Carmen
Carmen admitted to me that she wanted a break from her life and housework and to make friends, so that’s why she let slip that she was suicidal even though she “wasn’t really,” so that they’d keep her in.
But maybe, as my dad later told me when I told him this story, she was a little suicidal and they reasoned that it only takes five seconds to step under a bus.
Carmen was bipolar, complimenting people one second and judgmental the next but always chatting. She was so bothered by her moods sometimes that she was pretending to be “normal,” not paying attention to what was actually right... just what was normal for wherever she was and whoever she was with. The result was her having one opinion about something and the next moment having a different opinion about it. Like about how to raise kids, or about whether she wanted to be here in the Douglas. But that could also be because she was still figuring it out and was keeping an open mind and trying to, in her own way, empathize with all sides. She, like all of us, is learning and growing.
She was very social, and opinionated yet so flexible that her opinion changed all the time. She really just wanted to have fun, and was trying in different ways with her different opinions and stories to hit that spot, and that shone through in how she enjoyed giving her opinion whether it was a positive or negative one. She just wanted to make friends. She made friends with me because I enjoyed telling stories too.
Gerald
Tired of being discriminated against for being gay and Native, among other problems he was tired of, Gerald attempted suicide by overdosing on pills. He was brought to the hospital and revived, then brought to the Douglas. So what do they do at the Douglas? Act like he was faking or exaggerating his depression, or just thinking he was depressed, or something like that. How can a person just think they’re in psychological pain, when by its very definition psychological pain is thinking you’re in psychological pain?
They kept telling him he was going to be discharged from the Douglas ER. He was scared both to be back in his situation and to be alone, without the friends he’d made in the Douglas ER and without any psychological or psychiatric support. “I’ll just tell them I don’t want to stay and they’ll keep me,” he said. “If that’s the game they’re going to play, I’ll play it.”
Finally, after talking to them, he was prescribed a good antidepressant, Pristiq, and sent to a crisis center. Me, him, and our friend Elaine cried when he left. “I’d give anything to have a man like you,” Marie-Josee said. Gerald had been so kind and understanding and concerned for the rest of us, and told funny stories to us about his bipolar disorder, like how he’d gotten so manic once that he’d decided he’d start a world-famous cookie bakery, and instead he ended up with two dozen burnt cookies, crying. The way he told it made us want more of his funny bipolar stories.
Roland
They kept pushing him to sign the admission form and he kept refusing, justifiably not trusting that it wasn’t a blanker sign-away-your-rights thing. After all, it didn’t specify on the form the rights he’d retain. So they reassured him that he had his rights. I think they told him about the rights thing that was on the wall listing the most important ones in general. But one thing the list-- both on the wall and the more specific description in the booklet that they didn’t even give out unless it was asked for-- did not say, was the right to an ACCURATE medical file, and to question the accuracy of one’s file. And I think part of his reluctance to sign the paper was because of that. Without the right to an accurate file, both your reputation and your freedom are at stake, because dirt can be made up on you or things misinterpreted or exaggerated.
Yousef
His apartment flooded, destroying most of his stuff, and his place was now unlivable. This made him depressed to the point of suicidality.
Staff kept making him feel like a malingerer, making him feel worse... telling him that just because his place flooded didn’t mean he needed to be in the hospital... never mind that he was suicidal! Instead maybe they should have asked him what else was bothering him, because the flooded apartment and being homeless obviously was either the straw that broke the camel’s back among other issues, or part of a bigger issue he was dealing with in his life.
Yousef told me that saying a prayer with another patient, Sarah, helped him a lot, as did talking to me and the others. The staff, meanwhile, did fuck-all for him. He was discharged from the psych ER a few days after his admission. At least they saw fit to give him an appointment at the external clinic, where he hopefully got psychological help.
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