the system works. Those who are suicidal, have tried to end their life, homicidal, or psychotic are placed on commitment because we value life, or at least we claim to. Until the search to find a hospital becomes too difficult and then it's just easier to give up and let them go home.
How do I know all of this? Because I've lived it, and not just once. Many times. I've gone to the ER to get help because I was suicidal and knew I needed to get into a hospital, only to get there to find a social worker who gave up after the first set of rejections came in. I've been put on commitment papers and taken off them less than 24 hours later because they gave up. I knew I needed help and I had to find it on my own because there wasn't anyone going to find it for me. I've sat in a hospital for two weeks after an attempt waiting for a hospital only to have the hospital give up and send me home because there was nothing they could do. I've been turned away by hospitals I've never been to before. I've been turned away by a total of 6 hospitals. I cannot even begin to explain the pain this brings to me. The hopeless feelings it has brought on. The dark places it has brought me to.
This is just one of the many broken parts in our mental health system. One of the many parts that MUST be fixed if we want to see the suicide rate decrease and we want mental illness to be less debilitating. Fixing this will bring hope to more people and make sure that no one is left in the shadows wishing they had the help that so many others had access to. It will mean no one gets turned away.
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