Low Points Of My Life Due To My Mental Health

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog post for a while and I thought I would do it now seen as though I feel crap and I need to distract. Maybe the subject is not the best thing to write about but maybe writing about bad times in the past will distract away from the current bad time I am going through.

So this blog is going to be about my 5 all time low experiences because of my mental health. They are not in a particular order as I don’t think you should rank things like these.

1.       Seclusion

The first time I was in seclusion was horrible. I was a patient on a PICU and I can’t even remember what I had done but they decided to put me in seclusion. I remember being dragged in whilst in restraint. They laid me on the mat and ran out closing this huge metal door behind them.  The room was bare except this big purple mat. I cried and cried and cried. It was a massive shock as I had never been locked in a cell or anything similar before. I wasn’t in long as I think they could tell it was distressing me significantly. It was about half an hour but it did feel like a lifetime at the time. I came out still crying and a nurse even offered to hug me I was so upset but then another one jumped in and said he couldn’t. I was in seclusion numerous times after that, my longest stint being over 24 hours. It still upset me for a while but after the 10^th or so time I had become desensitised to it. The first few times were horrid and the feelings you get from being locked up in seclusion are indescribable. You are utterly powerless. As a criminal locked in police cells and the like you have rights. As a mental health patient in seclusion you have none. No right to see a solicitor or to challenge being locked up. You can be in there for an unlimited time; it’s up to the doctors when they let you out. You feel total and utter powerlessness. I wouldn’t wish the experience of seclusion on my worst enemy. I wrote this poem after a period in seclusion once.

 There is a room with nothing there

Just a great big door and walls that are bare.

The only thing that fills the space

Is my broken mind and the tears that rush down my face.

Anger fuelled by torment and distress

The walls begin to move and my mind they compress.

With no way out it’s hard to cope

So once again in life you begin to lose hope.

With thoughts racing it’s hard to know what to feel

Someone please save me this cannot be real.

I pray that this is all an illusion

But as my head hits the wall, I know it’s real...

...I know this is seclusion

May I also add that one evening I was secluded in somebody else’s filth for a few hours. This guy had seriously assaulted a nurse and smashed his jaw to pieces and therefore had been placed in seclusion for over a week until a bed was found at a more secure hospital. That morning he had been moved. I was secluded in the evening and they hadn’t cleaned the seclusion room. As I was being dragged in other nurses were clearing out all the rubbish. When I was locked in it stank and there were bits of food everywhere. Not to mention the invisible dirt that was no doubt in there like sweat and urine. It was disgusting. How can they lock you up in somebody elses filth? Very degrading.

2.       A&E

One time I was in A&E after an episode of self harm. I was accompanied by the police. I remember getting agitated by the way the A&E staff were treating me as well as the police. I decided to leave. I went to walk through the door and the police grabbed me. There was a struggle. I ended up in handcuffs and leg restraints and laid on this mat on the floor the nurses had brought in. I was laid on this mat and all my bandages had come off in the struggle. I was left in handcuffs and leg restraints lying in my own blood for a good while. I was crying. Would they have left an animal lying in their own blood like that? It makes me feel sad when I think about this. It was a very low point in my life. They had also during the struggle placed me under section 136. Afterwards they just took that away and said I could go if I saw crisis team. So was all that even necessary? No it fucking wasn’t.

3.       Transfer from hospital

Again this incident involves the police. Surprised? I had been an inpatient for a about a week and a half. I’d just been transferred from the assessment unit to an open treatment unit. I had been there a few days and I was very mentally unstable. Another patient had destroyed something I had been working on all day in the craft room so I went and found her and threw a jug of water over her in the dining room. An argument followed and then I went to my room. About an hour later 2 nurses came into my room and told me to pack my things. I asked why and they told me I was moving back to the hospital I’d just moved from. I was confused and asked them why I was moving back to the assessment unit and they said I wasn’t. The other unit there was the PICU and I had previously been told that is where violent people go. I was scared and said I didn’t want to go there so I got out of bed and walked out of my room. 2 police officers were waiting for me and they threw me into the wall. I banged my head and I was then wrestled to the floor and cuffed. By this stage I was hysterically crying from the shock and brutality of it. All I had done was walk out my room. I hadn’t been violent or anything. The hospital was on lock down so they must have been prepared for it for some reason. I was dragged through the hospital down the stairs and thrown into the back of a police van. By the time I reached the PICU I was in a right state. I was placed in open seclusion (the outer bit and not the locked cell) and given medication to calm me down. I will never forget this experience ever. I am still shocked and angry about how they treated me. I was a mental health patient not a criminal.

4.       Being “line of sight”

After being in hospital a year I became significantly unwell again. After an incident of restraint and me stabling myself with a pen I was placed on 2:1 observations. For the first time I was placed on “line of sight” in the bathroom. This means the 2 nurses on my observations had to watch me in the bathroom basically. It was horrid. They watched me on the toilet and I think you’ll agree having a poo is a private thing so having not one but two people watching you is very degrading. It was a fairly distressing thing to do too. I really didn’t want to but I suppose when you got to go you got to go. Having my first shower on “line of sight” was an unpleasant experience too. I am very self conscious about my body and having two people watch you fully naked is not an enjoyable thing. Being in hospital kind of makes you desensitise to exposing your body, you definitely lose your dignity when unwell.

5.       Being IM’d in public

I was in restraint one day in the PICU and I was really distressed and struggling back. I was in the corridor of the communal area which was for both male and female patients of the ward. They dropped me on the floor and continued restraining me. Everyone was watching me including male patients when they pulled my pants down and injected me. Surely this should have been a private event. Its bad enough being IM’d without others seeing it happen to you and seeing your bare arse. How did this make me feel when I had calmed down? Embarrassed, ashamed and feeling like a total twat. Afterwards people were like “oh H that was good, you are crazy” blah blah blah. It wasn’t good, it was awful. Any occasion of being IM’d is an unpleasant experience but this was the worst.

There are other bad experiences i've had due to my mental health, but these are the ones that have made me feel the worse. alot of them when i think about them make me feel sad and angry.

Brokenmind

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