It is generally accepted that to be sectioned you must be a danger to yourself or others, but they have a clever catch all of “has a medical condition that needs to be managed in hospital”, which allows you to be taken with little justification if you are known to the services.

I once heard that there are approximately 300 deaths in mental wards a year.  That is not just unfortunate,  that is a disgrace!  And that number does not include the most dangerous time, which is known to be shortly after release.  If 300 people were going into hospital a year with broken legs and coming out paralysed there would be outcry, yet time and again the suicides in mental health care are simply palmed off as people with complex mental health needs, or hidden in the back pages of the newspaper, though this starting to change.  The amount of stress the services put you under whilst commanding you to avoid stress would be comical if it were not deadly.  There is no criterion for release, there is no way to get a diagnosis wiped from your record.  If you are depressed or anxious you can recover, but if you are bi-polar or schizophrenic you are considered that for life.   

The first time I was sectioned, they discharged me from the services as soon as I was released. After the third they would not. For 2.5 years I went to meetings wondering desperately what I could do to make them believe I was okay and achieve discharge. They kept asking me if I felt better. There was no criteria for better, no description as to what a healthy mind was, just “better” and all I could think was that better was how I was that first time they locked me up and took everything I had worked my life for from me. It took 2.5 years for work to offer me a project lead again and it was 2.5 years later that my risky choice of boyfriend tried to kill me and being under the services only resulted in my detention and his release. There were witnesses yet, I was locked up for a month while he walked free.

From there any wonder became deathly serious and a deep melancholy at not being in control of my own life overtook me. 

I sit here and I hate myself 

I don’t want meds, I don’t want help 

It used to be a better day 

Until they sectioned that away 

  

Until they stripped me of my soul 

Spent weeks and months and years 

Convincing me that I was wrong 

That I was ill, somehow undone 

  

“I drank too much”, “I screwed too much” 

Somehow my brain just didn’t work 

Funny that, it seems to me 

It always had been fine 

  

I’d got my grades, I’d done my job 

I always had performed 

And crucially upon it all 

I liked my deranged mind 

  

And now there’s anger in my soul 

A pain I can’t abide 

A hardness and a broken heart 

An innocence destroyed. 

Now, if they had used that time in the ward to discuss healthy relationships with me it may have been worth it, but they did not. They even let my attacker visit me before I was strong enough to be done with him for good. 

The hardest part of being sectioned is that everyone assumes you deserved it and that is true of the legal system too, for you can not sue against a decision to be sectioned. There is no “I was sane, please let me explain route” I went back to a man who I knew had the capacity for violence because he was the only person who did not treat me like I was ill, but as a survivor with inspiring, achievable goals and ambitions.  He used to send me off to work with the phrase “go be a woman who means business in business” and he wanted a kid, a cute cottage and happy family life as much as I did. We clashed because he was very monogamous and I was an ex-swinger poly kid and because, while I was prepared to be monogamous for him, I wasn’t prepared to renounce the lifestyle or my friends from the scene. But I really did want the quiet life. 

You ask me for my fantasies 

I say the quiet life 

With a clean house and gardening 

With baking instead of strife 

I’ve been there now. I have done it 

I’ve done near everything 

So let me tell you of the things 

That would cause my heart to sing: 

I want to bake a pretty cake 

Maybe a rainbow one 

With coloured icing and sprinkles 

And a bow that I have done 

I’d like to plant some daffodils 

In bright delightful pots 

And maybe a thriving herb patch 

I would like that, lots and lots 

I dream of chores not being chores 

The hoover, dust, and mop 

And maybe even ironing 

The housework that God forgot 

And as the evening hours lengthen 

I’ll scribble, draw and write 

Give the little cat a cuddle 

And make a tasty bite

 

I’d like to bake a fancy flan 

A hotpot for the main 

When I tell of you my fantasies 

They’re really most mundane 

Of course, I like the passion 

A party’s mostly fun 

But I would like the wholesome life 

Now all that’s done is done. 

The rest of the world just tentatively asked “how are you?” every two minutes and “fine” was never an acceptable answer. This narrative that you must not accept fine as an answer for friends who have been previously depressed, keeps people in the past and focused on their trauma, like your recovery has to be at an acceptable rate for the people around you.  You end up in this weird limbo world, where you are expected to act fine, but not too fine.