Written in praise admiration for fellow writer Desha Blue

I highly recommend Desha Blue’s book, Abducted by Aliens, or anything else she has written. This is an amazing collection of poetry about psych abuse. All I can say is, wow. I can sure relate. Everything she says is absolutely true about what “they” do.

I write this to honor Desha and I support her efforts 100%. I truly believe in what she is doing to show the world precisely what psych abuse does to a person.

I can’t say it was that bad at first otherwise surely, I wouldn’t have ever gone back. I’d say the last 6 years for me were bad. The last three, Living Hell. As soon as they claim you lack insight, you become worthless shit.

It’s true that psych abuse wrecks lives, breaks families apart, and is the #1 cause of suicide.

I am writing this also remembering Diane Daw. She was a good friend of mine. We were hospital roommates.  We laughed together many nights. After that, we remained friends.

Diane was an amazing artist. A painter. She was witty and, I’d say, brilliant.

In 1986, I left Vermont and moved to the Boston area. I begged Diane to move and leave the incompetent quacks she was seeing. Namely Carl Burak, MD and the other incompetent she saw. However, Diane was rather taken by these doctors and praised their expertise. In the same breath, she said she knew they were not only humbugs but that she was getting nowhere with them.

That’s how it is with folks that get immersed and too deeply into it. Psych abuse sucks you in just like spousal abuse and you can’t get away.

I sent Diane a letter in 1988 and her roommate wrote back that she had died. The letter said she had been buried in Connecticut. Nothing

Excuses we are told when we try to report abuse

Have you ever reported abuse? What excuse were YOU given for having to undergo such trauma, and for NOTHING to be done about what happened?

1) Your story isn’t credible. You don’t have enough cold hard evidence. Therefore, it’s not possible that it even happened, and we are going to assume that you are inventing the whole thing. We see no reason to pursue.
2) It was done for your own good, and the abuser was “just doing his job” to protect you and give you “care.”
3) You were misbehaving or acting out of line. Therefore, anything inhumane done to you is entirely justified within the Institution.
4) There were no witnesses. Therefore, it couldn’t possibly have happened.
5) When you reported the abuse, you approached the wrong person, and now, the statute of limitations is up. Therefore, the abuse never happened, and your trauma is nonexistent.
6) You are too poor to get a lawyer, therefore, we won’t pursue if you try to report the abuse. What’s the point?
7) You are a sick person with mental issues, therefore, nothing you say is credible. You don’t stand a chance, and the Institution and its personnel can do anything they damn please.
8) You were drugged, therefore, your perceptions may have been off. Probably, you imagined it.
9) You are a child and deserved what happened. Children don’t have rights. They deserve punishment, after all.
10) You are elderly, probably senile. Nothing you say can possibly be true. After all, you are a batty old lady full of silly notions. Go back to your teddy bear.
11) You are physically handicapped, blind, or you have had a stroke, or you are developmentally disabled. Who can blame someone for taking advantage of you? We assumed you simply wouldn’t notice that you were assaulted.
12) The perp wasn’t well educated. Try to see things from the perp’s point of view. I mean, consider the suicide rate among perps. We should have National Perp Day. A charity for perps. Have you loved your perp today? Please, have pity on these folks.
13) You have serious anger problems and that’s why you are complaining. Go to anger management. You are so sick and you need antidepressants.
14) Pray and forgive. And give money to our church. This is “help.” You’ll probably be abused more, but pray harder and forgive the church over and over, too.
15) Go to a hospital or mental health care if you have been abused. The hospital will see to it that you are made “happy” so you’ll never, ever speak of the abuse again. However, if their tactics don’t work, expect Medical Abuse or Psychiatric Abuse, in the form of forced drugging, further imprisonment, and the like.
16) Above all, do not form a support group or website about abuse. Never blog about it. This is a threat and this will make you a liability case. You will be blacklisted at medical institutions and denied even the most basic care.
17) Are you still speaking out? We can ignore you, but should you be found dead by the side of the road someday, surely it was only a random killing, right?

I was abused at Mount Auburn Hospital in August 2013, no acknowledgment or apology

My life has been in shambles ever since because of what the hospital did.  Medical abuse is real. I have lost so many friendships.  People, well-meaning or not, who refuse to believe that this is happened to me. However, it did.

I’m not sure what to do. Maybe write to the CEO and tell this person what my life has been like since I left, the impact it all has had, and describe just what happened and why it all was wrong, and say this should never, ever happen to another patient in their care.

Why is the victim so often blamed? Why are the perps, who are often doctors, wealthy people in high places, CEOs, health care providers, therapists even, psychiatrists of course, so often glorified as saviors?

These cruel people are not saviors, but abusers.

We need to put a stop to abuse.  Please stop abuse. Stop it from happening to other people. And please, if you have abused, at least APOLOGIZE.  You’ll most likely feel better.  Stop abusing and you’ll be a better person.

Julie

 

More abuse done by x Hospital and others…I am not surprised

As always, my commentary….

So you all are so shocked that these renowned “hospitals” are so abusive?  You do not believe that I went through these horrors in these places that were supposed to provide care but instead, treated me like I was a caged animal?

For those of you that assume I am lying, exaggerating, or delusional, know that there are plenty of others who are now coming out with strikingly similar stories of abuse. As a matter of fact, I am hearing of the same health care workers (doctors, therapists, hands-on workers) doing the exact same things to patients that were done to me, the same cruel acts.

It is time to unite and speak out and get the perps removed from their jobs.  It’s time to end patient abuse.

There was originally a link here, but I removed it. Sorry!  🙂

Link: Boston Children’s Hospital’s Psych Ward Under Investigation (and a bit of commentary by “yours truly”)

Here’s the link:

http://liftingtheveil.blog.com/2014/02/03/boston-childrens-hospital-to-be-investigated-by-department-of-public-health/

This article speaks so much for itself and will tell you so much about the history of the case that there isn’t too much I need to add, except the following:

As you can see, these institutions are indeed very powerful. Everything in this article is 100% true to my knowledge.  I’ve been trapped inside these places, helpless and physically weak and sick, and yes, I’ve heard them put those very same things on my “care plan.” They really do deliberately cut off your communication with the outside world ILLEGALLY in order to prevent “leaks,” that is, in their words, I QUOTE:

“We don’t want you exposing us.”

Now, much later, my own shrink told me I was “trivializing.” Really?  She told me the Five Fundamental Rights were trivial, but you can see them right there in this article and I think our patient rights here in Massachusetts do matter.

These powerful hospitals really hope that their patients are so “out of it” and medically sick that they “forget” such “trivial” stuff.  This is why abuse toward the elderly, hard of hearing,  and demented runs rampant. This is why those who are very, very thin and weak get abused, too.  This is why folks in wheelchairs get abused. This is why those that are overmedicated get abused.  We’re “out of it” and can’t report abuse, so it won’t matter and they can get away with it.

They’re all hoping we will forget.

People, the abusers wanted me medicated. They wanted me put away. They wanted to make sure I stopped writing…for good.

I think they were rather upset to find out that I have an impeccable memory. Sorry, dudes.

That DSM is so inaccurate that it has had to go through five revisions now, and no one can agree on it. It has killed thousands of innocent people, too, torn apart families, and ruined lives.  My memory is made of metaphorical manila folders and little paper cards and it’s worn on the edges.  It’s kept me, one person, alive over half a century DESPITE ALL ODDS.  The DSM is an overpriced book.  My card catalog brain?  I’m not even sure it’s inside my brain, cuz all it is is metaphor, and you know something?  Its priceless.

Lou Pelletier speaks out on the Glenn Beck show…and my own reaction…link too

If you right-click on the link below, this should open the video, which will play a brief TV clip that was on TV yesterday at 5pm.  I don’t have a TV but I was going to try to stream it.

I didn’t happen to see it.  Lou Pelletier, Justina Pelletier’s dad, was on the Glenn Beck show.  I saw the clip just now.  I bawled.  I’ll tell you exactly why in a sec.

First of all, yesterday, for much of the day, I was sick in bed, and I’ve been PHYSICALLY ill for the past month.

I turned 56 years old January 8 and thanked my lucky stars I was still alive.  I figured anything would be better than the hell I went through last year, especially the part last summer when I was abused on the medical floor of a hospital.

Two days following my birthday, just over a month ago, that is, January 10th, I attended the protest outside of the courthouse in Boston regarding 15-year-old Justina Pelletier, a girl from Connecticut who is currently being medically abused by our powerful Massachusetts hospitals.  I sure as hell know that abuse very, very well and the power these institutions have.

(It amuses me now to look back and recall a comment I saw on Facebook. The sign I held at the protest said, “Never, ever shut up.” Someone remarked that they liked the sign “that boy” was holding.  Funny, I can laugh now…I am a rather petite woman and boy’s attire is inexpensive, durable, and actually fits.  I guess at a distance I can be mistaken for a kid.)

I came home from the protest totally beat, freezing cold, desperately thirsty, with a ripping headache and searing stomach pain.  All I wanted to do was to immediately warm up as much as I could, get water into me, and lie down.  Within ten minutes, though, I was the victim of a hate crime. I’ve clearly been profiled by people that should know better.  There has been further “hate” type persecution in the month that followed since then.

I’m under an awful lot of stress.  I’m exhausted.  Just plain sick and exhausted.

Now I know some you that are reading these words are regular blog readers and some are here for the first time….

Let me explain.  I’ll tell you I cried to hear Lou Pelletier speak of what his daughter Justina is now going through.

Perhaps it was hardest to hear the part that they put her on the toilet and then…

Because I myself recall the same.  Back in summer 2013, that is, last August….Mount Auburn Hospital, not far from here, on a medical floor, in fact, one of the godawful noisiest places I’ve ever been…..

After I had been suffering malnutrition and had so much trouble putting my thoughts together as a result…then all that endless diarrhea coming out of me…they had me on the toilet and even when the diarrhea stopped, when there was nothing more, when I lay back down upon the bed, my own life continued to come out of me.  My life rapidly drained out of me and it didn’t matter what bodily position I was in.  That rush of diarrhea was only a symbol. In fact, it was a beautiful symbol to me.

I am a writer and I understand symbol and meaning. Even in my dementia-like state, I totally “got it.”  Instinctively, I knew somehow, I was near death.

And those untrained, unfeeling “sitters” had the nerve to watch me, to criticize me, to invade that very private space I desperately needed, that one moment, while I sat on the toilet.  Even then, when by law, I should have been left alone, they stood there and jeered at  me. When I finally insisted that by law, they had to leave me alone in that bathroom, those sitters were verbally abusive, invasive, and rude.

I was physically shoved a number of times by one sitter.  Another grabbed my phone, that is, the corded phone I was paying out of pocket for, and used it as if it were her own private phone continuously for the whole shift.  Almost all of them bossed me around.  Most blasted my TV, which in fact was right next to my left ear as I lay in the bed, and the constant flickering light of that darned TV above me was rather annoying.  (People who regularly watch TV are unaware that TV’s have a constant high-pitched buzz sound and a constant visual flashing on and off of bright lights, which non-TV-watchers find extremely annoying.)  Almost all “sitters” were verbally abusive.  Almost all treated me with gross disrespect and invaded my privacy far too much.  A small minority were kind and deserve a lot of credit.

Since I was so thin, I could hardly get the johnnies to cover me, and the ones the hospital had were missing the necessary ties and snaps. When I asked for one that wasn’t missing a tie or snap, if the “sitter” could understand English at all, I got yelled at, if not, I got yelled at.  Some nurse would come in and tell me what a nuisance I was. The doctors would come and tell me I was a liar, or that they didn’t want to hear my complaints, that it was some other person’s place to hear such things. Then, I’d get threatened, and I was told I was “dangerous.”  I wasn’t even suicidal and it took them over a week before someone even listened and took those abusive sitters away. They had never been necessary.  I was doomed to spend another month incarcerated on a psych ward, but I got out of it cuz they couldn’t justify sending someone there who wasn’t even suicidal, and wasn’t psychotic. All I needed was food, and I told them I could eat just fine at home with my little dog.

Today, I am alive.

I am scared to death of anything resembling a hospital or stretcher or the sound of a siren.

Here’s the clip.  As I said, right-click on it to get it to open in a separate tab.

 

http://www.video.theblaze.com/shared/video/embed/embed.html?content_id=31367675

Reflecting on the past few months: severe anorexia nervosa and subsequent abuse in a hospital

I guess this is a story of how I got better from anorexia nervosa, in a nutshell.  It’s not a pretty story about a horse farm.

While cleaning out my computer today, I opened a few old video files and watched them.  One was done not long before I entered the hospital last summer, and the other was shot only a few days after my return.

I am not at all surprised at what I saw. Before the hospital I was rather “out of it,” seeing as I was starved, rather spaced out and in my own little world.  I didn’t talk about starvation at all, but of course I appeared rather shockingly thin.  I didn’t show my full body but it’s quite clear just looking at my face.  I never look like that unless I’m “bad off.”

However, I appear to be enjoying myself.  I showed some of my belongings to the camera, dumb little things, then picked the cam off the computer and showed the viewer a peek at little Puzzle.  I laugh frequently, too, and seem surprisingly carefree considering that in the back of my mind, I assumed it wouldn’t be long before I would drop dead.  Also in the back of my mind I was panicked thinking that at some point, I might get “caught” at what I was doing, and sent to a hospital. I was scared, because I’d been abused before, so I had no intentions of showing up at one again.

So what were my options? I figured my two choices were to get “help” or die.  I dreaded what I’d seen of “help” and didn’t want to put myself through all that. So I figured death was the better option.

I hadn’t considered the alternative: eat.  Yes, eat.  That would have solved everything. I guess if I’d realized just how badly I needed to avoid hospitalization on all costs, I would surely have seen things differently.  I knew hospitals were bad, but my experience  that began perhaps a week later, August 12 through 22nd, at Mount Auburn Hospital was by far a worse nightmare than I could ever have imagined.

The other video I am doing from my bed. I was so physically ill after the hospital that I could barely do anything except lay in bed and cry.  I was told to go to a day program, but this was out of the question because I had so much edema in my lower body.  It went right up from my huge feet to my bra line.  You could make dents all the way up my legs, on my buttocks and even into my stomach. The kidney doctor said he wanted me in a lying down position with my legs raised high, at every moment I had that I didn’t have to be doing something else. This isn’t the same as “bed rest,” as it’s known, when a patient is instructed not to leave bed due to dangerously low blood pressure or another danger.  I wasn’t in that kind of danger like that, but I was instructed to lay down to reduce edema.

I was also feeling very sick when I did the video.  After all, I was recovering from acute renal failure.  It takes a long time to get better after that.

But there was one more thing I noted that in fact overwhelmed me.  This was the loss of dignity I felt following the horrendous abuse done to me in the hospital. You can’t undo that loss overnight.  I was alternately tearful, shaken, and full of rage.  I was also physically exhausted.  You can see that the incidents of abuse are still playing like movies inside my head.  I appear ed distracted and pummeled by these memories, and I had a lot of trouble putting a sentence together.

This, to me, is tragic. Sure, I had a lot of weight restored, but the damage from trauma ran deep.

Today, I don’t feel those things half as much.  I was crying all the time after the abuse, and to make things worse, there was no one I could talk to about it. People couldn’t believe a top notch hospital could be a prison like that if someone is being treated for a serious medical condition.  I was not in there for psychiatric treatment, and in fact received no counseling.  I was only force-drugged.  I was belittled by a majority of the Mount Auburn personnel.

One thing helped me, though, and I can see this clearly now.  I was determined to meet others that had also been abused in hospitals.  I knew I hadn’t made up or imagined or incorrectly perceived what had happened.

Most people have the capability to distinguish caring from abuse.  No way were these abusive personnel doing acts of caring. This was abuse.   I have never questioned my judgment here.  Not once have I questioned the validity of my perception of what happened at MGH in 2011.

Some were convinced I was psychotic and “imagining things”…of course not. I wasn’t so “out of it” from starvation not to recognize abuse.  I was a good girl and took an antipsychotic as instructed for a period following the abuse at MGH, and yet I continued to maintain everything I originally said, that I had been cruelly abused.  Why should I not? All of it indeed happened and no pill will change the facts.

Now we know about the severe abuses masterminded by Boston Children’s Hospital and Child Protective Services, I think more people are waking up to the fact that this indeed can happen. If it happens to vulnerable children, then surely, it happens plenty to adults.

It was the answer for me to find others that had had this experience.  Together, we are working to make these horrors stop.  Today, I don’t look like I did in the first video, because I am not starved.  Nor do I look so devastated as I did in the second video.  I am able to lead a productive life again, but it has taken time.

I have joined forces with the antipsychiatry movement and I don’t ever intend to see another shrink of any type, ever.  I love the new person that I have become. I am free of mental health care.  I am the rebel kid I always was inside.  I am a former girl hitch-hiker who loves her dog, nothing more.

Are you an army of one? Try using social media…and don’t give up!

So say you were the victim of mental health stigma, discrimination, or medical or psychiatric abuse, whatever you want to call it.

So now what?  Everyone around you tells you the following: “The doc/hospital/therapist was right. You were sick and that person was justified doing what he/she did.”

Of course, most well-meaning, caring people will tell you this.  It’s NORMAL for them to do that cuz no one wants to be accusatory or point a finger. That’s uncomfortable, right?

So, for instance, I was told by a very well-meaning, caring friend that the therapist who made a pass at me last spring, called me Honey from the start, and invited me out on a weekend-long date was a good therapist and right in doing what he did. Okay, I’m used to this sort of thing, this “justifying abuse” thing. People don’t mean harm by saying stuff like that. They want you to stop being pissed off, right? They think they are being helpful by justifying the abuse and smoothing it over.

The man who raped me was nice to me too.  He had his good qualities.  Of course he did or I never would have gone over there for coffee that night.

I didn’t talk about the rape afterward except to the rape counselor. No way did she once say the man who raped me was “justified” in what he did, or that I should forgive, or turn the other cheek. She encouraged me to never speak to him again and take steps to change my life so that I would never have to run into him, ever again.

Yes, you can compare. Abuse is abuse.  They say if a child is verbally abused, or physically abused, no way should we justify it and tell that child, “You deserved to be bullied,” or, “You asked for it.”  We hope we don’t tell a child that it was their own fault that they were bullied over their weight, do we? If a kid gets his lunch stolen, do we tell that kid he was delusional and maybe exaggerating, and maybe it’s cuz his grades need improving and the other kids were teaching him a lesson? If a kid from another country gets beat up, do we tell him it’s his own fault because he speaks another language at home?

But no, mental patients are told regularly that abuse by “treatment” is just fine. We are told we were sick and deserved to be locked up, battered, shoved aside, ignored, yelled at, deprived of basic needs, wrongly accused, threatened repeatedly, and repeatedly the victims of force and further bullying.  Many are physically or sexually abused.  Verbal abuse is a given.  Disrespect is a given.  Everyone has to fight to get quality care and you are lucky to get it at all.  Our privacy is stripped from us and this, too, gets justified. We were sick and that makes it okay. Why? The abuser didn’t want a lawsuit in case of some accident. The abuse is justified because it’s okay and legal for the abuser to cover his ass.

I say no more. We patients have asses too.  We need them covered, not stripped bare and lashed.

So if you have been abused and you tried to report the abuse and got NO RESPONSE from the human rights people…what next?

Don’t give up!  I know what it’s like. A lot of people around you telling you you are lying, making it all up, exaggerating, telling you it couldn’t have happened, or telling you to “forgive,” or telling you you are now even sicker and need more pills. No, you’re just pissed off and scared, not sick, and I don’t think any of this should happen to a person. The social rejection that follows abuse sucks. I don’t care for the religious zealots telling me to pray for the abusers, either.  I won’t do it and yes, I have in the past.  It never helped, and I was always sorry I said, “I forgive.” I was sorry I let it go and didn’t follow through.

I think if I’d followed through and DONE SOMETHING about bad quality health care, about uncaring or abusive therapists and staff, I would have gotten better lots faster than I did. Decades sooner, in fact.  Isn’t that amazing, the thought of it, that TAKING ACTION really helps?  It does!

If no one is listening right now, if you feel hopeless right now, get on social media.  Give that a try. If one venue isn’t working (like if you get slammed down and told how sick you are) try another.

Yesterday was my birthday and honestly, I had 90% of my birthday on social media.  I went for a run and went out with Puzzle and cuddled with her. I did a lot of writing as usual. Oh, I bought some books for myself too.

I had a great birthday and I mustered up some support on social media, too.  Wow, that felt so good.  Honestly, I can’t get anyone around here to go out with me for coffee, but I bet many of my Facebook friends would go out for coffee with me if they lived nearby. That feels wicked decent, about as decent as it gets.

Don’t stop trying. Don’t give up.  Please, our voices WILL be heard.

Renaming: “psychiatric abuse” becomes “medical abuse”

This broadens the definition, for one thing, and my intention isn’t to pin it on one branch of medicine but to say that our whole system is based on

THE DOCTOR KNOWS BEST

however, THE PATIENT KNOWS BEST.  Now why do I say this seemingly dumb thing?  Our doctors are trying to steal our bodies from us.  We are being managed.  We don’t need management. We need to reclaim our bodies and choose for ourselves and make our own decisions. Yet the medical world is trying to take the decisions out of the hands of responsible adults and families and put these choices in the hands of profit-makers.

So if we decide we want a second opinion, or we disagree with the determination of “expert,” whether this is a psychiatrist or another medical specialty, our rights and freedom are legally taken away.

Psychiatric abuse is one form of medical abuse and I think often, medical abuse involves psychiatry because psychiatry is the one medical profession that actually imprisons its patients.  Psychiatry can also put a legal order on someone and forcibly make the person do something via the courts.  All it takes is the opinion of a psychiatrist, who uses no specific scientific proof, just his word, that you are WRONG, and poof!  Court order.

We are also seeing parents lose custody of their children, that is, minors, because the parents disagree with the all-holy doctors.  The kids have no voice.  No one listens to the kids and they are caught in the middle.  The parents are silenced, called abusers, and the giant institutions legally take away any decision-making ability they had.

So I need to use new words.  Medical abuse. Which includes psychiatric abuse of course…it is a given. These go hand in hand.

I am going to start my newsletter…at some point…I am so tired right now.

The last thing they want is ANOTHER activist. Some troublemaker. Hello, world.

So they did everything. Tried their darndest to shut me up. Tried to force drug me, tried to lock me up, tried to tell me how crazy I was, tried to get me so busy with “programs” that I had no time to do human rights work. Tried to tell me all this wasn’t important.

It IS important cuz I have heard too many stories and the abuse MUST STOP NOW.

You get sick and you go to a doctor to get well, you don’t want a medical nightmare.  Mine lasted three and a half decades and I want that to happen to no other person on this planet!