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SECTIONED – Part 11: Conclusion

So we are coming to the end of our show, this next poem, I first recited in front of horrified staff and patients on the 7th and hopefully last time I was sectioned. 7 seems a good number, a lucky number. This time I was not angry at being in a ward as I desperately…
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SECTIONED – Part 10: Psychoactive

Bi-polar is a common misdiagnosis for autism and something I do not recognise from my youth, sure I’d been depressed but manic highs were not something I knew. I’d known my brain was different from a young age and when I discovered autism, I felt I had found the explanation. I carried it with me…
Read more: SECTIONED – Part 10: Psychoactive
SECTIONED – Part 9: Chasing happiness

I strongly believe that true recovery from illness born from trauma is possible, but you have to allow people to experience joy, to be stupid at times and heal at their own rate and to not talk about it if they do not wish to, for they will when they want. Conversely, for the distressed,…
Read more: SECTIONED – Part 9: Chasing happiness
SECTIONED – Part 8: I’m fine

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…
Read more: SECTIONED – Part 8: I’m fine
SECTIONED – Part 7: Help

I haven’t seen my section notes for any time except the first despite many requests for access. Apparently they don’t like to show them to people in case it triggers a reaction. I say that no one is triggered by the truth and part of your job as a psychiatric doctor is to be able…
Read more: SECTIONED – Part 7: Help
SECTIONED – Part 6: Psychosis

Left without any footholds, over the next three months I spiralled until after a frustrating work meeting where I was once again denied a return to the office, on a weekend in Bootle, I first experienced extreme psychosis and maybe nearly died. My frustration was doubled by my gorgeous heavy drinking friend disapproving of a…
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SECTIONED – Part 5: Let me die

The Alchemist talks about watching for signs from the universe and the first time my mind tripped was in the ward that first time. Lying on my bed, trying to process what had happened with no contact to the outside world I had a thought that I would never be happy again, which was…
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SECTIONED – Part 4: Sectioned

I’d gone to my parent’s rural house after the arrest on the express promise they drive me home by 1pm the next day in time for a dear friend to come visit, take me to IKEA and hopefully finally release some of that sexual tension, for while my mind was clear I was still hella…
Read more: SECTIONED – Part 4: Sectioned