Sectioned at a young age

[chocolatebox123]

I was sectioned (section 2) last year under the mental health act. This was the most traumatic time of my life and I never want to go through that again. The whole experience made me quite depressed. I was only just 18 when it happened and I feel it was not the right environment for someone that age. I was by far the youngest patient there and was with much older patients with much more serious conditions. A year on I have flash backs of it and bad memories even though I was only there for 3 weeks. I just feel that the system needs to change as I was actually wrongly sectioned. I think that for young people in particular, the experience can do more damage than good, as it did for me. If there had been more people my age then it might have helped but I felt completely alone in the unit.

What do other people think about this? Has anyone been sectioned at a young age? What was your experience like? x

[Borderline]

I was in hospital for a month at 15, where i got on pretty well on a adolescent ward. I was sectioned at 16, by the police and taken to one of those holding wards, where they watch you through a window. Where your only aloud a matress on the floor and some squidgy cushions... The ambulance people even told me, you shouldnt be here. I think it was totally wrong too. Luckily enough i was only on a 72 hour section, but was let go at 3 o'clock that morning without being transferred but i'd never felt so lonely, when i was there.

[Apotheosis]

What do other people think about this? Has anyone been sectioned at a young age? What was your experience like?

I was sectioned for 4 months on a locked ward at the age of 17. Spent a lot of time in the 'strong room' - a bare brick room, steel door & blue mattress in the middle of the floor. I was given a lot of acuphase injections, liquid largactil, & handfuls of psychiatric drugs (I was informed of what the cocktail was some years ago, but couldn't reel off the names of them all). The current psychiatrist commented on the large amount of drugs I was given at the time.

I was in a very extreme psychosis that lead me there. No doubt I was totally crazy before being put in the place. A lot is blank about it all as well, & I feel that a lot went on there that wasn't right at all; abuse of one kind & another by staff on patients, & I have a number of good reasons for thinking that.

I had a realisation that I had to act & speak calmly & normally & ignore everything I thought & felt. I said that I'd experienced something & the only way out of it was to have reacted the way that I did, but it had passed & I felt fine. I kept it up for a while, they put it all down to a temporary drug induced psychosis & let me go. Thing is that I wasn't really fine, nothing had really been dealt with, & the same pattern repeated another 3 times over the next 9 years.

22 years later, since it all started & I still have the same stuff go through my head about it all - almost every day.

I feel that the way I was reacted to compounded the experience, & drove it deeper. I do feel that things have loosened to a degree with work that I've put into healing over the years, but do I feel that locking people up & drugging them that are in extreme emotional & mental confusion & distress is right? Not really no. I think that stuff like that always stays with you. People in those states need a lot of care, support, understanding & kindness. I was brutalised by certain things in my life, & then brutalised by the system. I don't think that anyone can really know what it's like unless they go through it.

[chocolatebox123]

that sounds awful and I feel really sorry for you. I thought my experience was bad but yours seems a lot worse. I still don't agree with sectioning young people unless they really are a danger to themselves or others. I was neither of those, thats why it was wrong. The system doesn't seem to have changed that much as it is still difficult to get out etc. I know some people feel that it is a good thing but I don't. Maybe they should have adolesant wards that go up to the age of 21 or something because as I said previously I was with much older people and had nothing in common. xx