You can’t openly discuss suicidal feelings with a therapist, because then they can strip you of your rights and send you to a place that might be the hospital out of One Flew Out of the Cookoo’s Nest - and then charge you thousands for the stay.
The hotlines are the same - a 988 call seems to be “wow that sounds hard” until you say something for them to call 911 on you for.
Inpatient is almost like punishment. “I am so sad that I want to no longer live” - “we’re going to shove you into a filthy room, force feed you medication, and give you fifteen minutes of ‘therapy’ before we send you back to the outside world (without your job now too, because you missed work)”
The almost shitpost of a response I hear is “at least you’re alive!” Yeah - with some more lovely sights and images and smells and sounds that’ll flood my brain when I’m trying to sleep at night.
“It’s just for stabilization! For long term care, you need to seek outpatient services” - doesn’t exist here LOL
Is anything about the mental health care system designed to be functional?
Like, I don’t even want to be dead. I want to be alive, but in a safe place. The likelihood of me getting to a safe place is evaporating more everyday. My family abandoned me almost two decades ago. There’s just nothing for me here. I can go to my LPC twice a month and talk about how stressed out I am - but none of my problems are getting better.
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I usually don’t comment here, but I can relate because I had this exact thing happen to me (and I’m still paying for it). I can say from experience that my hospitalization was less pleasant than county jail.
I can’t afford long-term therapy, but I did manage to glean one useful strategy from my therapist. I made a list of people I can call when I’m feeling suicidal. Not even to talk about my feelings per se, but even just to call and be like, “Hey, how you doing?”
Some of the people on my list are like, a discord server admin who I trust and who I know won’t mind the call. Doesn’t have to be all close friends and family, but enough that there’s someone to talk to with whom I have some sort of established connection, which is even better than talking to some rando on 988 imo
I hope this helps. I know what works for me may not work for everyone.
You can’t openly discuss suicidal feelings with a therapist, because then they can strip you of your rights and send you to a place that might be the hospital out of One Flew Out of the Cookoo’s Nest - and then charge you thousands for the stay.
You 100% can discuss those things, an invol hold is just if you’re showing signs you’re an imment danger to yourself or others.
It sounds like your fresh out and angry, I’m not going to argue with you about it, some suck.
But they don’t all, and I didn’t want your post just sitting there dissuading people from seeking help as that’s incredibly dangerous.
A couple months out. They put me on a female ward (I’m trans, but legally changed my sex to male more than ten years ago). I was physically assaulted by staff and aggressively misgendered. I also got fired from my job, so now have no insurance to pay for outpatient care if it even exists. (Already forced to pay cash for my LPC anyway - none of them take insurance here)
When I was in college, I attempted because I was broke and about to be homeless. That invol hold I paid for with sex work afterwards. I didn’t get assaulted or misgendered then, I just got to watch the staff and other clients bully an elderly man with dementia. His screams don’t go away.
When I was a teenager, my mom would Google up different obscure mental health conditions in WebMD and read the symptoms lists to whatever inpatient/partial inpatient/therapist would listen. I got medicated for obscure genetic disorders and even paranoid schizophrenia (as a pre teen!)
Nothing I have seen of this field seems to work.
