Costs of Not Actually Being Heard by People in the Mental Health Field

MY Safety Plan
Suicide as a Moral imperative

Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes.

Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston, 1716

First and foremost —I fundamentally and fully sanction suicide.

Since before I had even heard the word "suicide" the very first time, I knew that I wanted to die at a time and manner of my own choosing. When we had our first "suicide is bad" presentation in middle school, I knew (a) I had a very different moral perspective about suicide and (b) I knew that short of a fatal accident or very rapidly progressing illness, I would absolutely die of suicide.

In the decades since, this is something that I've thought about a lot and my moral stance on the matter has not only stood the test of time, my resolve has only grown stronger over those decades.

For me, suicide has never been because of or about a psychiatric or mental health condition.

I —without hesitation or doubt— believe that suicide is a personal freedom and right.

For me, suicide has always been a logical, ethical, personal option that for me represents the ultimate in safety and escape.

To be clear, I believe —with absolutely no hesitation or doubt— that someone should be able to end their life for any reason.

To paraphrase an example that someone shared with me, if someone decides that they want to end their life because a butterfly landed on the left side of their nose on a Thursday, that's their right and their choice.

For me, other than a very sudden and unavoidable death (e.g. fatal car accident), I've fully expected to kill myself; i.e. I absolutely never wanted to die a "natural" death, I very explicitly wanted to die at a time, in a manner, and in a place of my own choosing!

I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.

Hunter S. Thompson

In my mid-20s I had a failed suicide attempt. It was roughly 5-6 months from the point that I made the decision until I implemented it. In other words, it wasn't a spur of the moment decision, it wasn't capricious, it was very deliberate. One of the interesting aspects of that experience, was just how amazingly peaceful that 5-6 month period was.

While I fully expected my subsequent suicide to also be very deliberate, and well planned, I knew that it was possible that there might be things that would warrant an expedited exit —and that's something I had absolutely no ethical issues with, i.e. while such a suicide might appear to be impulsive, for me suicide is something that I've contemplated enough, I've contemplated for decades, that even if the time frame from decision to actual implementation might be relatively quick, is such that I would still have done a thorough review of my own criteria before actually implementing, i.e. no matter how capricious it might appear to others, I would NEVER act without having reviewed MY OWN CRITERIA and coming to a deliberate decision —even though I believe that it is each and every human's right to make a capricious decision— that's not how I roll. That said, I fully expected, and would absolutely prefer, a very deliberate and well prepared suicide.

By my mid-30s, I had reached a point where I still actively thought about my suicide plan daily, but I also expected that factors wouldn't push me to actually act on those plans until my mid-50s to mid-60s, and then, it would most likely be due to early to mid-stage dementia.

For clarity's sake as you read the remainder of this account, when I use the phrase "imminently suicidal" I mean expecting to kill oneself with the next roughly 72 hours, while "actively suicidal" means that my primary, or potentially only, goal with my remaining days is to kill myself, although, the time frame to complete that goal may be months away as I complete any secondary goals.

Contemplating ending ones life is NOT always an indicator of "mental illness". It can be a rational decision when ones quality of life is no longer desirable. This is why medical assistance in dying is now legal for terminally ill folks in my country with a Supreme Court battle to extend it to those who are not terminal but are in suffering with no cure. Are all these folks "mentally ill" too? And what if it is "mental illness" with no cure like schizophrenia, BPD Aand bipolar disorders? Is mental suffering more trivial than physical suffering?

for someone people, like myself, knowing that death is an option and will come regardless in time, gives me peace. I have not checked out yet. I guess that means a part of me still wants to keep plugging way. Once I had my method it was like a huge burden was off my shoulders. I could "live" again.

Suicidal thoughts and behaviours do not always equal suicide nor do they equal "depression".

This is a safe place to talk about it without being thrown in the psych ward, which does more harm than good due to the humiliation and being treated like a criminal and getting no treatment whole there anyways.>

brainpain2, "A Conversation about Mental Health"

Personal "Hotel" Background

As previously mentioned, in my mid-20s I had a failed suicide attempt. In the aftermath, (a) I promised my mother I wouldn't kill myself while she was alive (although, even then, I had caveats on that promise) and (b) I agreed to go to the psych ward for 72 hours. That stay ended up getting extended to 5 days.

When I went into that psych ward, it was truly willingly. I didn't have any expectations, I was a failure, and the only thing I knew was that by going in, it would make my mother feel better.

By the time I left, that experience made it clear to me, that a psych ward is nothing except a psychological prison! The staff were nothing but jailers who I would never trust in that environment nor if I was to ever interact with them subsequently. I was not there to "get better" nor to "be helped", I was there solely as punishment. Every moment and aspect of that entire incarceration reminded me (a) solely of my failure, (b) solidified my resolve not to fail again, and (c) traumatized me more.

I learned —with absolutely certainty— that such an environment could never be beneficial to me in any way and was, in fact, harmful enough that I promised myself if I was ever subjected to such a place again, it null and voided the recently made promise to my mother, i.e. simply being subjected to such a hellhole again, would not only be justification enough to kill myself, it would guarantee —without exception— my suicide, as a direct and explicit response to such traumatizing "treatment".

To be clear, when I went to the psych ward I was no longer actively suicidal, i.e. I was not planning to kill myself anytime soon and I was definitely not an imminent threat to myself (I felt like too much of a failure to try again in the immediate aftermath —something I expressed rather often and openly). I did, however, spend almost every waking moment of that stay analyzing my suicide failure —in a way that I would not have done if I had not been imprisoned in that hellhole— and identifying steps that I would take to ensure that I did not fail the next time. I'm sure I would have gotten around to contemplating that in the years that followed, but that hellhole gave me both (a) lots of dedicated time to contemplate my failure and (b) massive incentive to contemplate how I would ensure success the next time.

I also spent a lot of time observing another patient. Their expressions and how they carried themselves personified depression in a way that I had never seen before (nor since). Even if I was smiling, when I was depressed I felt exactly like how they presented themselves, but I intuitively code switch/mask my depression, and have done so since my very first experience with clinical depression. The image of that person has stuck with me all these years, almost as a gauge of irreparable depression. I knew that if I ever felt like that, without hope of change, and I felt confident in my suicide plan, I would —without exception— kill myself (i.e. it is one of the conditions that would null and void the promise to my mother).

The sole positive moments during that 5 day period were talking with another patient while smoking. Every one of our conversations ended in discussions about what we had learned during our respective suicide failures and ways to increase the probability of success the next time.

I also had a classmate visit me a couple of times while incarcerated in that hellhole. During those visits, my colleague and the psych intern who was my "doctor" during my incarceration met.

After being discharged, even before my mother and I made it out of the hospital, I threw away the psych meds they sent home with me. It had been the only time in my life that I completely distrusted prescribers, but they were jailers first and foremost, and therefore they would NEVER TO BE TRUSTED!

For years after wards¹, I regularly had nightmares about that imprisonment. Every time I had one of those nightmares, I made a point of actively improving my plan so that I wouldn't fail a second time.

One lasting take-away, was that if anyone ever again tried to force, or coerce, their differing ethics about suicide on me, every fiber of my being will do anything and everything to assert my power to live and to die according to my ethics.

Any future attempts to deny me the ability to kill myself -would absolutely and without exception— lead to me killing myself as a direct, and exclusively as a direct result of such attempts to deny me that very right.

And I learned that the negative ramifications continue well past the actual psychological incarceration.

The following may sound irrelevant at first, but it will shortly become clear that it is very relevant.

Less than a month after being discharged, the classmate who had visited me, talked me into running for office in our department's student group. I ran unopposed for treasurer, so unsurprisingly, I won the vote; meanwhile, that classmate had run, and won, the presidential seat.

One of our responsibilities, as the department's president and treasurer, was to also participate in the school's student group. (Each department belongs to a "school" within the university, e.g. "School of Engineering", "School of Social Sciences", etc.)

When my classmate and I showed up at our first school-level meeting, lo and behold, the psych intern, who had been my "doctor" while I was incarcerated, was on their respective department's student group.

I can't express just how tense and uncomfortable every single one of those meetings were. Every month for a year, I was actively reminded of my failure and subsequent incarceration. Unsurprisingly, the imprisonment nightmares would inevitably start up again. My planning would go from a passive review every morning, to active re-evaluations —to ensure that I would not fail a second time— actively trying to identify every possible failure point and ways to mitigate them.

A decade and a half later, when I entered the VA healthcare system, I answered their questions about previous psychiatric imprisonment truthfully. That admission is currently listed in my VA medical record over 2,500 times! Something like that undoubtedly biases the treatment that I have gotten. To say otherwise is either a boldface lie or indicative of utterly irredeemable incompetence at understanding basic human biases and VA policies and procedures.

In short, my experience with the psych ward was EXCLUSIVELY TRAUMATIZING with nothing but negative repercussions ever since; well, unless you considering drastically improved suicide plans a positive, which I certainly do!

The suicide failure that led to that imprisonment happened months (5-6 months to be specific) after I made the decision to kill myself, i.e. I was actively suicidal for 5-6 months. Likewise, every ideal plan that I subsequently identified, assumed that I wouldn't pull the trigger (proverbial or otherwise) until months after I had made the actual decision. I.e. unless I felt immediately threatened (more on this later), my suicide was always going to include completing a list of tasks between deciding to end myself and actually catching the bus, that would take several months to complete.

On the flip side, once I had made the decision, there was absolutely, positively NOTHING that was going to change my mind! Quite the opposite, every discussion about suicide, every anti-suicide commercial, every "call a crisis line" message, could only increase my resolve and anticipation.

Since I am a proponent of suicide, and since every other justifiable reason to imprison someone in such a hellhole (e.g. detox) is not a problem that I have ever had, or which could possibly be helpful to me in such a hellhole, then by extension, any subsequent incarceration in a psych ward would SOLELY be about depriving me of my right of self-determination, i.e. if I were to ever again be imprisoned in a psych ward it would be exclusively as a prisoner of conscious.

Frankly, such an environment is the antithesis of safety for me! It is exclusively traumatizing, dehumanizing, counter-therapeutic, patronizing, sanctimonious, and unjustified imprisonment and subjugation!!!!

I knew, if I was ever made to experience anything like that ever again, for any reason, for the remainder of my life, if I hadn't already been actively suicidal before such imprisonment, then every single aspect of such imprisonment, the dehumanization, the deprivation, the downright disrespect of my moral and ethical right to self-determination, and the unjustified imprisonment would —without exception— make me actively suicidal. I.e. Incarceration, ever again, in a psych ward GUARANTEED —without exception— I would kill myself AS A DIRECT AND EXPLICIT RESULT OF THAT IMPRISONMENT!

Personal "Hotel" Perspective

Reminder: I'm explaining all this, because I'm actually considering the psych ward, but for you —the reader— to understand that personal deliberation, you need to understand my personal perspective first.

To think that a place like that would ever in any way be helpful to me is to so thoroughly misunderstand my NEEDS as to prove that anyone involved in imprisoning me in such a manner is utterly and completely incapable of doing anything other than causing me harm!

Denying me agency and autonomy —in any way similar to what I had previously experienced in the psych ward— could ONLY EVER make me completely and irreparably distrust every single individual involved and, after that experience, if I were ever to be subjected to anything like that again, such subjection would make it unambiguously clear that this is no longer a world that I will ever again be willing to be a part of.

So basically, there are only a handful of reasons that I would be subjected to a psych ward again —and each of them would ONLY be such a failure of something so CRITICAL TO ME that such a failure would only make me actively suicidal, e.g.:

• suicidal ideations - Imprisoning me for my suicidal ideations is nothing except being made a prisoner of conscience, and when denied my right of self-determination, it ONLY makes asserting that right my primary goal for the remainder of my life.
• suicide failure - Imprisoning me for a suicide failure again would only make me feel more like a failure, a prisoner of conscience, and to think about how to not fail again when I tried again.
• psychiatric care - Outside of my time on active duty (there were dynamics that made it unsafe to ask for help in that situation), and as should be demonstrated throughout this account, I asked for psychiatric help when I thought it would help, and I was open to discussing any possible treatment, so long as (a) I was able to get the information that I believed that I need to make a decision and (b) that my decision was respected.
• detox - While I absolutely drunk to excess, on occasion, particularly decades ago while on active duty, I've never had an alcohol or substance abuse problem, and certainly nothing that ever —remotely— came close to something warranting detox, and even if it did, there are better ways then incarceration in an exclusively suicide-inducing hellhole.

For me, being imprisoned in a psych ward with depression is the definition —the epitome of a living f'ing hell. (It ranks above being conscience but completely paralyzed and unable to communicate.) If I weren't actively suicidal going in, I would 100% and —without exception— be actively suicidal the moment I stepped foot in such a hellhole.

As someone who battles depression, since the moment I was released from that psych hellhole, I've lived in fear of being imprisoned in such a living hellhole again; so much so that I would —without exception— kill myself if I were ever made to experience such a place ever again.

For reasons elaborated momentarily, if I were ever again forced or coerced into a psych ward, by definition, that is not respecting my decision making right and —without exception— I will take back my decision making right in the most permanent way possible.

A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire, or preserve his freedom.

Malcolm X

Imprison me, or otherwise punish me, under the guise of "saving me from myself" and I will guarantee MY FREEDOM in the most permanent way possible!

PERIOD!

WITHOUT EXCEPTION!

Fellow Veteran's experience

In my discussion with the fellow vet —someone who suffers from a very different set of mental health issues than I do— they mentioned that there are times when they simply can't take care of themselves and the psych ward is something of a "hotel" for them.

Among other things, they mentioned that when they were incapable of things like making meals, following a basic schedule, and being able to take meds on time, that the psych ward basically becomes a hotel for them.

Obviously, this had not been my experience nor my perspective.

I reminded myself more than a few times that just because such a hellhole was, and only ever could be exclusively and extremely traumatizing for me, that others have gotten benefit out of it.

I didn't need people to make meals for me, nor to keep me on schedule, nor to tell me what meds to take when —at this point, I was actually handling all these things just fine. (Meals not withstanding, all the food related problems were exclusively GI-caused. And, at this point, I actually had a really good system in place to ensure that I didn't miss or double-up on meds. The if-else medication and a second problematic prescription hadn't yet been prescribed.)

However, I couldn't help but think that maybe if others actually saw the cognitive issues that I was dealing with, maybe then they would actually take my problems seriously and actually get me the help that I needed.

Once the course that I was teaching actually started, I knew that I needed to be able to respond to student inquiries within a 48 hour time frame; so, if I was going to "step away from normal life" for more than 48 hours, I needed to do so before the course started (in early May.)

Criteria: What might have been useful

As far as what would need to be different, to make such an experience potentially beneficial instead of exclusively traumatizing and —without exception— suicide-inducing I identified a handful of factors, that fell into 3 categories:

• won't traumatize me so much that I would —without exception— kill myself
• will help me continue to assess my cognitive issues, while not taking away coping skills that (a) I was not willing to give up and (b) which had actually been the only things that had actually been helping me for months
• simply logistically relevant

Criteria A: MUST be different
Otherwise it would ONLY BE SUICIDE-INDUCING!

The following must be different otherwise the experience would only and —without exception— be traumatizing and suicided-inducing, i.e. without these, such a place would ONLY be a prison, and —without exception— if I were ever subjected to such a place ever again, for any reason —without exception— I would kill myself as a direct and explicit response —without exception! (Hopefully I'm not being too subtle here. /s)

1. being able to leave at any time, for any reason, and without permission
   • notifying someone that I'm leaving is assumed; i.e. just "disappearing" wouldn't be acceptable
   • telling someone on duty that I'm leaving right now is perfectly reasonable so long as I am then able to leave
     • without having to wait for permission
     • without having to wait for doors to be unlocked
     • without having to wait for someone else to "sign for me"
     • without having any other impediments to actually leaving of my own accord
   • within reason, this would include leaving and returning
     • e.g. at mealtime going to a gas station and buying a soda
2. being able to wear any clothing type of my choice
   • to include belt, shoes with shoelaces, and hat
   • assumptions:
     • outside of showering, going without a minimum amount of clothing would not be acceptable (e.g. some type of shirt-like cover, some type of pant-/shorts-like cover, and some type of footwear, at a minimum in public spaces)
     • apparel with potentially offensive statements, images, etc would also not be acceptable (I would actually assume that would include anything that might be triggering, e.g. offensive language, pot leaf image, etc.)
   • this probably seems silly, but if I can't wear a ballcap, shoes with laces, etc.
     —I am nothing but a prisoner in a f'ing prison, period!

If imprisoned ever again in such a hellhole, I will kill myself as a direct and explicit response to that imprisonment!

Criteria B: MUST be different
Otherwise there wouldn't be enough benefit

The following must be different, or else I wouldn't get enough benefit for such an experience to actually be helpful, i.e. without these, such an experience would cut me off from my life so much that I simply would not be able to benefit from it.

Without the following, the costs of such a place would be too high to justify any possible benefit!

1. have my laptop with me, and the ability to use it (within reason); this was important for more than one reason:
   • my standing Friday night movie night with a friend was one of the very few, very helpful coping mechanisms that had been keeping me going through all of this
     • while it wouldn't be true at all times in my life, at this point, losing this, even for one week, would have only severely damaged my mental health
     • in and of itself, loosing this for a single week, wouldn't be enough to make me suicidal, but being deprived of this would absolutely negatively impact my mental health enough to outweigh any possible benefit.
   • I was obviously still teaching the online course, and for several reasons, I needed to be able to continue working on this course
     • as strange as it sounds being deprived of this would absolutely negatively impact my mental health enough to outweigh any possible benefit.
   • Most importantly —and remember having people who might be able to SEE WHAT I WAS EXPERIENCING was the ONLY reason that I was even contemplating the psych ward as an option in the first place— since so much of what I was struggling with, and definitely the worst of what I was struggling with at this point, was reading and writing code, I needed to be able to demonstrate reading and writing code.

     • While I wouldn't expect therapists to understand the code itself, being able to show them what I was experiencing versus what I should have been experiencing would have been possible, at least to a degree that I felt would be meaningful and helpful.

     • In addition, I would absolutely need my computer to assess whether I was experiencing the most critical improvements in the cognitive situation. (i.e. if we thought we had identified a fix, I needed my computer to assess whether the fix worked or not)

     • Being deprived of this would absolutely negate THE ONLY REASON this option was even being considered in the first place!

2. Being able to go outside and smoke. While I have no doubt that there are better coping skills, FOR ME, stepping outside and smoking is absolutely an acceptable coping skill and one that works for me. To be clear, it isn't just about smoking, it's part ritual, it's part scenery change, and —as strange as it sounds— it's about being in fresh air. I have genuinely found that smoking in blizzard-like conditions, torrential downpours, and even heat that rivals an oven, is amazingly cathartic.

3. Having and using my phone (within reason). As with other things on this list, there are multiple reasons.
   • Because of the cognitive issues, the phone had become a second brain to me.
     • When I was concerned that I was going to forget something, I tried to jot it down on my phone.
     • If I knew I was supposed to have remembered something, I'd check my phone to see if I'd jotted down what I was supposed to remember.
     • Even before my cognition had started declining, I had used solitaire as a metric for my cognitive condition (e.g. is my brain running at 100%), but this had become even more important given the cognitive situation. Solitaire had basically become a combination coping tool and my "cognitive scale". E.g. while a bathroom scale can be used in a negative way, it can also just be used to gauge someone's weight, independent of judgement. Likewise, while I had a lot of self-judgment related to my cognitive decline, solitaire really served as a non-judgmental way to assess my current state.
   • One of my other coping skills was a monthly phone call with another friend, and being able to make this call in private was important to me. Being deprived of this would absolutely negatively impact my mental health enough to outweigh any possible benefit.

Criteria C: Of logistical importance

I had recently taken a dog from a friend (the dog had been their mother's dog, but their mom had died of COVID, and the friend couldn't take care of the dog) that —if and only if all of the above criteria were met— would need a place to stay during my stay, but I'd prefer him be near me, so I could visit him during my stay (the dog had abandonment issues, and my mental health would absolutely take a hit if I thought I was contributing to those abandonment issues).

Criteria Determination
Did these differences exist︖

One person's heaven is another person's hell.
One person's cure is an absolutely lethal poison to another.
One person's sanctionary is nothing except a suicide inducing hellhole for another person!

author

So, I needed to know:

• Is it a locked word?
  • If it is, it will be exclusively and —without exception— traumatizing and suicide-inducing
• Am I trusted to wear my own clothes of my own choosing?
  • If not, it will be exclusively and —without exception— traumatizing and suicide-inducing
• Can I take and, with acceptable limitations, use my laptop?
  • if not, there will be no purpose in going in the first place
  • but also, it will deprive me too much of a coping mechanism that I'm unwilling to give up
• Can I take and, with acceptable limitations, use my phone?
  • if not, it is depriving me too much of a tool that I need to get better
  • and depriving me too much of a coping mechanism that I'm unwilling to give up
• Can I step outside to smoke?
  • if not, it will deprive me too much of a coping mechanism that I'm unwilling to give up
• Is there an adjacent facility that can house my dog during my stay
  • if not, and if every other criteria was met then I'd have to find a place for him to stay

During periods when my brain was mostly cooperating, I did web searches trying to find answers to these questions —with no success.

During my next two meetings with the LSW (#3) and my next meeting the APRN (#4), I offhandedly mentioned that I had contemplated checking myself in. I was genuinely hoping they would ask why I hadn't, so that I could ask questions about current state of VA psych wards to determine if it might be beneficial or whether it would be —without exception— exclusively suicide-inducing traumatic.

Neither the LSW (#3) nor the APRN (#4) even acknowledged me mentioning that I had contemplated the psych ward, and by extension, neither inquired why I hadn't checked myself in, nor why I had even considered the possibility in the first place.

MH Provider APRN #4 - part B

I met with APRN #4 in the morning.

I know that I had been thinking about the very recent, new trauma-trigger, but I don't remember if we talked about it.

I did update them on the cognitive issues, but they didn't explore any possible causes.

We spent most of the appointment discussing the more general increase in my stress levels and panic attacks, as well as my GI issues. This is in large part due to the fact that they wanted to put me on a medication that they normally wouldn't prescribe precisely because it causes GI issues, but in my case, those GI issues could have been beneficial.

The prescriber told me to take a single pill for something like 3 days, and then something to the effect of if "GI symptom A" happens, then continue to only take 1 pill, but if "GI symptom B" happens, then take 2 pills. In programming, this concept is known as an "if-else", and the underlying concept is the bread and butter of every developer! It's as fundamental to computer programming as the alphabet, pictographs, or ideographs are to reading —and while I knew that was the general concept, I literally could not follow their logic long enough to write down what condition warranted 1 pill versus what condition warranted 2 pills!

I genuinely cannot begin to tell you just how stressful this was for me! This is definitely an example of how the cognitive issue was exacerbating my stress!

I was deep in cog-2.

Not only was this frustrating, in and of itself, but this provider was genuinely incredulous that I couldn't follow such basic instructions —which only made it that much more frustrating that I couldn't!

I had to practically beg them to send me the "if-then" caveats via Secure Message² —which was so much more demoralizing than I can express in words— nevertheless I was genuinely grateful that they promised to do so.

PCP & Resident

One thing that I appreciate about our VA facility (at least, the vast majority of the time) is the integration of resident MDs. For this appointment, before I would see my PCP, I saw her current resident.

While I had still been at home, getting ready for this appointment, my brain had gone down a truly horrifying trauma-related rabbit hole, and then I had the hour long drive to the VA, for my brain to stew in it.

Unfortunately, one of the resident's first questions promptly triggered a complete emotional breakdown.

To be clear, while I've definitely had emotional meltdowns like that before —I had NEVER had an uncontrollable emotional meltdown like that before! Previously, I had always been able to control my emotional response at least enough to calm myself down before such a meltdown, or at the very least, to keep my response in check until I could get somewhere that I felt was safe enough and comfortable enough to let my emotions free (normally, that would simply be by myself, but on occasion, it would be with a MH therapist).

Needless to say, this uncontrolled meltdown was scary and embarrassing, but frankly, it was also frustrating, because I had other things that I actually wanted to get accomplished —to include finally starting a discussion with my PCP about the cognitive issues.

Once I was able to compose myself, the resident and I continued to discuss the issues that I was actually there for. When I had discussed everything with the resident, they went and briefed my PCP, and then the two of them returned.

Unsurprisingly, the first topic of conversation with the two of them was my meltdown.

Also unsurprisingly, my PCP very quickly offered the psych ward.

I'm still so frustrated that neither LSW #3 nor APRN #4 had ever engaged in a conversation about the psych ward, and that it took this full-on breakdown with my PCP and her resident, but at least I was finally able to ask the questions that would inform me on whether it was different enough to be potentially beneficial or exclusively suicide-inducing.

So, I quickly rattled off all of my questions, and then paused while PCP gave me the relevant answers. Of course, the first question was whether it was a locked ward, and unsurprisingly it was, therefore the rest of the answers really weren't important to me, but since I had already rattled them off, she proceeded to answer them as best as she could. All of the questions —except the dog logistics one— had simple, "yes", "no", or "I have no idea" answers. Interestingly, there is a program for people with dogs, and so she promised to have the relevant information sent to me. But again, given the fact that the very first criteria was an exclusively suicide-inducing —HELL NO— it didn't really matter.

Once she was done giving me the answers, I told her that I was definitely NOT interested, and I expressed my very genuine gratitude that she had offered it as on option, and that she had given me answers to the questions that I needed answered to make the right decision for me.

We then moved on to my actual medical concerns, to include the cognitive issues. Unfortunately, I suspect that they discounted my cognitive concerns because of the full blown emotional meltdown that I had just had 😔.

Shortly after this appointment, I would actually learn how to access my medical records. Their note regarding the cognitive issues was limited to the heading "#Depression/ cognition" and then only included notes about depression 😔. I didn't see any indication that there was a consult put in for any type of related testing nor a review of potential medical causes.

So, I had finally talked to my PCP about it, only to have that discussion completely dismissed because of the out of control emotional issue. 😒

We also discussed the GI cramps that I was still dealing with. They added a prescription for Dicyclomine, as needed, up to 3 pills per day.

I also asked them to renew several prescription, including a VA prescription for the two migraine medications that I take, one of which is just a generic version of Excedrin and the other is an off-label anti-nausea medication (i.e. Phenergan).

That evening, there were a couple things that I realized.

First, I couldn't remember what the outcome was of the discussion related to my cognitive issues, so I sent a Secure Message shortly after that appointment. In that message, I went into more detail about the cognitive issues, including the "boat analogy" (see the "January & February 2023/Full Blown Cognitive" section for the boat analogy).

Vision Problem

The morning of Apr 22nd, I was panicked by both the cognitive challenges that I was going to have to deal with while doing course prep work that day, as well as the looming deadline to have course prep work completed.

I didn't want to take panic meds until I was actively going to work on course and I had had a bad night's sleep so I was also tired. As a result, I decided to try and take a nap to calm myself down and hopefully help with cognition.

After about 30 minutes, of trying to sleep, with only a few moments of actual sleep, only to be woken in a panic again, I conceded defeat on the nap front.

Just prior to conceding defeat, I'd been laying on my left side, with my left eye pressed against my pillow. When I conceded defeat and finally opened my eyes, my left eye wouldn't focus.

Quick context: for the better part of a decade, during my annual checkup, the optometrists told me that I'm at a very high risk for eye ruptures, e.g. parts coming apart in my eyes, and that if that happens, my vision will go wonky (they often times would go through a list of different separations that might happen and describe the different visual symptoms of each) and end with very stern warnings that if I had any drastic vision changes that I needed to go to an ER as quickly as possible, because I would need eye surgery as soon as possible. They each then emphasized that any rupture that wasn't surgically fixed within about 24 hours would result in permanent vision loss.

For roughly 10 minutes, I played with the dog that I was carrying for, giving my eye time to recover from any sleep-related issues, but my vision remained completely out of focus, so I decided to take a shower, and if I was still having issues after that, then I would drive the 45~60 min to the VA ER.

As I was getting clothes ready for a shower, for roughly a 2-3 minute period, the vision in my left eye came into focus, but it had a very trippy 3d kaleidoscope effect, and then it returned to simply being completely out of focus. I deliberately took my time taking a shower and getting ready to leave the house.

It was roughly 45 minutes from the time I woke up, with this extreme visual problem, to the point that I left the house for the VA ER.

Vision ER

The drive to the VA took roughly an additional 45 minutes, during which time my vision did finally start to clear up.

I debated whether to even continue. I assumed that since it was clearing up on it's own, it probably wasn't something that would require urgent surgery. However, I still didn't know what had happened, and it had really been quite an extreme vision problem, so I decided to continue to the ER.

By the time I reached the ER, my vision was mostly back to normal.

One thing that the VA ER does differently than any other ER that I'm aware of, is during intake the patient is asked suicidal ideation (SI) questions.

I have to admit, the previous times that I'd gone to the VA ER, I don't ever remember being asked all the SI questions. What I do know is that I was at baseline SI (baseline for me) when I walked in for that vision problem, and I answered all the questions honestly.

I was taken back to a room with multiple beds and other patients. On the way there, I had done a quick eye chart test.

Then I saw an ER resident, who was quickly able to rule out all of the visual problems that would require urgent surgery. (:wipes-brow: but still 🤔) Since the vision had mostly cleared up by the time I arrived at the ER, I had assumed it wasn't surgical, but simply having this young doctor confirm that assumption —was so much more comforting than I can express!

Unfortunately, the resident wasn't able to tell me what I had experienced, and they were clearly flummoxed by what I was describing.

Once they had told me everything that they could, they went to report to their attending physician.

While I was very relieved that at least I wasn't going to need eye surgery with the next few hours, I was still anxious to know what had happened to my vision, and what the repercussions of it might be.

"Do you mind if ..."

While I was waiting for the resident and attending doctors to return, a person who didn't strike me as ER staff approached me, introduced themself, and asked in more of a declarative than questioning tone, "Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

Every fiber of my being immediately interpreted them,

their interjection into my purpose for being there, and

their actual question

as exclusively and extremely menacing and threatening.

I absolutely did not feel like I could say "no" even though I frankly did NOT want to interact with them in any way.

This persons' unsought for presence and interjection into a situation where I hadn't ask for them, and didn't want to have anything to do with them was NOTHING BUT THREATENING!

It didn't matter whether they were nice and polite.
I didn't ask for them.
I didn't want to interact with them.
They INTERJECTED THEMSELVES into a situation (i.e. an extreme vision problem) that did not warrant their presence!

Despite not wanting to interact with them, I also didn't have any specific reason not to (I was still waiting on the actual doctors, i.e. the ONLY PEOPLE that I was there to get help from!), so I responded with something to the effect of "sure, whatever".

I'm normally a very polite and kind person, a bit shy, but otherwise willing to talk with just about anyone. I honestly wish I had just told this person to "fuck off". This retro-active wish says MUCH, MUCH MORE about how I interpreted this specific person in this specific interjection than it does about me!

I need to be unambiguously clear, all I wanted at this point, was to find out what had happened to my vision that morning, what the repercussions of that might be, and to get back to my previously scheduled life.

My biggest concerns were (a) whether the vision problem was a precursor to one of the vision issues that would require surgery, (b) was this something that I should expect to become a regular thing, (c) was there anything I could do to minimize the chance of something like this happening again, and (d) getting out of there so I could work on the course that I was becoming less and less capable of actually teaching.

VA Safety Plans in General

The VA has their "safety plans". This includes questions regarding warning signs, coping skills, distractions, social support, suicide plans, access to suicide methods, and crisis services contact information.

As strange as it sounds, these have always been somewhat triggering for me. I understand why the VA wants us to fill them out, but when there is something to be done to impact my SI, I do it, I don't need a sheet of paper with reminders on it. If talking to someone will help, I talk to them, I don't need a f'ing reminder to do so; if some activity will help, I do said activity, I don't need a f'ing reminder to do so!

I also always have suicide plans.
I regularly revise my safety plans.
I make sure that I have access to means, even if those means aren't in my house.
Suicide is, and has been for my decades MY SAFETY PLAN.

As for reaching out to any "crisis" services -
HELL TO THE FUCK NO!!!
NEVER!!!

One of the first times, if not the very first time, I filled one of these out, it was with the therapist identified as MH #1 LCSW, but more often referred to as the Gold Standard Therapist (GST), more on her in a moment. The first time she asked me if I would reach out to one of these services, I hemmed and hawed, because NO, under absolutely NO circumstance would I ever reach out to them in a situation that THEY might deem a crisis. She then rephrased the question, and asked if I would reach out to her, or another specific therapist, and yes, I could envision possibly reaching out to one of them. And so, from that point I on, I could honestly answer "yes" to this question, even though I would NEVER call a crisis hotline or go to the ER for mental health care. NEVER! UNDER ABSOLUTELY —NO— CIRCUMSTANCE! Their definition of "crisis" is either way too late and they'll ONLY make me act sooner or they have SO ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY MISDIAGNOSED ME AS TO ONLY BE ABLE TO INFLICT SUICIDE-INDUCING TRAUMA —WITHOUT EXCEPTION!

The mere threat of state-sanctioned forced treatment ONLY EVER CAUSED EXTREME ANXIETY and DRASTICALLY INCREASED MY SI! I KNEW that for me, and —without exception— ANY “emergency” or “crisis” mental health interventions, i.e. anything that could be construed as a mental health "intervention" or "treatment" that I did not explicitly —and completely of my own volition— seek, would ONLY, could ONLY, EVER cause trauma, massive, massive amounts of fucking suicide-inducing trauma! Such "interventions" and "treatments" would NEVER, could NEVER, provide even a remote hint of benefit. They could ONLY ever FUCK ME UP, MASSIVELY, UNDOUBTEDLY, AND EXTENSIVELY FUCK ME UP!!!! That is all that unasked for and unwanted MH crisis treatment could ever do to me!!!!

The Interrogation

At this point, I had gone to the ER EXCLUSIVELY to get the extreme vision problem identified and resolved, but before that actually happened (although, thankfully, the crisis aspect had resolved, because my vision in that eye had returned to normal, but I still didn't know what had caused it to so catastrophically fail, and I was eagerly awaiting that information) I now found myself the victim of an UN-ASKED FOR, UNWANTED, and UNNEEDED mental health employee imposing themself upon me.

Before the interrogation even began, I stated that I had spoken with my MH prescriber and my PCP only a couple days before, that I was speaking with my friends on a regular basis, and that I did not need to, nor want to, nor would I benefit from, talking to a stranger in the ER about what I was dealing with. (I need to crystal clear, my mental health could never benefit from talking to a stranger in the ER about my mental health!)

I don't remember their exact response, but it was along that lines of "I just have some questions that you need to answer." I.e. bashing me upside the head with their implicit state-sanctioned handgun of sanctimonious imprisonment!

It quickly became clear that she was going to subject me to what —even under the best of circumstances— could only ever be an exclusively STRESS-INDUCING safety planning session (and this was clearly far from the best of circumstances), in an open area where other vets and medical staff could hear everything that was said (which, in and of itself from my perspective, was not upsetting, but I know that if I were the other vet in such a situation, I would have been very uncomfortable overhearing such an interaction, and knowing that made me feel uncomfortable for the other vets and staff in the room).

Before I continue, it's important to point out, that since I woke up from the nap earlier that afternoon, with the vision in my left eye messed up, right up until the supposed MH "provider" imposed themself on me with "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?", that —for the first time in months, I hadn't been stressed, about my trauma or cognitive issues!

Don't get me wrong, the vision issues, and particularly the thought of having to have emergency surgery on my eye, was absolutely horrifying, but it also inadvertently served to completely distract me from all the other ongoing stress in my life!

This stranger imposing themself on me in the ER was about to bring all of that up and irrevocably connect it and other things in ways that I NEEDED THEM NOT TO BE CONNECTED!

When asking about SI, it was the first time in my life when I ever even considered how to kill myself with the things immediately around me! NEVER BEFORE had I ever considered how to kill myself as quickly as possible —that's how traumatizing I already found this interrogation!!! To be clear, even if I had, it wouldn't have been capricious. I had always planned to die of suicide, and threats —EXACTLY LIKE THIS— had been the only thing that I had ever envisioned could make want to kill myself ASAP. Sure enough, when being pistol whipped with that state-sanctioned handgun, that ASAP exit starts to become a possibility!

When asked about triggers, i.e. the very things that the vision problem had pushed out of my consciousness —for the first time in months— those triggers were all brought front and center, they were connected to suicide for the first time ever (i.e. my triggers had NEVER before been correlated with my SI), and ADDED DRASTICALLY MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL LIFE. The very things that the vision problem had pushed out of my consciousness were now irrevocably connected to the ER and suicide, and ADDED EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL LIFE.

After a veteran's initial VA safety planning, VA providers refer to your previous answers. E.g. "your current safety plan mentions that you'll call 'John Smith' if you need a distraction, would you still call him?"

When they asked about friends whom I would reach out to, I was reminded of friends whom I was no longer talking to, which connected them to SI, which connected them to triggers, which connected them to this EXCLUSIVELY TRAUMATIZING INTERROGATION, and ADDED EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL LIFE.³

When asked what friends I would now call, those friends were now irrevocably connected to the ER, trauma, all my ongoing stress, and suicide in a way that they hadn't been previously, which ADDED EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL LIFE.

When asked about previous coping skills, I was reminded of what I could no longer do because I had not been believed and because I had not been helped with the cognitive issues that I had been dealing with, and asking for help with, for a year at that point, and to a much more extreme degree for previous 3.5 months (to a degree that I knew meant there was an underlying non-psychological cause), and how instead, I had been gaslit by every supposed MH "provider", and how my situation had been made drastically worse by their toxic optimism and these failings were now irrevocably connected to the ER, SI, and ADDED EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL F'ING LIFE.

In the weeks leading up to this ER visit, and completely of my own volition I had identified an alternate coping mechanism that I thought might help me. Specifically, I had remembered how much my grandfather had enjoyed puzzles and I had found a couple puzzles on Amazon that I really thought I would like working on, one was a dachshund (I had had multiple dachshunds in my life, including an absolutely amazing, albeit inadvertent, therapy dog) and the others were mandalas. I had only ordered the dachshund puzzle, which was due to arrive the day after this ER visit.

In addition, because I was getting so few calories (because of the supposedly "somatic" /s GI issue, but more on that later) and the nutrition drink that I could tolerate only came in two flavors, and I was frankly concerned that I would "burn out" on those flavors, I had also ordered some syrups (e.g. coffee syrups) to mix into them. Because of all the new, unwanted, UNNEEDED, connections, including the fact that these syrups wore arriving with the dachshund puzzle, these too were now irrevocably connected to the ER, TRAUMA, SI, and ADDED EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS TO MY ALREADY TOO STRESSFUL LIFE.

When asked about new coping skills, this new coping skill, along with the memory of my grandfather, the memory of my dachshunds, the mental image of the dachshund puzzle, the mandalas, and the syrups for the nutrition drinks were now irrevocably connected to the ER, to all of the previous year's trauma, to SI and IT TOO ADDED WHOLE NEW LEVELS OF EVEN MORE UNNEEDED STRESS.

At this point, it was clear that this INTERROGATION, AND THAT'S ALL IT WAS TO ME, was not just adding unneeded stress, and drastically more so than any previous "VA safety plan", it was now clearly and indisputably MAKING MY SITUATION DRASTICALLY WORSE!

So, I explicitly told my interrogator:

This is making things worse, I NEED this conversation to stop. I promise I will reach out for help —to the people that can actually help me— if and when they can actually help me.

Their response was implicitly, but absolutely undeniably, "you either finish this or you're going to be locked up". They put it slightly more tactfully, but the gist was unambiguously clear!

Back to the issue at hand

During the interrogation, someone I didn't know had briefly interrupted us, then apologized and left.

When my interrogator was finally done connecting things that I NEEDED not to have been connected, she finally left me in peace.

Shortly after that, the person who had interrupted us came back and introduced themself as the attending doctor.

Anyway, after discussing the vision situation, the doctor showed me some images on their phone, and upon finding several images, that aligned (no pun intended) with the trippy 3d kaleidoscope effect that I had experienced, the doctor let me know that I had had a "scintillating scotoma".

Given my history with migraines, and the stress that I was under, this made a lot of sense. I wasn't currently experiencing any migraine pain, although there had been a noticeable uptick in migraines over the proceeding couple of months, but the doctor said the scintillating scotoma may proceed a more tradition, i.e. potentially debilitating, migraine and since I had a 45-60 minute drive home, I asked for some generic Excedrin, which they said they'd get to me.

While I certainly wasn't happy to have experienced this, I had dealt with migraines for decades, and so, just knowing that the vision issue was related to that, I knew that if something like that happened again, I could deal with it.

Over the next 15 minutes or so, 3 separate times, I heard someone come into an adjacent area, say they were from the pharmacy and ask where I was. The first two times, it promptly got really quiet, and that person didn't enter the room where I was.

The third time they were told where I was, or given permission, I'm honestly not sure, but they finally gave me the medicine, along with an odd, judgmental look. I took the medicine, grabbed my jacket and ball cap and started to leave.

On my way out, the MH interrogator reentered the ER, gave me some paperwork, and made a point of telling me, "You've been heard". BULLSHIT!!! If I'd actually been heard the interrogation would have ended when I said that talking to a stranger in an ER was not going to be helpful and that I had people that I would reach out to if needed, and it absolutely would have been halted the instant that I said IT —i.e. the unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and EXCLUSIVELY TRAUMATIZING INTERROGATION— was actively making things worse!

The paperwork, including the updated "Safety Plan", that they handed me would get thrown on a fire.

The dachshund puzzle —that was supposed to be my new relaxing coping mechanism— but which was now irrevocably associated with the trauma of their interrogation, the trauma of my PTSD, suicide, the layoff, and all the other things that I NEEDED it NOT to be connected to, would also get thrown on a fire.

Some coffee syrups that I had on order, to add to my nutrition drinks, so that maybe I could find a way to consume more, but which were now associated with the trauma of this interrogation, the trauma of my PTSD, suicide, the layoff, and all the other things that I NEEDED them NOT to have been connected to, would simply get thrown in the trash.

Trust

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

Anton Chekhov, "The Wife, and Other Stories", p. 287

Once I realized that the interrogation had gone from simply stressful to actively causing me to connect things that I NEEDED to NOT be connected, I repeatedly requested that we stop.

I truthfully told the interrogator that any further discussion would ONLY make my situation worse.

I was NOT trusted, believed, was demonstrably not "heard", and my CRITICAL NEEDS AND CONCERNS were dismissed out of hand!

Several weeks later, another vet would tell me that I just needed to lie.

Consequences of the Vision ER Interrogation

I had walked into the ER that day exclusively for a vision problem. I had walked in at absolutely baseline SI. I walked out just shy of actively suicidal because —SOLELY BECAUSE— of the unasked for, unwanted, unneeded MH interrogation that was NOT stopped when I explicitly stated that IT was actively making things worse!

The suicidal ideation questions and safety planning had figuratively driven my SI from baseline to just shy of actively suicidal.

The unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and asked for it to be stopped psychiatric crisis interrogation simply— and drastically— elevated my SI!!!

When I knew it was ACTIVELY CAUSING DRASTIC MH DAMAGE and I told the supposed MH "professional" that I NEEDED it to stop, I WASN'T HEARD, I was implicitly threatened with psychological imprisonment!

The supposed MH “professional” clearly and unambiguously demonstrated that they did NOT actually hear me, but of course, they made a concerted point to tell me that “You’ve been heard.” BULLSHIT! 100% FUCKING BULLSHIT!

Upon ER ENTRY I was at BASELINE SI!

Upon ER EXIT I had significantly elevated SI,

DUE SOLELY to their unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, &

EXCLUSIVELY TRAUMATIZING crisis INTERVENTION!

But now, because of the new connections —connections made because of the unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and asked to be stopped MH interrogation things and activities that I had actively been looking forward to, activities that I had actively been working on, to build new coping skills, and to identify new means of increasing my food intake, became yet more sources of panic attacks as a direct result of this ER "intervention"!

I was plagued by new nightmares of being interrogated, of being implicitly threatened with more exclusively traumatizing "interventions", and of having trauma and loss repeatedly connected with more and more things that I needed them not to have been connected to!

Honesty vs Suicidality

by eliminating actual discussion of suicide, you are isolating people in this world and only justifying it further and further. Let people talk about how they're feeling without getting banned or sent to a hospital.

...

Not everyone on this planet likes listening to feel-good trash. Some people just want an actual discussion, too bad society makes it feel illegal and you have to go some dark web shit to have an uncensored conversation.

Silver-Monk_Shu "Banning subreddits like r/sanctionedsuicide is isolating people who are suicidal who want an actual discussion." (alt)

What could possibly have been helpful

1. The very fact that I had gone there exclusively for medical care should have completely prioritized the medical care that I was seeking. I should have absolutely seen the attending doctor and gotten the excedrin BEFORE talking to anyone from MH!

2. Instead of having someone who was clearly not medical staff approach me very publicly with a clearly loaded question and threatening tone (i.e. "Do you mind if we talk" said in a way that did NOT feel like I could say, "no" without guaranteeing state-sanction imprisonment):

• The resident doctor who initially examined me or the attending doctor, who, because of the interrogation, I hadn't even met until after the interrogation was over, should have simply asked, as part of the medical exam, "We notice that you appear to have increased SI, would you like to talk with someone while you're here?"

OR

• After the medical interaction, including seeing the attending doctor and receiving treatment (e.g. excedrin for a migraine) is completed, inviting the person to a private office or exam room (and NOT the seclusion room) and then have the resident doctor or the attending doctor simply ask, "We noticed that you appear to have increased SI, would you like to talk with someone while you're here?"

3. The MOMENT that I told them they and their questions were actively making things worse, and that I had a network that I would utilize, if needed and potentially beneficial, they should have asked if there was anything they could do to help, and then left me the f alone!

History with MH Provider #1

MH Provider #1 was the first VA therapist I had worked with, and the therapist that had helped me the most with my PTSD. As I worked with other therapists, they were always compared to her, and she was always the better of the two, so much so that I started thinking of her as the Gold Standard Therapist (GST).

I had met and gotten to know GST outside of the VA, at a support group for people with an unrelated medical condition.

As her workload at the VA increased, she stopped facilitating those groups, and due to my work schedule, and not really needing support for that, I had stopped attending those groups.

In late 2017 she started a VA group specifically for veterans with that medical condition and reached out to me. I had my condition well and truly under control, so I wasn't really interested in attending, but she pointed out that folks just starting to deal with it could really benefit from my participation, and so I started attending.

As mentioned previously, my PTSD event happened Christmas Eve and my PTSD had gotten drastically worse each Christmas and holiday season, every subsequent year. Because I was a first responder, and not the victim, I really never felt like I could complain about what I was experiencing. So, I reminded myself of what a good job I had done that night, and I did the best I could to avoid triggers.

After our first group of 2018, she pulled me aside and told me it was clear that something about Christmas was really bothering me and asked if there was anything she could do to help.

I really opened up about it for first time. When I was done, she made it clear that what I was dealing with was definitely PTSD, even though I wasn't the victim of the incident in question, and she encouraged me to apply for VA disability. She also connected me with others in the VA who could help me put together my disability application.

I knew that she had been through something like the victim of that incident, and so initially I didn't really want to see her as a therapist (it really felt like what I needed to share could hit too close to home for her), so she connected me to a different VA therapist.

As I was working on my disability application, I was really focused on the mental health benefits. Having finally acknowledged just how bad the PTSD was, working on fixing that was really my primary focus.

In talking with her about the VA in general, she highlighted the unified team approach they take for medical and mental health care, and that really appealed to me.

As I was finishing up my application, one of the pieces of information I had to supply was my bank information. When I told the other vet, who was helping me with my application, that I wasn't actually interested in the monthly disability payment, he pointed out that it was a package deal, and said that if I really didn't want it, I could donate it.

When I was finally approved, I did in fact donate 100% of the disability payments, on top of donations that I was already making, to various organizations. I continued doing that until January of 2023, when I realized that the cognitive issues were absolutely prohibitive to seeking employment in the field that I had been in and would be for the foreseeable future.

After my first, official therapist at the VA was transferred, I ended up transferring to GST, and worked with her until late 2021 when she left the VA and went into private practice.

Reason for reaching out

On the drive home from the ER after the Vision problem, I knew something HAD to change or else supposed MH "professionals" were literally going to make me actively suicidal —that's clearly how bad things had gotten.

Again, despite just how bad things were in my life, and despite the fact that I review my suicide plans daily, I had been at baseline SI walking into that ER. The unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, asked to be stopped, exclusively traumatizing MH interrogation had driven me to a hair's width from actively suicidal.

I knew, that if I was ever again, for any reason, made to experience anything even remotely like, for any reason, I would —without exception— end myself as a direct and explicit response to such unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and exclusively traumatizing actions against me.

I.e. help me the way I ask for help, or leave me the f alone! If you force, or coerce with the threat of state-sanctioned imprisonment, your unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, exclusively traumatizing "treatments" on me again, I WILL END MYSELF —WITHOUT EXCEPTION!

Of course, the likelihood that I would have a similar ER experience was probably really slim, but what had just happened really highlighted for me just how thoroughly unheard, discounted, and gaslighted I had been by my supposed MH "providers" for over a year!

For better or worse, one of my traits when something goes wrong around me, is to analyze what I need to change. Since supposed MH "providers" were not hearing me, and I do —genuinely— believe they were trying to help me, the first thing for me to focus on improving was how I communicate with them.

By the time I got home, I had identified:

• one primary concern
• two categories of harm that result from that one concern
• a phrase that should make it unambiguously clear just how much harm could be done by MH personnel failing to actually hear me
  and how much harm would absolutely —without exception— be done if MH personnel in the ER failed to hear me again
• an analogy that would bring her up to speed on everything that had happened in the year+ since we had last seen each other.

The Concern & Categories of Harm

My primary concern boiled down to being harmed by supposed MH 'providers' because I had not actually been heard, my lived experience had been discounted, my concerns had been dismissed, what I knew was not trusted, and my priorities and stated needs were not being respected.

There were two, more specific concerns about, specific categories of harms that I had already experienced because of not being heard, of having had my experiences discounted, of having had my concerns dismissed, of having not been trusted, and not having had my priorities and my stated needs respected and honored, and therefore I had very good reason to believe that if I was not able to communicate with my supposed MH "providers" in a way that they actually heard me, actually believed me, actually trusted me, and actually respected my critical needs and priorities, then I would continue to experience these categories of harms:

1. being gaslit about what I was actually experiencing when I sought help for what I was experiencing
2. being subjected to unsought for —and exclusively trauma-inducing "MH crisis treatments"— which, as a result of the previous ER interrogation, if for any reason, I was ever again subjected to, I would —without exception— be made actively suicidal as a direct and explicit response to such maltreatment.

In other words, I explicitly sought out this therapist because, for a year, I had not actually been heard, believed, trusted, and respected.

First, for a year I had complained, to all three of my regular mental health "providers", about the cognitive issues that I was having, and I was NOT trusted, believed, nor "heard", instead, they treated these cognitive issues as being exclusively caused by my trauma and mental health conditions.

I was told it was my imagination, i.e. I was told that I could get a "baseline" evaluation, so that when I had issues there would be baseline data, which, by extension means the provider did not believe me when I repeatedly complained about these issues.

I was told to take a job offer —an offer for a job that I felt imminently unqualified for, and less and less qualified for by the day.

I was told the job —a job I didn't feel qualified to take in the first place— would help me get my mojo back.

Instead, it was a regular reminder —a regular reminder of just how broken my brain was and just how much worse it was becoming.

I had NOT truly been trusted, believed, nor "heard" about what I was actually experiencing, instead I was gaslighted.

As a result, I hadn't gotten help for something that I needed help for —something that needed to be fixed (at least, fixed as much as possible) because I expected to live long enough to benefit from it being fixed.

I had finally acknowledged to myself that I had been gaslighted by my providers, and I was done being gaslighted by those who purported to help me, and whom I had trusted.

Second, I had not been heard, nor trusted, by the ER personnel, and as a result of having been unheard and untrusted, their psychiatric crisis intervention interrogation had caused my SI to be escalated from baseline to a hair's width away from having a finish line, because of the trauma of the interrogation, the implicit threat of state-sanctioned imprisonment because of my strongly held moral beliefs, and all the new associations that that traumatizing interrogation had inflicted on me!

Later, in explaining this, I also, very clearly stated what would happen if I were to ever again be subjected to any more such psychiatric crisis interventions; even mentioning that the finish line would most likely not be in the following days or weeks, rather, it'd most likely be several months away.

As someone who has been genuinely suicidal for my entire life, I have never "threatened" to commit suicide for attention or asked for help to "save" myself; suicide is simply the ultimate escape hatch for me.

Freedom or Death

Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette, November 13, 1913

The Phrase

Each section of this phrase was well thought out and critically important.

If I am made to experience ...

I.e. it doesn't matter if I were to be physically forced or psychologically bullied (aka "coerced") into such situations, what matters is that I am made to experience such things without my having explicitly requested them.

... any more Mother-Fucking Psychiatric Crisis Fucking Interventions...

I.e. I had already been made to experience a psych ward and I had already been made to experience a mental health interrogation in the ER, if I was made to experience anything even remotely similar to those experiences..."

Mother-Fucking Psychiatric Crisis Fucking Intervention (MFPCFI)

Any unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, explicitly declined, or explicitly requested to be stopped psychiatric, psychological, or mental health "treatment" (e.g. "safety planning", psych wards, etc.) that someone is subjected to by sanctimonious, thought police who wield the state-sanctioned authority to detain or imprison a person, particularly in the context of a person who has sought exclusively medical care in an emergency facility and who has either, when explicitly asked SI-related questions, been honest about their decades-long baseline suicidal ideations or who has refused to answer those SI-related questions —because they aren't relevant to the medical care that the person is actively seeking.

... for any reason, ...

It wouldn't matter how justified someone else felt that such interventions might be, there is absolutely no reason, none, zip, zil, no reason at all, that would be justifiable for me.

Anything that someone else could conceivably believe might be accomplished by such exclusively traumatizing interventions, can absolutely be accomplished in an alternative way that does not involve MFPCFIs and such alternatives would be unlikely to make me suicidal.

... for the rest of my life, ...

I certainly didn't expect something, like what had recently caused me to go to the ER (i.e. the vision problem), to happen again anytime soon. Regardless, if I was to ever again be subjected to any more MFPCFIs, whether it was minutes after talking to GST or a couple decades later, it wouldn't matter.

... —without exception— ...

This should be pretty self-explanatory, but there was absolutely no possible exception, none, zip, zil, no exceptions at all!

... I will be driven into zone 2.

I.e. I will be made actively suicidal. For me, that likely wouldn't be imminently suicidal, rather, I would start completing the tasks that I felt compelled to complete before killing myself.

Live free or Die

Official motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire

April 28th - Friday

I finally saw the Gold Standard Therapist (#1 LCSW; GST) for the first time as a private patient. This was also the first time that I had met with GST in 16+ months.

I went to her precisely because I trusted her to hear me and to help me be heard, specifically:

1. to teach me communication skills so that MH "providers" would be less likely to gaslight me about something that might not be, or definitely wasn't, caused by my mental health situation
2. to teach me communication skills so that if I found myself in an ER, having to deal with "MH" staff, that I could communicate that their "crisis interventions" would only —and without exception— make things worse (i.e. any subsequent MFPCFIs would —without exception— make me actively suicidal)

In that first meeting, I explained, in detail, how MH providers #2-#4 had failed to hear me about my cognitive issues and as a result, how my cognitive issues had continued to deteriorate and how I was now teaching a course that I was less and less qualified to teach, which was only causing my stress to escalate, and which was now causing panic attacks every time I had to interact with it.

During this meeting, I very explicitly told her that I had been complaining about the cognitive issues to the three VA MH "providers" that I'd had over the prior year, and that all of them had functionally been gas-lighting me; and, to be crystal clear, I absolutely used the phrase "gas-lighting" multiple times throughout this meeting.

Again, I do NOT think that any of these supposed MH "providers" were intentionally lying to me, but the end effect is the same whether it was intentional or not.

Because I so desperately needed her to understand the severity of harm that could be done if I was not actually heard I explained that, with regard to suicide, I have three zones.

When I'm in Zone 0, I'm basically open to discussing suicide with anyone.

When I'm in Zone 1, anyone who is actively trying to change my mind about suicide will ONLY AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION drive me closer and closer to Zone 2.

Zone 2 is actively suicidal.
I mentioned that I had only been in Zone 2 once before.
I mentioned that I had been in zone 2 for roughly 5-6 months between making the choice and my failed implementation.
I mentioned that I had gone about my life as though nothing was different.

I explicitly explained that if I were ever driven into zone 2 again, I most likely wouldn't act on my decision in the days or weeks after being driven into zone 2, that it would most like be months later that I would implement.

I explained that if I were ever driven into zone 2 again, I would go about my life as normal (e.g. continuing to go to therapy appointments, medical appointments, etc), while privately taking steps toward my finish line.

I explained that, at the point that anyone could correctly define me as an "imminent threat to myself", I would not interact with anyone. More specifically, I would NEVER seek help, to include calling a crisis line, or going to an ER, if I was even remotely close to the point of being an "imminent threat" to myself.

I explained how traumatic the April 22nd interrogation had been, and how it —i.e. the unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and, when I realized it was actually causing harm, explicitly asked for it to be stopped, integration— had driven me from baseline (where I had been for the most of the last two decades) to a hairs-width away from being actively suicidal.

During this meeting, I very explicitly told GST that the interrogation trauma was bad enough that I would never again go to the VA ER. I very explicitly told her that the interrogation trauma was bad enough that I would rather die than to ever be taken to the VA ER.

I very explicitly told her that the interrogation trauma was bad enough that if I was EVER again, "made to experience any more Mother-Fucking Psychiatric Crisis Fucking Interventions, for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception— I will be driven into zone 2.", i.e. I would become actively suicidal, specifically the finish line would be defined.

I explicitly stated, verbatim:

If I am made to experience any more Mother-Fucking Psychiatric Crisis Fucking Interventions (MFPCFIs), for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception— I will be driven into zone 2.

After she finished jotting down her notes about what I had just said, I went on to explicitly tell her that if I was driven into zone 2, I most likely wouldn't cross the finish line in the following days or weeks, that it would most likely be months (i.e. I still wouldn't be an imminent threat to myself, just an active threat to myself). And I explicitly told her that I would not fail a second time.

I then went on to tell her briefly about my suicide failure, particularly the fact that I didn't actually attempt until 5-6 months after having made the decision; that no one around me had a clue that I was actively suicidal for all those months; that those months had actually been some of the most peaceful and enjoyable of my life, and that I still regretted failing every single day since.

A lot of people who are suicidal will never let their friends and family know they are planning to take their life. Most, even. We don't want to burden you with that, we don't want to be stopped, and we definitely do not want to be involuntarily held or put inpatient. We just want whatever pain we are feeling to stop.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/19bh8pt/comment/kis56hz/

During this meeting, I also very explicitly told her that the interrogation trauma was bad enough that, after this meeting with her, I would never again answer any questions about suicide.

What I confided to her was the closest to "asking for help" to reduce the probability that I would commit suicide that I ever got and ever would get.

Again, SI and suicide were NOT problems for me, the had NEVER be problems for me; my problem was unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, exclusively traumatizing psychological bullying and imprisonment because of my firmly held moral beliefs! If you want to stop me from killing myself —give me the help that ask for to live or leave me the f alone!

I told her that I hadn't been heard and believed in my previous ER visit, and that AS A DIRECT RESULT, I HAD BEEN PUSHED from my baseline ideation to as close to actively suicidal as I had been in over 25 years! While I was only a hair's width away, I still wasn't actively suicidal, but if subjected to anything like that ever again, I would be.

I also very, very explicitly told her that SI questions increased my ideations (therefore, my plan to never again answering them was a proactive means of self-protection) and I, of course, explicitly told her exactly what would happen if I were to ever again be subjected to any more crisis interventions.

As I was getting ready to leave, she assured me she wouldn't ever subject me to anything like that unless she "needed to".

This bothered me, because, if she had actually heard what I had told her then she should have known that I would NEVER NEED to be subjected to such treatment; that being subjected to such treatment would —without exception— result in my suicide.

But, I also knew, that she didn't have to do shifts in the ER, so the probability that she might be able to make the mistake of thinking that she "needed to", thereby —without exception— making me actively suicidal, was astronomically minuscule (granted, still not zero).

The long green mile

I'm a tyrant that you should trust, and you should let me run your life, because I do know what is best for you.

Vermin Love Supreme

I don't actually remember standing up and leaving the intake area.

There's a hall from the intake area back into the rest of the ER. I don't remember walking the first few yards, but I know that my backpack and phone were taken from me.

With each step on that long green mile, my fear and anxiety increased while the minuscule remaining trust and hope that I could ever have for any MH provider rapidly decreased.

And then, I very clearly and distinctly remember FGST stating, "You aren't going to like this, but it's in your best interest."
(That moment is one of the nightmares that has woken me almost every single morning since!)

The likelihood that any and all actions taken after the phrase "You aren't going to like this, but it's in your best interest." ... yeah, every single fucking psychiatric action after that point GUARANTEED I WOULD KILL MYSELF AS A DIRECT AND EXPLICIT RESPONSE!

And again,
I had NOT been an imminent threat to myself walking into the ER with her,
I had not been actively suicidal walking into that ER with her,
and I had explicitly and repeatedly told her this, since the moment that she first brandished the state-sanctioned "72 hour imprisonment" pistol!

The final hope

After she told me, in no uncertain terms, that she was about to make me actively suicidal, by subjecting me to the very thing that I had sought her out to help me protect myself from being subjected to, we turned a corner and she showed me the "coffin room".

For those that don't know what I'm referring to, the coffin room, or more formally the "seclusion room" is an empty hellhole of a room, with the exception of (a) a bed, which a person can be strapped down to, and which looks eerily like a coffin, with a cheap foam mattress topper, and (b) possibly some absurdly large and heavy foam chairs. It also absolutely has a window in it so that every passer-by can gawk at the person, who has been judged so unworthy of being heard and respected that they've been imprisoned within.

I made a comment about the "coffin" in the coffin room and chuckled, because (a) I hoped that such a comment would demonstrated how EXCLUSIVELY DEATHLY I SAW THAT HELLHOLE and (b) the irony of the room that I was about to be subjected to —thus making me actively suicidal for only the second time in 50+ years of life— was filled with something so iconic of death. I so desperately wanted to say, "It does seem very, very fitting that y'alls intervention that is about to drive me straight into zone 2 includes a fuckin' coffin! How fitting." But I knew that saying that would only guarantee 72 hours of exclusively trauma-inducing incarceration, and I knew that if I stepped into that MF'ing coffin room, I needed to be released as soon as possible so that I could start working on the tasks that I would feel compelled to complete before crossing the finish line —the finish line that would be hung up the moment that I did I enter that MF'ing coffin room. So, I bit my tongue yet again.

My very last hope for my life was that the person I had confided in —less than 2 weeks before and whom I had trusted that morning— would remember why I had so explicitly sought her out, or at the very least, having shown me the coffin room, and having heard me describe it as a coffin room, would simply ask if I thought such a place could possibly help. I wasn't even given that much curtesy, respect, or trust.

While I might have had a choice, I genuinely did NOT feel like I did, and —based on the bold face lies that I was told, as well as the inaccuracies and lies in my medical notes— I am absolutely confident that these sanctimonious simpletons would have fabricated a justification to involuntarily imprison me if I didn't comply to their exclusively suicide-inducing and trauma-inducing demands.

Changed in an instant
The Point of No Return

The end of your life is already begun.

There is a last place you will ever go, a last door you will ever walk through, a last sight you will ever see.

And every step you ever take is moving you closer.

Doctor Who, season 10 Pyramid at the end of the world

So many things that I NEEDED to live were irrevocably destroyed the moment I was subjected to that MF'ing coffin room.

To be clear, the coffin room was nothing more than falsely justified imprisonment, degradation, dehumanization, trauma-inducing, hope-destroying, and utter deprivation of the actual sought for unbiased medical care that I should have received and which alone could have actually been helpful.

Instead of getting the help that I had sought, needed, and could have benefited from, I had been judged as a morally deficient human being, found guilty of thinking for myself, and sentenced to psychological imprisonment for these horrific crimes. I was being punished for standing up for my own ethical position during a time of genuine need.

The moment FGST had me enter that coffin room, she simultaneously hung up my finish line and fired the starter gun —not to give away too much /s, but there hasn't been even a fraction of a moment since, when I haven't been actively suicidal.

The moment I passed through the doorframe into that hellhole, I was driven into zone 2, and there was absolutely, positively, zip, zil, zero chance that I would not kill myself as a direct and explicit response to that subjugation! The only questions remaining were when and how.

The moment I entered that hellhole, anything remotely like hope for my life was vaporized by those who subjected me to such a hellhole.

The moment I entered that hellhole, my primary goal for the remainder of my life was my suicide.

Before my foot even touched the floor of that hellhole, I had started reviewing my now active finish line task list.

By the time the dehumanizing strip search was done, I had completed the first of many reviews that I would do of my now active finish line task list, the task list for the finish line that had just been hung up by the very person whom, only a couple of hours previously, I had so completely trusted to protect me from exactly such, exclusively suicide-inducing, MFPCFIs, and who had given me more hope than I'd had in a year!

From this point on, I was no longer just making pro-active retirement plans, putting money into my retirement account, and making tentative schedules, from this point on, I was drawing that money out and buying tickets for my final trip! I knew that I wasn't likely to cross the finish line any sooner than 5 months, and that was likely going to be a challenge given the tasks that I felt compelled to complete, so I set my goal for 5-6 months. (I clearly missed that target, but if you're reading this, I have at least attempted to cross the finish line.)

For some of us suicide is our safety plan. Threaten our ability to implement that safety plan and it becomes our number one goal. If threatened enough, it becomes our only goal.

Had the world suck before I was subjected to that hellhole?
Hell, yes.

Had I been willing and actively trying to make things better?
Yes.

Had my life sucked in the months prior to that instance?
Hell, yes.

Had I been willing and actively trying to seek help for my PTSD?
Yes.

Had I been willing and actively trying to seek help for my depression?
Yes.

Once I was subjected to that room, I would never again be willing to actually seek help for my PTSD or depression. In fact, I would never again actively engage in therapy. (I would meet with FGST twice, those interactions were really the only meaningful lis that would tell. More on this later.)

They could have given me a million dollars, a dream job, hell even magically and completely fixed my depression, but the damage done in that instant was complete and irreparable.

Ripped From Life, Stripped of Coping Mechanisms, and Denied Unbiased Medical Care

I had been needlessly and traumatically ripped out of my life, which, despite being a crappy as hell life at that point, I had still found ways to provide the stability that my mental health needed, more than ever.

All the things that gave my life purpose were stripped away from me even as I was actually being stripped searched like a fucking criminal; and while having my actual needs —both for exclusively medical attention and my clearly stated need to never again be made to experience any more MFPCFIs for any reason— completely and utterly dismissed.

Even as FGST reached out to my friends, to pick-up the pieces of my life that she was actively destroying, she was also demonstrating, in real time, just how easily the world will adapt to my absence.

All forms of coercive practices are inconsistent with human rights-based mental healthcare.

...

There are different forms and degrees of coercion in mental healthcare, some more explicit than others. They comprise a broad range of practices (Szmukler and Applebaum, 2008) including treatment pressures, interpersonal leverage, implicit or explicit threats and compulsion i.e. the use of force, usually governed by law, to make a person accept treatment or interventions that have been refused (Szmukler, 2015)... Coercion in mental healthcare includes implied or actual threats, the ‘fear that many patients have that non-compliance may lead to the use of compulsion’, described as ‘a coercive shadow’ (Szmukler, 2015).

...

It is time for the psychiatric profession ‘to stand up to this outrage and ensure that no one with mental disorder is chained, literally or symbolically…’ (Patel and Bhui, 2018).

Sashidharan, S. P., Mezzina, R., & Puras, D. (2019). Reducing coercion in mental healthcare. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 28(6), 605–612. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045796019000350

For all practical purposes, I was psychologically bullied and assaulted when I was already down.

Unlike other types of assault, all the ER assailants justified my imprisonment, my degradation, and the outright denial of actual, unbiased medical care for the issues that I sought care for, under the guise of "helping" me, when in fact all they did was subject me to exclusively trauma-inducing psychological assault and imprisonment, while UTTERLY FAILING to actually address the ONLY thing that I had sought help for!

During each of my own sexual assaults, I could fight back against my assailants. I could't fight back against my assailants in the ER without that self-defense giving them justification to forcefully and legally subject me to drastically more psychological trauma.

Coerced incarceration is inherently nothing but a state-sanctioned form of assault and imprisonment. Just because it's state-sanctioned, that doesn't means it's right, ethical, or even remotely beneficial, anymore than slavery, or wives as property, or child laborers were right, ethical, or beneficial to the slaves, wives, and children despite those actions being state-sanctioned.

The utter fear that I experienced during both of my sexual assaults actually pales in comparison to my fear of MFPCFIs. No matter how unethical and destructive it is, because it's state-sanctioned, and any arguments given by the victim, the sanctimonious assailants who wield that state-sanctioned power, can directly use the victim's self-defense against being subjected to MFPCFIs to justify their subjugation. E.g. my refusal to answer SI questions —BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T RELEVANT, IN ANY WAY, TO WHY I WAS IN THE ER was used as justification to F'ING IMPRISON ME WHEN I SOUGHT EXCLUSIVELY UNBIASED MEDICAL CARE!!!

Just because someone doesn't fight back, that doesn't mean they consent.

Just because someone signs a form under duress, that doesn't mean they consent.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

I literally told them that their actions were making (during the vision trip) or would only make (during That Morning's ER trip) everything worse, that I NEEDED them to stop making it about MH when that's NOT why I was there. If they had just stopped with their fucking MH crisis interventions when I explicitly and repeatedly told them that I NEEDED them to STOP, then I would not be killing myself as a direct and explicit result of the unwanted, unneeded, and exclusively traumatizing MFPCFIs they subjected me to!!! But they just had to keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and they pushed me straight into "I don't give a fuck anymore!", "I'm getting the fuck outta here forever!!", and "If you won't listen,actually help, and not heap more trauma on me, then I'll guarantee —via suicide— that I will NEVER AGAIN be subjected to any more MFPCFIs!!!".

If they had actually "heard" me, then they would have stopped forcing/coercing their MH crisis intervention bullshit on me, and instead actually given me the care that I was actively seeking —BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WAS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO MY WILLINGNESS TO LIVE— and it was the ONLY TREATMENT that I would actively accept and could possibly help. Of course, if they had, you wouldn't be reading this.

That's literally all they had to do —actually hear me and actually give me care for what I sought care for— instead of making it about something it wasn't, and, as you'll see, life would be better, but they didn't.

All they had to do was provide the care that I explicitly sought and STOP making it something it wasn't until their very own actions —by NOT STOPPING WHEN I IMPLORED THEM TO STOP OR NOT SUBJECT ME TO UNSOUGHT FOR MH CRISIS INTERVENTIONS— actually caused the thing that it hadn't been!

I hadn't been actively suicidal UNTIL THEY subjected me to that MF'ing coffin room!

I genuinely would have preferred to die than go through the trauma of being denied the care I sought and instead being subjected to more MFPCFIs.

I genuinely would have preferred to die rather than deal with all the ramifications of the trauma inflicted upon me over that 36 hour period.

I genuinely would have preferred to die to having all the trauma inflicted upon me for having asked for help to avoid MFPCFIs and then trusting the person that I had asked for that help to provide exactly that help.

I genuinely would have preferred death; that will be corrected by the time you're reading this.

Of course, I genuinely would have preferred to have actually been heard instead of being told "you've been heard" when every action demonstrated —without any room for doubt or misinterpretations— that I had not been heard.

I genuinely would have preferred to have been heard than to having been utterly and completely betrayed and failed by the very person I trusted, so much so that I explicitly sought them out, to get me help and to ensure that I wasn't maltreated (I.e. denied the actual medical care that I actually sought and instead, subjected to exclusively suicide-inducing MFPCFIs, the very things that I had stated less than 2 weeks previously would only ever be suicide-inducing).

It should be obvious, but if your actions make someone want to kill themselves, and particularly if your actions exclusively cause so much trauma that they want to kill themselves (i.e. there is absolutely NO benefit what so ever, instead your actions ONLY inflict trauma and harm), then your actions are —without exception— wrong, unethical, and downright reprehensible! When someone has specifically come to you seeking help so that they are not subjected to precisely such exclusively suicide-inducing traumatic experiences in the future, and instead of actually helping them avoid such scenarios, you are the one who puts them through exactly such exclusively suicide-inducing trauma, you're pure, unadulterated, unmitigated maleficence incarnate.

Needlessly coercing me, with the implicit threat of 72 hours of state-sanctioned imprisonment, to abandon a dog whom I had committed to care for, broke a fundamental part of my identity and meant that I was failing a dog with abandonment issues that much more, solely because I had trusted FGST to get me needed medical help and protect me from exactly the trauma that she was now actively inflicting upon me.

Needlessly coercing me, with the implicit threat of 72 hours of state-sanctioned imprisonment, to break the teaching commitment —that, while I never should have been talked into making in the first place, and I certainly shouldn't have made— broke a fundamental part of my identity and meant that I was failing my students that much more, solely because I had trusted FGST to get me needed medical help and protect me from exactly the trauma that she was now actively inflicting upon me.

There's a reason that imprisonment is used as punishment.

I didn't deserve punishment.

I deserved to genuinely be heard and actually provided exclusively, unbiased medical care.

What ever happened to, "Do no harm"?

MH "professionals" should absolutely be held to same standard of "doing no harm", because all they had done to me for a year was harm.

Selected quotes from the perspective of MH Nurse, Dan Warrender (I highly recommend reading his entire post):

If I had empathised with her situation fully, and imagined her experience, how could I have abused her in that way?
...
Empathising with her meant acknowledging the damage I had done, and seeing that my actual self and ideal self were out of sync.
...
The primary ethical obligation is non-maleficence, that first we do no harm. Though here, the first thing we did was harm, then tried to build from there. The foundation of a therapeutic relationship was sabotaged, giving it no chance.
...
Sometimes, the ethical merit of an action can be found through its consequences, with bad things justified if they have good outcomes.
...
What happens when our version of ‘safety’ isn’t safe for the person we are supposedly trying to protect? We need to consider what we can do instead, as surely, surely there must be a better way? That question is for every mental health nurse, and should guide the future of the profession.

(emphasis added)

Dan Warrender Tension, "Mental health nursing: somewhere in between good and evil", Nov 3, 2019

In my case, less than 2 weeks prior, I had guaranteed my suicide —should I ever again be subjected to such interventions, for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception—, i.e. the absolute opposite of a good outcome, by any almost any definition, and by extension, there was absolutely no justification for subjecting me to such exclusively suicide-inducing trauma! (re: "almost any definition" - the good outcome is that, by the time you're reading this, I will have killed myself, and I will never again be betrayed, unheard, maltreated, dehumanized, distrusted, disrespected, or in any other way failed by anymore supposed MH "professionals" —never again— so, that is the good that came out of what I was subjected to That Morning!)

Medical professionals should made more aware of the trauma that forced psychiatry causes, they also need to be made aware of the fact that people will not be straightforward with someone who can and will forcible confine them. In addition to this we need to stop sanitizing the language used in the context of forced psychiatry. The medical profession needs to face what they do to suicidal people instead of hiding behind euphemisms. This will force them to evaluated whether it is worth sacrificing many people to trauma and abuse on the chance that a few of them will be grateful for the intervention. The choice between the having the trust of their patients and having the power to forcibly detain their patients needs to be made clear.

Meretlein

Further stripped

The strip search was nothing but brazenly dehumanizing, arrogant, degrading, violating, disrespectful, belittling, demeaning, pompous, humiliating, denigrating, conceited, disgraceful, and a clearly egotistical experience!

And after that utterly dehumanizing subjugation, I was given red prisoner's scrubs to wear.

So now, I'm in an all white room, wearing blood red scrubs (remember exactly how calming /s red and white are for me⁈), sitting on a f'ing coffin, in a room where every person, medical staff or patient, can gawk at me, all while having had MY ACTUAL NEEDS CONCERNS COMPLETELY DISMISSED and DISRESPECTED!

Consequences of this hellhole alone

Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

Malcolm X, "Oxford Union Debate", December 3, 1964

Suicide was always my safety plan and that safety plan was activated the moment I was subjected to that MF'ing coffin room.

My very last vestiges of hope and trust had been chipped away with each step toward that MF'ing coffin room.

To be crystal clear, from the moment I passed the threshold into that MF'ing coffin room, I would never again actively and genuinely engage in any therapeutic way with anyone in the MH field.

As I had mentioned to FGST during our first private session, if pushed into zone 2 (which being subjected to the coffin room —when I had explicitly and repeatedly stated that I was there exclusively for medical care, and that making it about mental health would ONLY MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE— very much qualified as a MFPCFI) I would act as though nothing changed, but I would ONLY be working toward my suicide from that moment onward!

Even in the best of times, an austere environment messes up my mental health, add to that a physiological problem that warranted going to the ER, being in shock, and already being in a round of nearly debilitating depression, and such an environment could only ever have caused me to be suicidal! I.e. even if I had been at baseline suicidality and I was put in that psychologically sterile hellhole, I would have instantly been made actively suicidal. To be put in such a place to supposedly "help me" represents such an extreme failure to be heard, believed, and trusted, that I simply will not continue living in a world where I have been imprisoned in such a way.

When the people who are supposed to help, so spectacularly fail to hear and understand that this particular class of interventions will ONLY be suicidally trauma-inducing, and they subject you to those interventions anyway, all trust is irrevocably destroyed, all hope is irrevocably lost, and all willingness is irrevocably decimated.

What they consider safety is the antithesis of safety for me!

To me, their crisis interventions are EXCLUSIVELY traumatizing, dehumanizing, tyrannical, nefarious, immoral, unjustified imprisonment and NOTHING good would EVER come from such experiences!!!!

I went from doing what I needed to do to survive the cognitive short circuit to doing what I needed to do to survive the shit FGST was clearly going to subject me to, so that I could get away from her and every other supposed MH "professional" and start making my way to the finish line.

I capitulated purely in an attempt to reduce the trauma they were inflicting on me.

Because FGST had implied that I was going to be held against my will for 72 hours, I had to reschedule a few, but absolutely sanity maintaining events, including weekly movie night with a friend, a monthly phone call with another friend, a lunch with a friend who wanted to introduce me to her new puppy, and a very long overdue dentist appointment.

I never rescheduled the lunch with the friend, nor met her puppy, nor rescheduled the dentist appointment.

Now, movie night and the monthly phone calls, things that had been sanity maintaining events that brought me nothing but pleasure, now every single one reminds me of the hell that was That Morning, and yet, they've been the only thing that kept me sane, even as they reminded me of That Morning.

For me, and for multiple reasons, that coffin room was the most psychologically trauma-inducing experience that I have ever experienced! Worse than being beat up by my own father. Worse than being sexually assaulted by superiors while on active duty. Worse than the PTSD event that Christmas Eve. I have spent months trying to articulate the harms. This document is the best that I've been able to do, and it still doesn't fully encompass the harm of being imprisoned in that hellhole.

Being put in that coffin room meant MY ACTUAL CONCERNS and MY REASONS FOR GOING TO THE ER had already been completely dismissed —I had already been so completely failed by the people that I had trusted to help me.

Being put in that coffin room removed every last hope that the one person who I had trusted to keep me safe from exactly such traumas, would actually get me the help I needed and protect me from sanctimonious MH idiots.

Being put in that coffin room proved just how betrayed I had been by the one person who KNEW that for me ONLY trauma and suicide could ever come out of such an experience —KNEW because I had so explicitly sought her out and, less than 2 weeks before, I had explicitly explained how I had been gaslighted and what would happen if supposed MH "professionals" continued to gaslight me or were to ever again, for any reason, for the rest of my life, subject me to any more MFPCFIs —without exception.

There is simply no return from such a failure, from such a betrayal of trust.

It all just disappears, doesn't it? Everything you are, gone in an instant like breath on a mirror

The Doctor, The Time of the Doctor,

Being put in that coffin room meant that my pleas to not make everything worse had been completely and utterly ignored —by the very people whom I NEEDED to hear and act on those pleas.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I was done fighting the long term SI.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I was done trying to fight trauma.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I lost all faith that MH "professionals" might ever be able to help me.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I lost all faith in ER "professionals" providing the care that I needed

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I frankly lost all hope related to my life.

Since the moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, my primary goal has been to exit this fucked up world.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I wanted nothing more than to exit this fucked up world, this world where the very people whom I had trusted to help me with my fight against trauma, were the very same people who so thoroughly ignored my repeated pleas for help that I needed, and instead they were doing absolutely nothing but actively inflicting even more trauma on me.

Sitting in that coffin room, every single thought that went through my head fell into one of three categories:

• all the failures and betrayals by supposed MH "professionals" (who I had trusted, who claimed to have "heard" me, and who, through all of their actual actions had repeatedly proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, just how much they had NOT "heard" me and had not trusted me when I NEEDED them to hear me and trust me more than anything else in this world)
• all the traumas that I had already been haunted by (which all became intimately connected to the coffin room)
• all the things I felt obligated to do before exiting this fucked up world.

While sitting on the sofa of FGST during our first private session, after having explained zone 2 to her, I had mentally reviewed the running set of criteria for a current ideal finish line. While sitting in that coffin room, I confirmed those now active criteria and added a few additional criteria, including the creation and dissemination of a document somewhat similar to the one that you're currently reading; a document detailing the failures of my supposed MH providers and the harms inflicted upon me, so that others might influence changes, so that other veterans wouldn't have to be subjected to similar failures, and betrayals, and trauma when they seek help.

The moment that I was subjected to that coffin room, I started identifying even more "just in case I needed a quick exit" methods.

The coffin room was hours of nothing but being forced, quite literally constrained, to think about nothing but:

• how betrayed I was
• how thoroughly I was failed even as I tried yet again to get treatment that I actually needed
• how undeniably unheard, disrespected, and disbelieved I had been through all of this
• how I would never trust another human being ever again
• how I would never actively engage in MH care again
• how I was being forced to endure exclusively psychologically traumatizing and suicide-inducing interventions because I wasn't being heard and my repeatedly stated needs were being completely disregarded and disrespected
• how I was being constrained to one of the two most counter-therapeutic environments I had personally experienced in my entire life because I had been judged as lesser than by the people that I sought help from. (I am well aware that there are drastically more counter-therapeutic environments, but I haven't personally experienced them.)

I wouldn't realize for several weeks, just how much of a living hell I had been condemned to.

Contemporary qualitative research has explored service users’ experience of seclusion and has found it to be a highly distressing and potentially traumatizing experience for service users.

(emphasis added)

"Being in a Seclusion Room: The Forensic Psychiatric Inpatients’ Perspective", Louise Askew, Paul Fisher, Peter Beazley

What a joke of an understatement!

Instead of getting me the help that I had needed, and protecting me from exclusively suicide-inducing MFPCFIs, FGST had very literally driven me from zone 1 into zone 2.

Am I mad that she drove me from zone 1 to zone 2?
Not in the least.

However, I'm beyond infuriated that she didn't actually hear me, actually trust me, actually believe me, and actually respect my stated NEEDS.
Are you sensing a theme here? /s

And I'm beyond livid that she put me through all the harmful MFPCFIs that I had explicitly sought her out to avoid and had gone out of my way to explicitly tell her would not only not be beneficial but would —without exception— cause so much harm that simply being made to experience them would be enough to push me from zone 1 into zone 2 —without exception.

And I'm beyond infuriated that she so utterly and completely betrayed every ounce of trust that I had given to her, both in seeking her help initially and then again That Morning.

And I'm beyond infuriated with all the completely new problems that I hadn't had before trusting her and walking into that ER with her.

Honestly, it would have been much kinder just to kill me, tell me that she wanted me in zone 2, or explicitly tell me to kill myself. To be brutely honest, given what I had told her I would do if I was ever again subjected to any MFPCFIs, her actions That Morning implicitly told me to kill myself.

I trusted her. In return, she betrayed every bit of trust I had given her.

Trust is like blood pressure.
It’s silent,
vital to good health,
and if abused, it can be deadly.

Trust takes a long time to develop
but can be destroyed by a single action.

Frank Sonnenberg, Twitter, 21 March 2015

Justification for this
Moral Disengagement

I recently saw a video that sums up some of the errors in logic employed by my bullies, assailants, and jailers:

• Euphemistic labeling - e.g. "it's not as bad as he's making it out to be" (it doesn't matter how the supposed MH "providers" might experience such imprisonment, what mattered was how I experienced such imprisonment)
• Advantageous comparison - e.g. "imprisoning him is better than him killing himself" (thought and said amongst themselves while completely disregarding the fact that the sole and exclusive cause of my increased ideation was because of the threat of precisely such imprisonment in the first f'ing place!)
• Displacement of responsibility - e.g. "we were just following procedure"
• Diffusing responsibility - e.g. "it wasn't just my decision, we decided as a group that imprisoning him when he sought exclusively medical care was in his best interest"
• Disregarding consequences - e.g. "it would have been worse if we hadn't imprisoned him" (again, I am killing myself as a direct and explicit response to being imprisoned when I sought exclusively medical care; I would not be killing myself at this time if I'd gotten exclusively the care that I explicitly sought)
• Dehumanization - e.g. "he is so broken that he Isn't worthy of being heard, trusted, nor having his repeatedly stated needs respected"
• Attribution of blame - e.g. "if he didn't want to be locked up, he should have answered that he wasn't suicidal" (i.e. saying that I "lacked insight"; when I had enough insight to KNOW that (a) the help that I sought had absolutely nothing to do with SI and (b) that if I was subjected to any more MFPCFI I would —without exception— kill myself)

Psych Evals & Comments

Today, he refused to complete C-SSRS screening due to a negative experience last time, feeling like "he was interrogated". He reports those questions trigger more suicidal thoughts. Explained the reason for the C-SSRs screening and his safety but he has poor insight to understand and refused to answers.

When someone has made statements to the effect of "those questions trigger more suicidal thoughts", (a) they have MUCH BETTER INSIGHT into their own NEEDS than the people who are pressuring them to answer such questions and have conversations that (a.1) are absolutely irrelevant to the reason that the actual patient sought help, (a.2) will UNNECESSARILY INCREASE THEIR SUICIDAL IDEATION when they have sought help for something else altogether, and (a.3) when honestly answered (as demonstratively proven during my previous ER visit, less than a month prior), can result in (a.4) delays for treatment of the actual issue that the patient is actually there for, (a.5) can make connections between stressors, suicide, coping skills, and even medical care, that the patient had not made before and NEEDS to not have made for them, especially under such circumstances, and (a.6) oh, by the way, DRASTICALLY INCREASE THEIR SUICIDAL IDEATION, which they're actively trying to avoid having done to them. (a.2 is specifically referring to the intake question, a.6 is specifically referring to subsequent MFPCFIs.)

In such cases, if you genuinely want to reduce their SI, STOP PRESSURING THEM TO MORE FULLY ANSWER QUESTIONS THAT THEY'VE ALREADY ANSWERED with "that's not relevant and will only make everything worse", and actually LISTEN to what they're telling you!

Furthermore, if you genuinely want to help them, ASK them what will be helpful for them, ACTUALLY HEAR their answer, and PROVIDE THE ACTUAL HELP THAT THEY REQUEST instead of forcing your sanctimonious trauma on someone who has already, repeatedly stated that your "psychiatric interventions" and focus on mental health will ONLY make everything worse!!!

CHIEF COMPLAINT: Mental decline, increasing suicidal thoughts

"increasing suicidal thoughts" was absolutely NOT a complaint of mine that morning, or ever! Fear of being subjected to any more MFPCFIs —i.e. interventions that would ONLY AND ABSOLUTELY cause suicide-inducing TRAUMA— WAS a concern, a concern that was COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY DISMISSED —REPEATEDLY— AND DISCOUNTED BY EVERYONE THAT I EXPRESSED IT TO! The trauma being inflicted on me was the problem, suicide is simply the solution to that problem! If they hadn't subjected me to that trauma, I would not be killing myself because of, and solely because of, the trauma that they inflicted on me! It really is quite that simple!

If you think I would EVER trust any "care" provided by people who so sanctimoniously discounted MY concerns, to include the exclusively suicide-inducing trauma of MFPCFIs, and who subjected me to the very trauma I so desperately NEEDED not to be subjected to, you are deadly wrong!!!

Discussed treatment options and he is interested in a voluntary admission to rule out his cognitive decline

More on this later, but I was absolutely positively, at no time that morning, EVER "interested" in voluntary psychiatric admission!

To indicate otherwise is a boldfaced lie!

Fear is not consent.

monk2, Doctor Who, season 10 "Pyramid at the end of the world"

I never lied, I only told the truth, unlike them!

I only spoke the truth, but was repaid with lies, manipulation, coercion, psychological bullying, and the implicit threat of state-sanctioned imprisonment, all because I have a different moral stance on my own death and, after an extremely traumatizing cognitive short-circuit, I made the mistake of asking, yet again, for help with the cognitive issues that had been plaguing me for over a year, and which everyone wrongfully assumed and treated as exclusively caused by stress or mental illness without ever seriously considering any other possibility —despite me explicitly stating that I KNEW the root cause was not mental health (That Morning, I couldn't pull the word "physiological" out of the recesses of my cognitively glitching brain, despite many frustrating attempts to do so) and that I needed exclusively medical treatment.

manipulation noun
controlling someone or something to your own advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/manipulation

"manipulation" is not 100% accurate, as I knew that they were lying to me, but they were absolutely attempting to manipulate me with their lies, and to the extent that they always had the state-sanctioned authority to imprison me against my will and as much as they were clearly lying to me, I knew they would lie about me if I didn't submit to their threats, and even though I did ultimately concede, they still lied about me just to justify their sanctimonious bullying and imprisonment of me

State-Sanctioned Bullying & Outright Lies continue

Discussed treatment options and he is interested in a voluntary admission to rule out his cognitive decline ( medical vs. psychiatric) and worsening symptoms of PTSD and depression.

As stated previously, I was absolutely positively, at no time that morning, EVER "interested" in voluntary psychiatric admission!

To indicate otherwise is a boldfaced lie!

I was absolutely, positively NEVER told that THEY were trying to rule out the cause of my cognitive decline!

I KNEW, and had known for months, and had told FGST less than 2 weeks before, that the ROOT cause of my cognitive issues was NOT psychiatric, THAT'S THE ONLY REASON I HAD AGREED TO GO TO THE ER FOR HELP, BECAUSE I KNEW THERE WAS A PHYSIOLOGICAL (i.e. non-psychological) ROOT CAUSE and I had had hope that I could get the diagnostics, and maybe even an actual diagnosis, needed to address that NON-PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOT CAUSE.

I had known this BEFORE even reaching out to FGST as a private therapist; the gaslighting about this had been one of the primary reasons that I had reached out to her in the first place, and I had clearly told FGST this in our first private appointment less than two weeks prior!

There was NO REASON TO SUBJECT ME TO A PSYCHOLOGICAL PRISON TO RULE OUT WHAT I HAD ALREADY ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED AND REPEATEDLY STATED WAS NOT A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM!!!
Doing so only delayed the actual identification of the root cause even longer, and their state-sanctioned imprisonment only made me actively suicidal when I hadn't been before they sanctimoniously imprisoned me!

Later in the same paragraph, they note, "He states he does not wanted [sic] to be pushed to "an involuntary admission" and wished to be respected his autonomy." this is accurate and it is ONLY because I FEARED being involuntarily committed that I capitulated to being further subjected to exclusively suicide-inducing psychological trauma for a relatively shorter period than if they involuntarily committed me to a psychological trauma hellhole.

One mark of a great soldier is that he fights on his own terms or fights not at all.

Sun Tzu

When it was clear that I could not fight on my own terms, I ceded this battle. However, I was absolutely going to win the war that they started the moment they subjected me to that MF'ing coffin room! I was —without exception— going to kill myself because they refused to listen to what I repeatedly told them I NEEDED help with and what I repeatedly told them I NEEDED NOT TO BE SUBJECTED TO!

When someone signs a "consent form" after they've been implicitly threatened with further incarceration —for several hours— that doesn't mean that they genuinely consented, it just means they're fearful of an even longer state-sanctioned imprisonment. And it absolutely does not mean that they will —in any way— be willing to actively engage in any treatment while imprisoned, quite the opposite, it means they won't trust ANYBODY involved in their imprisonment.

Regardless, I was already actively suicidal because, and solely because, of already having had every concern that I expressed completely and utterly dismissed and instead, having been imprisoned in that MF'ing coffin room and strip searched like a f'ing criminal when ALL I WANTED WAS MEDICAL HELP FOR MY COGNITIVE GLITCH THAT MORNING —something that I KNEW was not CAUSED by any mental health or stress issues and which I NEVER got the care for that I had been seeking that day!

The difference is that if I was involuntarily committed, I would absolutely have killed myself as soon as I felt I could successfully do so. I could suck up being further imprisoned for a single day, so that I could complete the tasks that I felt compelled to try and complete before killing myself. More on this later.

In addition to the outright lie about being "interested in a voluntary admission", the APRN and the FGST promised that if I subjected myself to further incarceration in the psych prison then I would have priority access to cognitive testing —cognitive testing that I should have been encouraged to get repeatedly over the previous year, instead of being gaslighted and treated like it was exclusively caused by stress. Failing to get the diagnosis and treatment that I NEEDED was a MAJOR contributor to the stress I didn't need EVEN MORE GASLIGHTING and exclusively damaging "treatments" —I NEEDED A CORRECT MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS and to be protected from exclusively suicide-inducing MFPCFIs!!!

When I repeatedly pleaded with them to be admitted to a normal inpatient unit, i.e. not the exclusively trauma-inducing psych ward, to have this supposed priority access to cognitive testing, they just lied and told me that there was no such in-patient option.

This was actually TWO outright lies!

First, there was absolutely no priority access to cognitive testing as a result of being imprisoned in the psych ward, a lie that would be confirmed —as the lie that it was— within 24 hours.

Second, there absolutely was an in-patient, non-psych ward option, as this option was actually presented —with absolutely no prompting, nor even inquiry about the possibility of— to me just a week later!

I absolutely believed that the supposed priority cognitive testing —contingent on condemning myself to the f'ing psych ward— was a load of bullshit, but I honestly believed they would simply fabricate some other excuse and imprison me for a guaranteed 72 hours if I didn't comply and submit to 24 hours in that hellhole. Based on my Blue Button records, they were already actively doing this!

This was nothing but pure and utter psychological manipulation and bullying to get me to check myself into a place, that if they hadn't already made me suicidal, would have, in and of itself, ensured that I would be made suicidal —without exception.

On the very off chance that there actually would have been priority cognitive testing for submitting myself to that f'ing hellhole —I believe that such a contingent treatment would be beyond unethical. No one should ever have to be locked in such a hellhole to get timely diagnostics!

My first psychiatric incarceration was because of my own failure.

My second psychiatric imprisonment was because I made the mistake of trusting a supposed MH "professional" to actually help me get exclusively the medical care that I NEEDED and to keep me safe from any sanctimonious idiots who would subject me to un-asked for, unwanted, unneeded, and exclusively suicide-inducing mother-fucking psychiatric crisis interventions upon me.

Lesson learned: NEVER TRUST ANY SUPPOSED MH PROVIDER; BECAUSE, WHEN THEY SHOULD HELP THE MOST, THEY'LL ONLY LIE AND CAUSE MORE HARM!!!

Justification given for subjecting me to psychiatric inpatient imprisonment

At no time did I directly interact with the "referring physician", which I find simply appalling and reprehensible on multiple levels.

There were functionally 4 justifications for my subsequent incarceration on the psych ward.

Veteran will be admitted to a community inpatient psychiatric unit for medically supervised detoxification, increased safety, evaluation of medications, and psychiatric stabilization-IPU does not have a private bed for the veteran today.

1. Detoxification
   • More details to follow, but I absolutely and demonstrably did not need detoxification.
2. Safety
   • The ONLY thing that a psych ward would do for my safety is ENSURE MY SUICIDE AS A DIRECT AND EXPLICIT RESULT OF BEING IN SUCH A HELLHOLE!
   • I would NEVER be safer in such a f'ing hellhole!
   • I would have absolutely been safer at my own home, with a friend, as a normal (i.e. non-psych ward) hospital patient, or in a peer respite center than I could ever have been in a MF'ing psych ward!

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

---

Those who strip others of the other's essential liberty in order to obtain the appearance of a little temporary safety deserve, and have earned themselves, nothing but contempt and disrespect.

author

3. Evaluation of medications:
   • Evaluation of medications should have happened long before that morning.
   • There should absolutely have been a serious evaluation of medications in the ER that morning before I was ever put in the "so you unequivocally want me to kill myself" coffin room.
   • I would NEVER trust anything done to me in the psych ward, to include the fact that I would also NEVER continue with any medication changes (in fact, I NEVER filled the prescriptions that the doctors at the first psych ward sent me home with)
   • This could absolutely have been done with a normal, i.e. non-psych ward inpatient stay. In fact, I pleaded repeatedly with the APRN and the FGST to keep me in a normal in-patient setting (i.e. a non-trauma-inducing, psych ward hellscape), and was lied to and repeatedly told that that was not an option.
     This was yet another flat out, manipulative lie that these patronizing, sanctimonious, dishonorable assailants and bullies told me That Morning —actions that only ensured that I would NEVER AGAIN trust anyone of their ilk ever again!
     In a conversation, about medication side effects, with another provider only a week later —and with absolutely no prompting nor inquiry on my part— this exact option was offered to me!
4. Psychiatric stabilization
   • The only psychiatric stabilization that I had ever needed that morning was to NOT BE SUBJECTED TO MFPCFIs, in the first fucking place!!!
   • If I ever did need psychiatric stabilization it ABSOLUTELY NEVER COULD have POSSIBLY happened in a fucking psych ward! That's a place that could ONLY EVER MAKE ME SUICIDAL, or simply MORE SUICIDAL THAN THE MFPCFIs that had proceeded such incarceration!!!

In addition to the above, my record also indicates the following as justification:

Significant Psychosocial and Contextual Factors:

1. Cognitive decline
2. Unemployment
3. Lack of primary and social support

Left Languishing

After failing to receive the care that I sought...
After failing to receive any diagnosis for what I had experienced on the interstate that morning...
After everyone making it about SI, and in the process, driving me from just SI (granted really bad SI —but really bad SOLELY because of the previous ER INTERROGATION) to being actively suicidal —by doing to me exactly what I had told FGST would —without exception— make me actively suicidal...
After being psychologically assaulted and bullied into agreeing to be imprisoned in another fucking psych ward hellhole, that would have made me suicidal if they hadn't already done so...

After all that,
I was left to languish in that fucking hellhole of a coffin room for the rest of the day.

The only upshots /s were that I was "allowed" to send an email to my students letting them know that I was going to miss the next office hours and that I would be offline for a few days and I was "allowed" to have my phone while waiting to be transferred from the coffin room imprisonment to the psych ward imprisonment.

Only, when I got my phone, the phone that I had chipped that morning, the only chip that I had ever had in any phone —in over a decade of cell phone ownership— there was now a large crack and a second chip in the screen. For the next 24 hours, every single time they returned my phone from their custody, there were new chips or cracks!!! EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! If they can't even keep a phone physically safe, why the hell are they trusted to help humans!

Alcohol

Veteran will be admitted to a community inpatient psychiatric unit for medically supervised detoxification ..."

DESPITE the fact that my labs taken that day clearly and indisputably demonstrate that there was nothing to be detoxed from!

When both the PA-C and APRN asked about alcohol use in the preceding days, I chuckled a bit. To both of them, I responded to the effect of, 'yes, but not for the reason that most people would expect.' I then explained how I had used Baileys as a flavoring in my nutritional drink for the 4 proceeding nights, in an attempt to increase my consumption of the nutritional drink a drink that was now making up the bulk of my nutritional intake. (Out of roughly 300-400 TOTAL calories that I was consuming DAILY, the nutritional drink itself accounted for just over 200 of those calories; even half a bottle increased my nutritional intake by a whopping 12%.)

I made a point of stating that while I would have been happy if there was some alleviation of stress, that that was in no way the reason that I had added the Baileys to my nutritional drinks.

I was also very clear about the fact that I had only consumed a total of 2 shots over the course of previous 4 nights, i.e. I had only had half a shot each night for four nights, as flavoring to my nutritional drink.

Mind you, I was also on prescription clonazepam, and because I didn't want to deal with possible conflicts between that and the tiny bit of alcohol I had consumed, I hadn't taken the clonazepam in over 4 days. I can't speak for anyone else, but —at least for me— the clonazepam is a hell of a lot more potent than half a shot of alcohol, especially when that alcohol is mixed in with a nutritional drink.

The APRN's note in my medical record states, "He endorses drinking liquor 4 days last week to cope with stress and dysfunction...".

Yes, I absolutely endorsed drinking for the previous 4 nights.

NO, I absolutely did NOT endorse drinking "to cope with stress and dysfunction" for 4 days I drank one (1) night out of pure and utter frustration with the situation I found myself in —A SITUATION EXPLICITLY CAUSED BECAUSE MENTAL HEALTH "PROFESSIONALS" HAD BEEN DISCOUNTING and DISMISSING MY COGNITIVE CONCERNS FOR A YEAR—, and (a) even then it was only a single shot and (b) I had actually forgotten about That Morning, so I hadn't even mentioned that one to them.

After that, I was simply trying to find ways to increase my nutritional intake, because of the still yet to be diagnosed GI issue.

In addition, they used this as the initial justification to further incarcerate me in the psych ward, stating "Veteran will be admitted to a community inpatient psychiatric unit for medically supervised detoxification ..." DESPITE the fact that my labs taken that day clearly and indisputably demonstrate that there was nothing to be detoxed from!

LABS/TESTING SUMMARY:
ETHANOL, URINE Negative
CREATININE (RANDOM URINE) 43.7
BARBITURATES (Screen) Negative
AMPHETAMINES (Screen) Negative
COCAINE (Screen) Negative
BENZODIAZEPINE (Screen) Negative
MARIJUANA (Screen) Negative
METHADONE (Screen) Negative
BUPRENORPHINE (Screen) Negative
FENTANYL (Screen) Negative
OPIATE (Screen) Negative

(emphasis added)

Seriously? What exactly was I supposed to be detoxed from???

SI & "Safety"

Pt brought from clinic for endorsing SI; at arrival to ED, pt denied.

Suicide Screen: The patient was unable to answer. Comment: patient refuses to answer questions. per therapist screen is positive.

I was absolutely NOT "positive", i.e. actively suicidal, walking into that ER That Morning —something that I had repeatedly and explicitly told FGST en route!

I had also repeatedly told her, less than two weeks earlier and again en route That Morning, that I was NEVER again going to answer those questions again —BECAUSE THEY WERE IRRELEVANT TO ANY OF THE CARE THAT I SOUGHT or would EVER seek!

Even having sought out the FGST my SI were NEVER, not once, a problem for me, the problem was the MFPCFIs themselves and the sanctimonious people that would subject me to such exclusively suicide-inducing and traumatizing MFPCFIs!

CHIEF COMPLAINT: Mental decline, increasing suicidal thoughts

"Increasing suicidal thoughts" was, AT NO POINT that morning or at any other time in my entire life a complaint of mine —not even when I had been telling FGST that my suicidal ideations had been driven from baseline to just shy of active, my complaint had NEVER been about the "increasing suicidal thoughts". MY COMPLAINT had been solely about being SUBJECTED to unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, and exclusively traumatizing MFPCFI that was continued even when I had explicitly asked for it to be stopped, because it was making things worse!!! Given that SI wasn't even a complaint, you can sure as fuck bet that it wasn't MY chief complaint!

MY COMPLAINT That Morning, and my ONLY complaint that morning was the cognitive problems that I had been having for a year, and in particular the cognitive glitch that I had had WHILE I HAD BEEN DRIVING AT INTERSTATE SPEEDS THAT MORNING!!!!! A COMPLAINT WHICH WAS NEVER SERIOUSLY ADDRESSED IN THAT ER VISIT! NOT ONCE! There was a CAT scan done, but that was it. When it didn't show anything, there was no further attempt at identifying the actual problem only more assumptions that it was an exclusively mental health issue, or that it wasn't important enough to address in the ER that morning.

Insight and Judgment: fair, seeking MH treatment

No. I absolutely was NOT seeking MH treatment —and I REPEATEDLY STATED THAT I WASN'T and I repeatedly stated that being subjected to any supposed mental health treatment that morning was ONLY GOING TO MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE!

patient brought in by his therapist for recent disorientation and cognitive decline over about the last year....forgetting things ,getting confused, etc.several trauma triggers over the last 3 weeks...

At least they got this part right!

patient refuses to answer suicide screening questions. per therapist on site patient has been having thoughts of suicide with a plan that he has endorsed to her.

Yes, I had thoughts of suicide with a plan, just like I had thoughts of retirement and a retirement plan —that didn't mean that I was actively retiring, and now I never will!!!

There is a big difference between plan (and even preparation) and being actively suicidal.

I once had a co-worker who checked his retirement stocks several times a day. Before the coffin room, I tended to only check my SI plans, aka MY safety plans, once a day, i.e. far less obsessively than that former co-worker.

Ironically, the only things that guaranteed that I reviewed MY safety plans more often was whenever a provider started asking about SI. Between (a) being a "pink elephant" and (b) feeling that MY actual safety plans might be threatened, I'd end up doing much more thorough reviews several times a day, for at least a few days, but often times far more often and for more than a week after such conversations.

Again, the ONLY reason that I had sought FGST out and had the suicide conversation with her in the first place was because of the previous MFPCFI interrogation and MY NEED TO NEVER AGAIN BE SUBJECTED TO SUCH MFPCFIs, because if I were made to experience any more MFPCFIs, for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception— I would kill myself!!!!

MY SOLE COMPLAINT in the ER That Morning was the cognitive decline.

THAT WAS THE ONLY REASON that I was there.

It was the ONLY THING THAT I WANTED CARE FOR!

IT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT I WAS GOING TO ACTIVELY ACCEPT HELP FOR!!!

His therapist assessed suicide risk this morning and she states he endorses chronic SI but denies specific plan and intent to act on. He has used to alcohol to cope with these symptoms and has increased smoking but nothing helps improve them that he is willing to seek an voluntary inpt psychiatric admission.

As detailed previously, I had only once used alcohol to cope WITH THE STRESS OF THE ONGOING COGNITIVE ISSUE —NEVER FOR SI, SI HAD NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM FOR ME it was only a problem for sanctimonious idiots whom I made the mistake of trusting and seeking help from.

My smoking had definitely increased due the stress of the cognitive issues, again, NOT for SI, because the SI itself was NEVER A PROBLEM FOR ME!!!

... nothing helps improve them ...

Again, I wasn't seeking help to improve my SI, and I didn't need anything specifically to help improve my SI!

I was also never explicitly asked what would improve my SI, because I would have —and had repeatedly— told them what would help —STOP ASKING ABOUT MF'ING SUICIDAL IDEATIONS AND TREAT THE COGNITIVE ISSUE AS THE MEDICAL ISSUE THAT I NOW KNOW IT IS!!!

I needed help to improve my cognition so that I could feel like myself again! Which by extension would have helped my SI!!!

I needed help to reduce my PTSD, which, by extension, would have helped my SI!!!

Instead of HELPING me, these sanctimonious imbeciles MADE ME ACTIVELY SUICIDAL BY DOING WHAT I REPEATEDLY STATED WOULD ONLY "MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE."

To add insult, the very things that ACTUALLY HAD BEEN HELPING my PTSD, and which would have ACTUALLY HELPED me mentally deal with what had happened while driving That Morning, e.g. my regular movie night with one friend, my regular phone call with another friend, talking with my students (conversations about basic coding concepts hadn't been drastically impacted and —at that point— the office hours conversations were still about the basic coding concepts), simply stepping outside to smoke, sleeping in my own bed, etc. —these sanctimonious morons DENIED THOSE VERY THINGS— as a direct result of their MFPCFIs— they DENIED ME THE VERY things that ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE HELPED ME!!!

Yes, I allowed myself to be imprisoned, that's absolutely not the same as accepting MH treatment and it sure as hell isn't the same as "seek[ing"] an inpt psychiatric admission".

From the moment that I was imprisoned in that coffin room —I was NEVER going to actively engage in mental health care therapy EVER AGAIN, and I was NEVER going to accept any other treatments while imprisoned!

Patient was seen in the emergency department within the last month coming in with some eye complaints associated with his migraines and asked answered [sic] honestly the questions for the Columbia scale for suicidality and he does have chronic thoughts and he felt like he was completely interrogated and had a horrible experience here and today is refusing to answer those questions. His social worker is accompanying him today [FGST Name], who shakes her head yes when he is asked the questions of suicidality.

Again, failing completely to mention:

• that I had been at BASELINE SI BEFORE the previous INTERROGATION
• that the SOLE REASON for the increased SI WAS THE PREVIOUS MH INTERROGATION in that very ER
• that IF I HADN'T BEEN INTERROGATED DURING THE PREVIOUS ER visit —then I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD INCREASED SI
• that I had repeatedly told her en route to the ER that I was NEITHER imminently nor actively suicidal
• that I had repeatedly told her I was NEVER AGAIN answering the SI questions because they are, and only ever would be, absolutely irrelevant to the care that I seek and need
• that I had explicitly sought her help to avoid any future MFPCFIs because, if I were ever made to experience such MFPCFIs again, those MFPCFIs themselves would —without exception— make me actively suicidal

His therapist assessed suicide risk this morning and she states he endorses chronic SI but denies specific plan and intent to act on.

Well, at least once she told the truth. Too bad that by then her actions had already denied me the exclusively unbiased medical care that I sought and could have benefited from, and that her actions had already made me actively suicidal.

The fact that everyone whom I interacted with in that ER made it about suicidal ideation and stress —despite my repeated statements that those were absolutely NOT my concern that morning, and that making it about those things was only going to make everything worse— DEMONSTRATED BEYOND ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING DOUBT THAT I WAS NOT BEING HEARD, and that I was NOT going to get exclusively the actual, unbiased medical care that I SOUGHT and that I WAS THERE TO GET, and that instead I was ONLY GOING TO BE SUBJECTED TO SANCTIMONIOUS, THOUGHT-POLICING, STATE-SANCTIONED, TRAUMA-INDUCING, SUICIDE-INDUCING IMPRISONMENT, aka MFPCFIs.

The Drive

His therapist reports he lost on the way to her office today even though the veteran has been coming there frequently.

I had only been to her office twice before. That is not "coming there frequently"!

When the "glitch" happened, I was completely lost, not just relative to getting to her office, but where I was. That's part of what made it so horrifying!

Once I got off the interstate, I (a) had to stop and get gas, and then (b) I made my way to her using back streets STREETS THAT I HAD NEVER BEEN ON BEFORE, again, far from "frequently".

That said, between the place where I got gas and her office, is a simple grid-based area, i.e. it shouldn't be hard to navigate, but I was having problems with even that because of the glitch that I needed help identifying the cause of —and which was NEVER ADDRESSED IN THAT ER at any point That Morning.

Previous Testing Discussions

He reports he had kept asking for a neuropsychology test for cognition but there was no follow up

I should have been asking for neurological and neuropsychological testing, but in fact, I had been so thoroughly gaslit by MH #2, #3, & #4 that I had not, in fact, been asking for testing.

As mentioned previously, my first request for testing was made only a couple of weeks prior to That Morning. Unfortunately, That Morning, I couldn't remember what the status was of that request. But I absolutely never said that I had been asking for testing. I had been complaining about the cognitive issues, and I had been asking for help, but all I had gotten was a lot of gaslighting and toxic positivity.

The Layoff

He reports he felt "good" when he got laid off because he was under extreme stress and declined cognitive function.

I did not feel "good" that I got laid off!!! And I never said that I did.

I was "grateful" that my boss had kept me on for as long as they did —despite the problems that I was having at work due to the cognitive issues.

If anything, I was too calm about being laid off.

This may sound trivial, but it's actually an important distinction, and, when viewed from the bigger picture, it was actually an important —albeit extremely subtle— clue to one of the underlying causes.

I also read this statement as implying that I was under "extreme stress" at, or because of, my job. Just to be clear, the only stress that I was under at work was due to the cognitive issues and the PTSD flair-ups. When I was functioning "normally", my job itself had been amazing! Before the cognitive issues had started taking over, it had been challenging work, but in the best possible way. The company was a great company that does really good work in the healthcare space. My boss was absolutely amazing and supportive. My co-workers were among the best that I've ever had, and I've been lucky to have a lot of awesome co-workers over the years. And the projects I worked on were frankly dream projects. Was there some stress from time to time? Absolutely, but that's been true for almost every single job I've had, and has absolutely been true for every single job that I've cared about.

Nitpick that actually highlights
How critically I was dismissed

[John Doe] was casually dressed and self-reports that he hasn't taken a shower in weeks

That is absolutely NOT what I reported, NOR was it the truth, and it SHOULD HAVE BEEN VERY OBVIOUS!

What I told them was that when my depression was at it's worst AND I didn't have reason to leave my house then I could go weeks without showering.

I also CRITICALLY TOLD THEM that I had recognized this about myself, and that TO COMBAT THIS I was VERY INTENTIONALLY SCHEDULING FACE-TO-FACE APPOINTMENTS like I had with FGST THAT VERY MORNING and twice in the two weeks prior! I.e. I had had at least 3 showers in the previous two weeks, including one that very morning! (I had also very intentionally attended an in-person event with a friend, so it was actually 4 showers in the previous 2 weeks.)

I.e. I HAD VERY ACTIVELY AND CONSCIOUSLY BEEN TRYING TO IMPROVE MY SITUATION!!!

The fact that I was telling them this, while in the hellishly tiny MF'ing coffin room, means that if I hadn't taken a shower for weeks then they would have been able to SMELL THAT FACT. But I HAD taken MULTIPLE SHOWERS, INCLUDING ONE THAT VERY MORNING, so I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT HAVE ANY BODY ODOR EVEN AS THEY STOOD THERE JUDGING ME and LYING IN THEIR NOTES ABOUT ME!

Again, they ONLY HEARD WHAT FIT THE NARRATIVE THAT THEY HAD ALREADY AND ERRONEOUSLY DECIDED REGARDLESS OF THE ACTUAL INFORMATION SHARED BY THE PATIENT AND DESPITE THE CLEAR EVIDENCE THAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

The Ambulance

For those that don't know, in situations like this, you're transported via ambulance and, even if you're perfectly mobile, you're still strapped to the f'ing gurney.

The ambulance crew and I did have a surprisingly pleasant conversation, and they made a point of telling me that they'd never had a patient who they were transporting to the psych ward who was so cooperative and calm. (The honestly seemed grateful.)

I find it hard to believe that they'd never had such a calm and cooperative patient, regardless, that should highlight just how much I wasn't in a mental crisis, I wasn't having severe behavioral problems due to drugs, or any of the other things that someone who might benefit from being incarcerated in a psychological prison hellhole would be experiencing!

The Prison

Thankfully, intake and that evening were as uneventful as such things can be.

Escape plan

As soon as I was through the intake process, I started identifying ways to kill myself in that hellhole.

Thankfully, I identified 3 separate ways, one of which had a lower probability than I would like to have risked, but the other two I felt confident enough to use, should it come to that.

I determined that —if I was not released by the next evening— I would end myself in that hellhole.

I also determined that if I was released by the next evening, and was subjected to another psychological hellhole before crossing my more deliberate finish line, then I end myself in that hellhole, regardless of how long the initial prison sentence was.

My Phone

• orange arrows - chips on right hand side
• brown arrows - cracks that run off screen to the corresponding side of the phone

1. I'm not sure which of the bottom right chips happened when I initially dropped the phone.
2. The other bottom chip and the horizontal crack that goes off the screen to the left happened while ER personnel That Morning had control of my phone.
3. Every other chip and crack happened while the psych ward staff had control of my phone.

Mind you —Other than the initial chip, NONE of the other chips and cracks happened while I had control of the phone. If it was just propagation of the initial chip, I would have expected at least some of them to happen while I was actively handling and using the phone in that MF'ing coffin room. But no, other than the initial chip, every single chip and crack happened while the ER or psych ward staff had possession of my phone.

Seriously —If they can't even avoid so severely damaging a phone, how can they possibly help any human being?

Misdiagnosis
Denied the Actual Care I sought and should have benefited from

I was subjugated instead of receiving the care that I sought —the care that could have been helpful, the care that should have been provided, the care that would have given me a reason to continue living.

I was repeatedly "told", through the actions taken against me, that I was broken in ways that I wasn't, and knew that I wasn't; all while having my actual needs actively ignored and having what I explicitly asked for help to fix the ways in which I was actually broken completely dismissed and discounted.

In doing so, I was denied the help I needed, while the problem I sought help for was exacerbated, and the unwanted, unneeded, exclusively traumatizing interventions made me actively suicidal.

Trust and Betrayal

I would never have been subjected to any of these MFPCFIs if I had ACTUALLY been "heard", trusted, believed, and respected!

You must trust and believe in people ... or life becomes impossible.

Anton Chekhov, "Chechov: the three sisters", The cherry orchard", p. 92

The two times that I was subjected to MFPCFIs at the VA, I had entered that ER for actual, non-suicidal, non-depression, non-mental health, exclusively medical issues that I wanted addressed because I expected to live long enough to benefit from having them fixed.

I entered having won my SI battles,
ON MY OWN,
day after day,
week after week,
month after month,
year after year,
for over 2 decades!

I told everyone only the truth.

They believed ONLY the truths that they wanted to believe.
They twisted in perverse ways anything else that I said that didn't fit their biases.

They wanted to be heroes, so they didn't trust the WHOLE truth.
By doing so, they were nothing but villains.

I went in having won my battles.
I came out broken and defeated,
with no desire or willingness to fight anymore.

I came out, with only a finish line to move toward.

The only therapist I ever truly opened up to about suicide used what I had shared against me, less than 2 weeks later, when I needed actual medical attention, when I needed protection from any more MFPCFIs, when I trusted her to ensure that I would get exclusively the unbiased medical care that I sought, without being subjected to exclusively suicide-inducing MFPCFIs, and instead I was stripped and locked up like a criminal, deprived of the care that I genuinely could have benefited from, deprived of all my effective coping techniques, and otherwise subjected to what for me is, and only could be EXCLUSIVELY SUICIDE-INDUCING MOTHERFUCKING PSYCHIATRIC CRISIS FUCKING INTERVENTIONS - and all because I had sought help to avoid being subjected to exactly such sanctimonious and exclusively suicide-inducing trauma! There is absolutely no return from such a betrayal of trust in such a time of need.

I was utterly and completely betrayed by the person I trusted to get me the help that I needed and to keep me safe from nothing but extensively damaging interventions; instead she broke the agreement that I had made (to not go to the VA ER and to ONLY get treatment for the cognitive issues) before I even got in her car; she mis-diagnosed me before we got to the ER, thus biasing everyone else from that point on, she outright lied on multiple occasions (e.g. instead of checking me in EXCLUSIVELY for the “cognitive issues” that I was there for, she checked me in for “mental health crisis”).

Instead of having been heard, instead of being trusted, instead of simply being asked if I thought any of the MH interventions would be helpful, I was told, "You aren't going to like this, but it's in your best interest." by the very person I had told less —than 2 weeks previously— that not only could such interventions NEVER be helpful, but that they are so extremely and exclusively traumatizing that I would —without exception— kill myself if ever subjected to such things again, for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception! Those MFPCFIs were absolutely not in my best interest, they never could have been in my best interest, hell, they weren't even in her best interest -I'd have remained a patient of hers if I'd gotten the actual medical help that I needed, instead her actions have caused her patient to commit suicide exactly as he had stated he would if those actions were ever taken against him.

Her actions that morning were all the things that I needed protection from being subjected to, but instead of protecting me, she was just one more MH "professional" who gaslighted me, delayed me getting the treatment that I needed, and instead of helping to ensure that I got the appropriate unbiased treatment I sought, she psychologically bullied and imprisoned me, despite having been told, less than 2 weeks prior, that any such actions would —without exception— lead directly to me killing myself.

I trusted FGST to protect me from the very things she subjected me to. More importantly, I needed her protect me from the very things that she herself subjected me to. It was the final and ultimate failure to be heard, to instead be misdiagnosed and harmed -only harmed- as a direct result.

It was a fear of a situation EXACTLY like that that had led me to seek her out in the first place. When, less than 2 weeks later, I needed protection from those very interventions, she's the one that put me through them. The only results were delaying the actual needed medical intervention, making me actively suicidal, adding more trauma, decimating every ounce of trust in every single human being, and wasting time and money.

In the moment, their actions against me may have made them feel good about themselves for "helping the mentally broken person", but in fact, it was their very interventions that finally and completely broke me.

I was so hopeful, I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I was so much stronger. I was ready to let go of my pain, I needed someone to give me space and respect me. Luckily there are people you can pay for that, right? Everyone says that. Well, after seeing those people I was brought to the verge of suicide and now my life could easily take a horrible turn, because I feel I don't have it in me anymore and another major betrayal would be the end of me. Especially because I lost the ability to cry and every negative emotion stay stuck in me, turns into extreme anguish. Before the first therapist I was able to cry. Anyone else can't cry anymore?

Flogisto_Saltimbanco

Exclusively traumatizing and counter-therapeutic

• I was not "heard" when I repeatedly said I was there ONLY for help with the cognitive issue and that any MH treatment in that environment would ONLY make EVERYTHING worse.
• I was confined against my will to a fucking coffin room.
• I was put through a dehumanizing, humiliating, degrading strip-search despite not having been a threat to anyone, including myself, when I walked into that fucking ER. (And even then, I still wasn't an imminent threat to myself, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that I will be killing myself —as a direct and explicit result of that very imprisonment— 13 months after that imprisonment.)
• I was only treated as a predetermined diagnosis and not an actual human being
• I was psychologically bullied into doing something that I absolutely would NEVER HAVE CONSENTED TO IF NOT BEING IMPLICITLY THREATENED WITH STATE-SANCTIONED IMPRISONMENT BY SANCTIMONIOUS BULLIES
• I was confined in, not only counter-therapeutic environments, but environments that were actively and severely damaging to my mental health despite not having been a threat to anyone, including myself, when I walked into that fucking ER!

The coffin room and the "inpatient mental health unit" are the two most counter-therapeutic environments that I personally experienced in my entire life, and I grew up with a father who beat me regularly and severely enough that I was prepared to kill him if I thought my life was in imminent threat; and I worked with my 2nd sexual assailant for a fucking year!

Every nanosecond between entering the coffin room and exiting the psych ward, I had to remind myself that I was one fucking nanosecond closer to crossing my final finish line!

This is going to sound particularly odd, but I also now had a new prerequisite/self-promise for seeking emergency medical care should I feel it appropriate before crossing the recently hung finish line. Should the ER staff imprison me again instead of providing the care that I sought that I would kill myself while imprisoned —no exceptions.

Before these MFPCFIs, I knew that ANY crisis MH treatment would ONLY, could ONLY FUCK ME UP - but what was done during those 2 ER stays FUCKED ME UP SO, SO, SO, much worse than I ever could have imagined!!!!

Before these MFPCFIs, I knew that any MH treatment which I did not EXPLICITLY seek would ONLY FUCK ME UP - but none of the supposed "professionals" actually listened when I told them that's what they were ACTIVELY doing to me!!!!

Utterly Misplaced focus on SI

The question theyh never ask or care about is,"What, exactly would it take to make you no longer feel suicidal". They don't care and will do nothing to actually address this.

torimandy

The worst part is that they didn't even have to ask!

I had gone to the ER with specific and exclusively medical concerns.

All they had to do was help me with what I asked for help for!

I HAD BEEN AT BASELINE SUICIDALITY WALKING IN FOR THE VISION PROBLEM!!!

Their asking me about SI, their judging me about SI, their imprisoning me about SI

— I.E. THEIR OWN ACTIONS DROVE ME (literally and figuratively) FROM BASELINE SI TO ACTIVELY SUICIDAL!!!

If they'd just listened, provided the help I asked for, and STOPPED ASKING ABOUT and FORCING ME TO DISCUSS SI, then they wouldn't have made me actively suicidal!

IT WAS LITERALLY THAT SIMPLE!

For both the Vision and "Cognitive WTF?" ER visits, when I entered the ER I was neither an imminent threat nor an active threat, to anyone else, nor myself. (At least, not in the traditional meaning. Because of the cognitive glitch while driving at interstate speeds —THAT WAS NEVER ACTUALLY ADDRESSED— I was —and would remain— a threat to myself and others, until the root cause was actually identified!)

When someone comes to the ER for a non-mental health reason, then they have made an implicit agreement to spend time in the ER —to ideally get that problem —i.e. the problem that they actually came to the ER about— fixed (or at least to get the process of getting it fixed started), so that they can continue living long enough to benefit from having had that problem fixed!!!

By definition,
if someone comes in for a vision problem,
if someone comes in for cognitive issue, particularly when they've been gas lighted about it for a fucking year!!!
They want that medical problem to be fixed
because they expect to continue living long enough
to benefit from the time spent in a fucking ER getting that problem fixed in first f'ing place!!!

Of course, the biggest irony of this, is that I became actively suicide solely because of the actions taken against me in a sanctimonious effort to prevent me from killing myself, actions which I repeatedly informed everyone were not in my actual best interest, which I implored them to stop, which I implored them not to subject me to. But as had been true for the year prior -I was not heard, believed, trusted, or respected.

They forced their blunt, maladroit "solutions" on me in an attempt to prevent something that I was not actively working toward —until they forced those very "treatment" on me- and even more importantly it was a completely nonexistent problem for me. If they had just fixed the problems that I sought help for, they would have given me enough reason to keep fighting instead, their every action PROVED, DEMONSTRABLY PROVED, this is not a world I want to, or will any longer, be a part of.

While being suicidal was never a problem for me, their failure to actually hear, actually believe, actually trust me, and actually respect what was CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO ME, was a massive failure, and their "treatment" caused nothing except utterly, irreparable harm, trauma, and ultimately my suicide.

When someone tells you that if they are "made to experience any more Mother-Fucking Psychiatric Crisis Fucking Interventions, for any reason, for the rest of my life —without exception" that they will be made actively suicidal -then you really should hear and believe them- because:

• they know the repercussions that such interventions will have on them much better than you do
• they know what their response to such interventions and the resulting repercussions will be much better than you do, and
• they alone will act based on those repercussions.

Their actions made everyone except me, the patient -the person who actually needed the help- feel like they were helping, when in fact they were only suicidally traumatizing me. That's all that their unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, asked to be stopped, asked not to be subjected to, and exclusively traumatizing MFPCFIs did —they drove me to terminus.

If you want someone to not commit suicide, then when they tell you exactly what will push them over the edge, you should actually hear them, you should actually trust them —as much as they have trusted you by confiding that fact to you— and you should actually do everything within your power to ensure that they aren't pushed closer and closer to the edge or actually pushed over the edge, and you sure as f shouldn't be the one that actually pushes them over the edge!

Selectively Discounting Patient Information

We know what's best for you.

said through the absolutely unambiguous actions of every sanctimonious MH and ER employee that I interacted with in the VA ER during the Vision incident and That Morning, as well as FGST, —i.e. the very same set of people who figuratively and literally drove me from baseline SI to actually killing myself, all while I implored them not to subject me to the things that guaranteed I would kill myself.

When the person —who everyone knows has suicidal ideations — tells you "these things that you are subjecting me to, or clearly are planning to subject me to, will only make everything worse", that person, —and that person alone— is going to make the decision to live each day or not, so when they tell you "these things will ONLY make EVERYTHING worse" you really should f'cking believe them!

If FGST & the ER personnel had believed me, and acted accordingly, you wouldn't be reading this and I'd most likely still be around fighting the same fucking battle I'd been winning all on my own for more than 2 decades.

But they didn't trust me, they didn't actually listen, they didn't respect what was CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO ME, and I sure as hell, was not "heard", instead they forced the very type of treatment on me, that I repeatedly told told them would only make everything worse, and in doing so, they drove me right up to the edge and then shoved me right over that f'ing edge.

Maybe this will help them, so that they actually listen the next time someone tells them that their unasked for, unwanted, unneeded, requested to be stopped, requested to not be subjected to, and EXCLUSIVELY TRAUMATIZING INTERVENTIONS are only making things worse!

36 Hours

I was basically condemned to 36 hours of thinking exclusively about:

• all the trauma that I really needed not to be thinking about
• my now "actively suicidal" task list
• how I had been gaslit by more than half a dozen supposed MH "professionals" for over a year
• how I had been being outright failed and betrayed by the person that I had actively sought out to help me avoid exactly such exclusively suicide-inducing interventions
• how I had been denied the treatment that I had yet again sought and clearly needed for the cognitive issues
• how I would never again trust another human being
• how I would never again actively engage in any MH treatment
• how I had been actively denied treatment for my migraine for hours, then surreptitiously given alternate medicine that actually made it worse

Every single minute in both those places, proved —beyond even a hint of a shadow of a doubt— that everyone whom I trusted to help me had instead completely and utterly dismissed and discounted every actual concern and need that I ACTUALLY had!

Within minutes of my two sexual assaults, and less than an hour after my PTSD event, I could:

• breath fresh air
• talk with friends
• talk with friends in private
• smoke a cigarette
• drink a coffee
• go to sleep in my own rack (aka bed)

All things that brought me comfort in the aftermath of those events and —which I was completely and utterly deprived of in the aftermath of one of the scariest events of my life which was followed by multiple psychological assaults by people I had trusted to actually help me in the aftermath of that event!

The standing movie night that I looked forward to every week and which could have helped was cancelled because I was told that I was going to imprisoned for at least 72 hours. Every single movie night since, I've been reminded of That Morning! I actively looked forward to the last movie night because, despite the relief that they still brought, it was also always a reminder of That Morning. NEVER AGAIN!

The monthly phone call that I had been looking forward to and which would have helped was delayed a week because I was told that I was going to imprisoned for at least 72 hours, and every single monthly call since, I've been reminded of That Morning. I actively looked forward to the last phone call because, despite the relief that they still brought, it was also always a reminder of That Morning, and because of the harms of that morning, it never brought any where near as much relief as it did before. NEVER AGAIN!

I actually had doggy play date plans that weekend that cancelled because I was told that I was going to imprisoned for at least 72 hours, and it was simply never rescheduled.

I actually had a dentist appointment that afternoon (it would have been cancelled, regardless, just because I didn't feel safe driving in the immediate aftermath of the actual cognitive glitch —i.e. the ONLY problem I had until the VA IDIOTS MADE IT ABOUT SI!), but there's no use in rescheduling a dentist's appointment when you've been made suicidal.

Authorized Treatment Option

Priorities

Yes, I was cognitively broken walking into that ER, that's precisely why was there —to get exclusively medical attention for the cognitive issues that I'd been gaslit about for f'ing year, not to be repeatedly bashed with a psychological sledgehammer.

Not only were the MFPCFIs excruciatingly counterproductive and exclusively traumatizing, but I was subjected to them by perniciously, portentous, maleficent, and prejudicial do-gooders, who I suspect cared more to protect themselves, to include their own vacation plans, than they did to actually listen and provide the care that I was explicitly requesting and which I could have actually benefited from.

I hadn't been an active threat to myself UNTIL the moment that I was subjected to the very "treatments" that I had EXPLICITLY and REPEATEDLY STATED would —without exception— cause me to have a finish line, and which I had EXPLICITLY SOUGHT HELP TO AVOID, PRECISELY SO THAT I WOULDN'T BE PUSHED TO HAVE A FINISH LINE! And instead, the ONLY person that I would have trusted to get me the care that I so desperately needed that morning —the person who I had so explicitly sought help from to AVOID EXACTLY the MFPCFIs that would push me over the edge— she herself is the one who subjected me to those very same MFPCFIs, less than 2 weeks later, all while continuing to gaslight me about the cognitive issue!

If those things had not been done to me, my finish line would absolutely not have been hung up when it was. It likely wouldn't have been hung up for another decade.

Reasons to end myself

Life for the sake of life means nothing.

Master Bratak, SG-1 season 5 episode 2 Threshold

To be crystal clear, it's not that I couldn't get past the trauma of MFPCFIs, it was always that if I were made to experience any more MFPCFIs again, for any reason, for the rest of my life, I would never be willing to get past the trauma inflicted by those people who would subject me to such horrors, I would —without exception— kill myself as a direct and explicit result of being subjected to any such treatment ever again for any reason!

(a) I had enough unresolved trauma, (b) MFPCFIs could never help me, and (c) they would (and did) do nothing but absolutely inflict extensively more trauma on me, therefore if subjected to them, such actions represented such a clear and complete failure of everything that I trusted up to the point that I was subjected to them, that their subjugation itself would prove —beyond exception— (and it did) that this is no longer a world that I'm willing to be in anymore.

Being subjected to MFPCFIs again, for any reason, proved that this is no longer a world that I'm willing to be a part of

• subjected to the coffin room --> kill myself
• being stripped searched when seeking exclusively medical help --> kill myself
• having the person I trusted to keep me safe from precisely such mother-fucking psychiatric fucking crisis interventions --> kill myself
• having timely access to the diagnostics that I could have benefited from —falsely— made dependent on locking myself in a torture chamber for an additional 24 fucking hours --> kill myself
• being on the psych ward --> kill myself
• having a fucking suicide flag on my record because I had been so thoroughly failed by those I trusted --> kill myself

If I had not been imprisoned in that MF'ing coffin room and
if I had not been subjected to a dehumanizing strip search and
if I had not been psychologically bullied and
if timely access to potentially diagnostics hadn't been (falsely) made contingent on self-inflicting another 24 hours of pure trauma on myself and
if I had not incarcerated on that hellish psych ward and
if there hadn't been a suicide flag put on my record by those who so thoroughly failed me
then I would not be killing myself within an hour of sharing this document.

If those things had not been done to me, then I would not be killing myself as a direct and explicit response to the traumas that those MFPCFIs inflicted upon me and all the failures that such MFPCFIs represent.

Betrayal

The one and only mental health provider I ever brought up suicide with,
used what I had shared
what I had shared with the explicit purpose of being able to effectively communicate with any future MH providers,
particularly MH providers in an ER situation,
i.e. people who might subject me to exclusively suicide-inducing mother-fucking psychiatric crisis interventions,
so that they would not subject me to those exclusively suicide-inducing MFPCFIs-
and instead of helping me communicate that
she used that very request for help
to justify subjecting me to precisely that type of suicide-inducing trauma,
less than two weeks later!

There's no coming back from betrayal like that, there isn't even a remote chance. Such a betrayal of trust simply and ultimately cuts far too deep to ever heal.

Nightmares

Each of the ER "interventions" caused more nightmares, which, upon waking were immediately followed by the memories of MH "professionals" completely betraying every ounce of trust that I had given them.

I've had so many nightmares of FGST, the person who I had so deliberately sought out to help me avoid just such a scenario, and whom I trusted with my life that morning, saying one thing after another that made it clear that I was never, ever going to be able to truly get the help that I needed, and that I was only ever going to be failed by their distrust and disrespect, and subjected to exclusively suicide-inducing trauma by being subjected to the very MFPCFIs that I had trusted her to protect me from.

Most nights since That Morning, I've had fucked up meta-nightmares where I’m in the coffin room, or psych ward, having the nightmares from before That Morning playing through my head while I’m trapped in those places, and the clear betrayals of "professionals" replaying in the background.

With the exception of roughly a month (more on that later) I have been woken up every single morning by something FGST said that morning that highlighted just how unheard, disrespected, and distrusted I was, even as I was being lied to by the people who distrusted me, e.g. "you need to be prepared for 72 hours", "You're not going to like this", "it's in your best interest", "yeah, we called it the coffin room too, even as it was being constructed".

Other Consequences

Each and every one of the MFPCFIs caused MANY, MANY things to be linked that NEEDED to NOT be linked.

Things and activities that I had actively been looking forward to, prior to each of the ER "interventions", became yet more sources of panic attacks as a direct result of the ER "interventions".

After all of the MFPCFIs That Morning, the only thing that I genuinely looked forward to was exiting this fucked up world, a world where the very people that I had trusted to actually help me were the very people who had done nothing but gaslight me, inflict more trauma on me, subject me to exclusively trauma and suicide-inducing MFPCFIs, MFPCFIs that had decimated every last bit of interest in ever finding a reason to continue.

For the next month —with two exceptions— I lived life as though nothing had changed.

Internally, I have not had a single indefinite "to be or not to be" battle since entering that hellhole. Since being put in that hellhole, every single time that I've wanted to be gone already, I've just reminded myself that I'm actively working toward the finish line that was hung up the moment I was incarcerated in that MF'ing coffin room, and I was actively working on the tasks that I felt compelled to complete before crossing it. I have reevaluated the tasks on that list, and more than a few tasks have simply been dropped, because I need to cross that finish line already.

There are a couple of times since That Morning (detailed shortly) where I absolutely had internal "to be or not to be" battles —but they were unlike any SI battle I had ever had before, and in and of themselves, they're very telling of the damages of the MFPCFIs! (more on that shortly)

You aren't going to like this, but it's in your best interest.

Oh, the unapologetically sanctimonious hubris!

I don't know how you define "best interest" but every single fucking MH "treatment" that morning did NOTHING BUT FUCK ME UP!!!! Absolutely NONE OF IT was in my best interest!!! But, I'm sure her vacation was more important than the diagnosis of my actual cognitive issue that morning, as was the fact that their need to be MH "heroes" was clearly more important than actually helping me get the exclusively medical help for cognitive treatment that I needed,without being subjected the very MFPCFIs that could ONLY HAVE EVER HARMED MY MENTAL HEALTH and made me actively suicidal, as I had told her less than 2 weeks previously!

I'm sure it made her feel better, and it certainly made it easier for her to go on vacation with a "clean conscience", but she literally subjected me to exactly what I told her would ONLY CAUSE SUICIDE-INDUCING TRAUMA.

Don't conflate pious morality as anything other than sanctimonious judgement!

Knowing how much the previous ER interrogation traumatized me and that it had driven me from baseline to borderline SI, how the fuck FGST thought ANY of these intervention would do anything other than make me actively suicidal, I don't know! I clearly never will know. I could not have been more clear! The irony isn't lost on me that I had told here all of this because the previous sanctimonious ER MH idiot also hadn't really heard me when I explicitly SOUGHT her out so that I could learn how to better communicate with MH "professionals" so that they would actually help me instead of making things actively worse.

When the person you thought was the gold standard doubles down on every harm that has been done to you for the previous year, you lose all hope and have a new level of trauma that I simply can't even come close to describing; the closest that I can come, is "psychological purgatory".

My last remaining dregs of indefinite self-preservation had been to tell the ER triage nurse that the fucking SI questions and interventions were making everything worse but instead of actually hearing me, everyone just continued all of their sanctimonious actions that were actively denying me the unbiased treatment that I actually could have benefited, that would have given me hope, and kept me fighting another day, and instead they made me actively suicidal, and then just continued to heap on more and more trauma!

Relative Experience

Opened to my sister (an MD) about my suicidal thoughts and issues with addiction. She drove me straight to the psych ward. I've been locked in a room for 8 hours with no doctors, nurses, food, water or required meds.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/18xae4r/opened_to_my_sister_an_md_about_my_suicidal/

I strongly recommend reading/watching:

• "How a Wellness Check Showed Me the Danger in Having Police Respond to Mental Health Crises". The author details their own unneeded, exclusively traumatizing MFPCFI experience, and then does a phenomenal job of discussing some of the sad commonalities behind a lot police-involved MFPCFIs.
• "End Police “Wellness Checks.” Now." (alt)
• Hospital Sued for Putting Man in Straitjacket When He Claimed to Be Himself
• I wish honesty with suicidality wasn't punished. (alt)

  • ...
    You can't admit anything more than minor or occasional suicidal ideation to doctors or therapists without being sent away, and even just that is a risk.
    ...
    It's so harmful. Being punished for trying to get help. For daring to confide in someone that you're supposed to feel safe with. ...
    ...
    Psych wards aren't meant to make you feel better and comfortable. Their primary purpose is to just keep you from doing anything for as long as you're in there. And right when you're discharged, you're on your own and expected to go about life as usual. Never mind the traumatizing experiences and potential debt you'll suffer afterwards.
    ...
    It's a horrible and predatory system. ...
     　 ~ mediocrecolors

  • Sadly every time I’ve been sent to the psych ward, I came out worse and more traumatised than when I went in. It truly is an awful system.

    ~ hiddlestunned
• "Ten things not to say to a suicidal person". (Note: I'm bipolar, but my suicidality has never been directly related to my mental health —for me, it's simply a logical, ethical solution to not wanting to be in this unquestionably fucked up world anymore. I.e. if I hadn't been subjected to MFPCFIs when I repeatedly stated they would only make things worse, then now would not be my time, others' justifications for subjecting me to MFPCFIs are irrelevant, the mere fact that I was subjected to such "treatment" after repeatedly stating that it would only make things worse is an irrefutable indictment of this world, not my mental health.)
• I don’t understand why people care so much if someone wants to die, life is meaningless.(alt 1, alt 2)
• Life feels different when you've made up your mind about killing yourself
• DamiLee "Most Disturbing Prison in the Universe" (alt)
• https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/i-hate-how-many-humans-see-suicide-as-something-bad.151025/
• https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/suicidal-ideation-planning-as-a-coping-mechanism.150994/
• sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/a-conversation-about-mental-health.60901/post-1128524
• https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/a-conversation-about-mental-health.60901/post-1128651
• https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/a-conversation-about-mental-health.60901/post-1128752
• https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/a-conversation-about-mental-health.60901/post-1131172

Benefit One

Before the coffin room, I cared about the world around me. Since I crossed the threshold into that hellhole, I genuinely haven't.

One of the recurring pieces of advice, given to me before that day, was to stop watching the news, but I couldn't ever do it for very long because I felt responsible for being informed about the world that I was a part of.

Once I was put in the coffin room, it was no longer my world, therefore I haven't felt an obligation to be informed. I haven't felt the need to be genuinely engaged politically or socially with the world anymore.

So, it's been much easier to ignore the news (although, old habits die hard).

If asked, I would still discuss these things, but always knowing that I wouldn't be around long enough to vote in another election or see the outcome of any such discussions.

Because I didn't meet my initial target date, it turned out that I actually could have voted one more time in a primary, but it didn't change the fact that it wasn't my world anymore and I so, for the only time since I could vote, I didn't.

It's not like my voice would be heard anyway. That had been made painfully clear by every supposed MH "provider" I dealt with through this whole hellish experience.

I also didn't feel compelled to be active in the groups that I used to participate in.

I stopped trying to attend board of director meetings for the non-profits that I had previously been engaged in.

I stopped attending the VA group the FGST had started, and MH #3 (aka the Rainbows and Unicorn therapist) subsequently ran. I had been the one consistent attendee; in my absence the group stopped meeting altogether.

I never again interacted with the group that I had started a decade prior and run, teaching novices how to program.

I did try a couple of times to program and do board games as coping mechanisms, but they had been so thoroughly associated with MFPCFIs during the first ER interrogation, that they honestly just made me rage. So I stopped spending time on them. Note that I never used the word rage before.

Interestingly, once the causes of the cognitive issues were identified (with absolutely NO help from anyone at the VA until I had already identified them), that rage that I had experienced —something that was really quite foreign to me— also disappeared. Unfortunately, the negative associations with the MFPCFIs remained, and so, other than to meet very specific goals related to getting to or across my finish line, I never tried to program or do board games again.

Even working on the coding for this has been so much more emotionally difficult because of those associations, and I had to walk away from working on in it more times than I can count because of that association. (As you might imagine, there have been many things about preparing this document that were emotionally taxing and required that I walk away.)

Benefit Two

After my imprisonment, I was actually safer talking about being in zone 2 and having a finish line, precise because I knew that if anyone else was idiotic enough, arrogant enough, lazy enough, self-righteous enough to lock me up again, I now knew how to kill myself even in there, and frankly, if I was imprisoned again, I'd be dead and out of pain so much sooner!

Honestly, being imprisoned again would have been a blessing, because I would no longer have self inflicted obligations (like writing up this document) drawing out the torturous hell that my soul was now trapped in.