Posted by Craig on March 18, 2001, at 3:18:00
In reply to Re: cutting not in control- to all, posted by pat123 on March 16, 2001, at 10:36:52
My experience with voluntary hospitalization is that the theory is good, but the practice can be something different. Signing yourself into the hospital voluntarily does NOT always mean that you can leave whenever you want. If your doctor is present and he agrees that you're ready to leave the hospital, chances are that you'll be discharged without a problem. If he doesn't feel discharge is in your best interest, but you aren't a danger to yourself or others, you'll probably be allowed to leave AMA (against medical advice).
However, if your doctor isn't around and the ward staff drag their feet long enough or just plain won't bother to locate your doctor until it's too late in the day, you may as well forget about leaving then. You can tell me all you want about how that is against the law, but it happened to me. Other reasons why I wasn't allowed to leave when I requested to be discharged were it was a Saturday and requests had to be made Monday-Friday during the day. At other hospitals, after you'd made a written request to leave, you had to wait 5 business days before your request would be considered. This is the point at which I would be threatened by the doctor to either drop my request to be discharged or he would petition to have me involuntarily committed. I once had a strange doctor who told me if I dropped my request to leave, he would give me a weekend pass! I accepted his offer, went to my parent's house on pass, locked myself in the bathroom and refused to return to the hospital. (OK, it was childish, but it worked.) The doctor called and threatened to have the police come and pick me up, but I gambled and figured they had better things to do the week before Christmas than break down somebody's bathroom door to retrieve a "mental case." Maybe I got lucky because I was only a danger to myself.
I think I understand some of Judy's panic. My previous doctor once told me over the phone that I was to go to the Emergency Room right away. I know this sounds odd, but I remember telling him I couldn't because I was too sick to go to the hospital. It's a feeling of being overwhelmed and unable to defend yourself. For someone who doesn't trust well, going into the hospital is very hard to do.
P.S. to Judy: Like you, I am also familiar with restraints and isolation rooms. My history goes back to the days when injections of Thorazine were the ward staff's answer to seemingly everything. Some things you never forget.
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> Provided you commit yourself voluntarily this cannot happen, you can leave anytime. All the more reason to deal with this now before you
> really spin out of control and are committed involuntarily because you are a danger to yourself.
>
> Pat
poster:Craig
thread:5112
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010209/msgs/5161.html