Weakness proves to be fundamentally difficult to confess. The vulnerability that encases us when faced with hardship can lack permeability, building up walls between people and snuffing out conversations before they have a chance to happen. This article was birthed from a dark place in my life after the stress of the semester wore me down to the point where I thought I should talk to someone. If anyone reading this is having a hard time please contact someone and get help. Regardless of my experience, don't restrict yourself from reaching out, but acknowledge that you deserve high-quality treatment.
I made a mistake.
The grim experience began with a visit to the Community Counseling and Assessment Clinic (CCAC) on campus, which is the first pit stop that students will encounter en route to getting free counseling sessions. The counselors employed at CCAC are students-in-training working toward a masters degree in psychology. Once there, I spoke to a younger woman for around two hours about everything that had been going on in my life ranging from stressing over my classes to my difficulty in social situations. The counselor recommended that I get an appointment with Student Counseling Services because of significant risk factors in my past.
Translation: My sister committed suicide nearly three years ago.
My sister's death has had an inexplicable impact on my life. At sixteen, I mourned my closest sibling and my parents mourned their daughter. Her absence every day since has left me with a deep longing that resonates with our family and friends alike. The path I traveled to in adulthood twisted under the shadow of loss. That ache doesn't go away and that is okay. There isn't going to be a day that I'll wake up and suddenly not have lost my sissy. The passage of time doesn't cover her death up, it just makes me a different person than I was when I first experienced it. Separation of that variety cuts deep in a way that marks the soul for life, but I have a wonderful support system that holds me up when circumstance pushes me down. Suicide is not an option for me because I have been on the other end and no matter how hard life has gotten I have made it through.
Student Counseling Services (SCS) provides individual, group, and couples counseling on campus with social workers specializing in treating symptoms of depression; symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks; difficulties with motivation, time management, and procrastination; interpersonal concerns such as isolation, homesickness, interpersonal conflicts, and/or social anxiety; et cetera. Usually, students are referred to SCS after attending an intake session with CCAC. My referral led me to walk over to the office with the CCAC counselor to make my appointment and walk out shortly afterward since I was only deemed to be at moderate risk due to my background. The next day an SCS representative called and urgently wanted me to drop by for a risk assessment to determine if I am an immediate danger to myself or others. The receptionist at the front desk ushered me to the elevator after my arrival and to a third floor office where I met the SCS counselor for the first time. Let's call him Pat. The licensed marriage and family therapist sat across from my spot on a dull colored couch and listed off questions regarding my mental health:
"Do you think of suicide?"
"Do you have thoughts of harming yourself or others?"
"Do you have any coping mechanisms?"
The honest truth is that I think of suicide often as a concept, an event that happens though not to me, a grave resolution to someone's life that reaches all ends of their social circle. I am not suicidal. It is impossible to never think of the construct of suicide whenever you have lost someone to that very beast. It is impossible to never think of the construct of suicide if you have ever seen it plastered across a headline or squeezed between news stories. Everyone has thoughts about suicide whether they lie in the realm of ideation or remembrance. The inner confrontation between one's mind and the reality of death is inherently human. A stigma surrounds suicide in such a perverse fashion that thought crime can be an essential piece in a lacking psychologist's diagnostic arsenal.
Suicidal ideation is the thought of how to commit suicide, which can range from detailed plans to fleeting considerations and does not include the final act of killing oneself according to Medical News Today. Dr. Robert Simon states, "Whether suicide ideation is active or passive, the goal is the same—terminating one’s life," and explains the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation that describes passive ideation behaviors as a three point range with the increasingly worrisome behaviors from least to greatest including “would take precautions to save life”, “would leave life/death to chance (eg, carelessly crossing a busy street)”, “would avoid steps necessary to save or maintain life (eg, diabetic ceasing to take insulin).” This was the condition that was slapped on my file unbeknownst to me and the prognosis seemed grim. Obviously, my psyche was home to risk factors that raised a red flag before sinking the whole boat.
Pat disappeared to speak with a coworker at great length and returned with an offer-- a free evaluation by a psychiatrist regarding medication options that would be done by five o'clock, a mere 30 minute time commitment. That was a development that I reluctantly agreed to, if only because it would be short, sweet, and free. I had never attended counseling before so I had been prepared to talk to mental health professionals about treatment options. Campus cops drove my boyfriend and me to the psychiatrist's as per SCS transport policy with a counselor in tow behind us. They cracked jokes the entire trip however what happened afterward wasn't funny
A social worker showed up to Pine Grove to assess me a few hours from when I first stepped into the waiting room. He seemed inconvenienced to a fault, did not offer his name, and read strictly off of the referral SCS sent along with me with the counselor. I later came to find that the referral stated that I was a suicidal alcoholic whose sister died the previous year, not to mention that I am allegedly failing my classes. After receiving my records weeks later, I found that a worrying level of information in them was factually wrong down to dates being off by years and words being twisted to paint me in an incredibly negative light.
Fun fact: I am nowhere near failing and the only indication as such given was the fact that I'm stressing out about an Honors class. Nor am I an alcoholic.
Just a few minutes in the room being assessed and the social worker decided that I had to immediately be committed for 72 hours in the adult psychiatric ward of Pine Grove under an emergency stay. During my conversation with Pat, in-patient treatment was never discussed. The fact that Pine Grove is an in-patient facility was never discussed. The cost and burden of in-patient treatment was never discussed. In-patient treatment had never been an option in my mind. The entire time I had been in contact with counselors at USM, I was very clear that I do not want to commit suicide or hurt myself, only that I still think about my sister's death, but here I was being told that I'm a clear danger to myself and those around me.
I only went to counseling because I was having problems being motivated, with anxiety, and with depressive symptoms. Refusal of voluntary commitment led to a legal hold, in which I was legally not allowed to leave the facility without being pursued by police. A series of arguments, yelling, and phone calls ended in being physically led to the ward. My phone was taken en-route and the social worker screamed threats of longer incarceration at both me and my mother on the line.
He finally shrieked at me that if I didn't shut my mouth and behave I would be placed in the closed unit, a portion of the ward blocked off in isolation. A nurse took charge of me once he left, explaining that I would have to sign papers allowing Pine Grove to tell anyone I was there. A different nurse shooed me into a side room and involuntarily strip searched me, peppering the incredibly invasive procedure with the now familiar threat that if I didn't behave I wouldn't get to leave. I was then left in the front room until 11:30 p.m., not having been given a room yet and being continuously ignored by nurses I tried to get information from. The initial nurse I dealt with then privately told me that if I acted completely normal, cooperated, and accepted treatment a psychiatrist would see me as soon as possible. I asked her if I would be kept longer if I refused psychoactive treatment at the facility. She shrugged, indicating perhaps.
Pine Grove provided a room with a bed and a bathroom. The nurse from earlier was sweet enough to give me some cereal after I started cooperating. Sleep found me for a few hours until an older woman woke me up and told me to take a pill that turned out to be a prescription for my heart issue. In half-asleep confusion, I asked to, "Wait a minute." She authoritatively stated that I would take whatever they gave me, whenever they gave it.
By now, it was obvious what kind of place I was in.
Morning came soon after, waking up at five o'clock with the others, and the discovery that Pine Grove would not provide any hygienic accommodation proved unsightly to my mirror. Soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. are considered items that you should have on you when you come. Prescription medications are as well, but the emphasis on the heart condition inspired Pine Grove to provide me a few of pills out of the goodness of their heart. Later at the prescription counter where every patient had to wait in line at predetermined times of the day, a nurse berated me for not having all of my medications there. Silly me.
Funnily enough, I wasn't allowed to go eat breakfast because a psychiatrist hadn't seen me yet. Throughout the day, the presence of the psychiatrist changed with the first condition being that no one would be there until Monday, then one was coming in although I would be the last patient seen in the facility, and finally, that I would be seen as soon as possible as my parents had just arrived from Alabama. I spent my time in Pine Grove coloring half-colored sheets with other patients, not having spoken to a therapist at any point. Other individuals were there voluntarily for many different reasons and were all very pleasant.
When the psychiatrist eventually came, she quickly pulled me into an office and decided within five minutes that I didn't need to be there. The reality of my impending discharge changed in the few minutes of speaking to a medical professional.
Time spent at Pine Grove passed with threats, coercion, and coloring in a communal room. The only mental health professional I encountered agreed with me immediately that I didn't need to be there. Pine Grove's sad reality is that everything that occurred, not all being covered here out of my own desire for privacy, is perfectly legal. A psychiatrist doesn't legally have to assess you for you to be committed. You aren't obligated to assessment once admitted. Treatment doesn't have to be voluntary. Furthermore, these practices are known to Southern Miss and supported. The director over SCS worked at Pine Grove for several years and currently maintains a relationship with the facility by providing training and lectures to those employed there.
I am pursuing the implementation of a policy requiring fully informed consent in regards to treatment and reimbursement for the expensive inpatient stay Southern Miss encouraged. Informed consent is incredibly important in medicine and psychiatry, though there is no standing policy of informed consent at SCS currently. The experience I was subject to at Pine Grove is being submitted as a formal complaint with no change foreseeable in the future since involuntary commitment provides psychiatry approximately $25 billion a year with little to no liability on the part of the mental health workers making these calls.
If you've wondered what's been going on with me lately, then this is the truth. I've been dealing with the trauma of being taken against my will into a program that is legally acceptable in Mississippi and the United States, being denied hygienic and medical accommodation, and being held financially liable for the cost of "treatment" at a facility where I wasn't given meals and just colored in a room the entirety of my stay. My problems with anxiety have only gotten worse because of this and in dealing with Southern Miss afterward I have been shown the dark side of the school I love - an industry without accountability.
