Standardy Opieki Psychiatrycznej – bo warto pytać

They laughed at me in the ambulance. The rescue worker and the doctor thought it was all a good joke; they said that it looked like I was expecting the red carpet rolled out where they were taking me. And this was my first contact with psychiatry.
Weeks later, I found out that I am sick with F20. Are you familiar with this old patients’ joke that our diagnoses sound like the updated models of the F-16 aircraft? This is all I was told, just the cold-served medical ID; the doctor must have assumed that it’s pointless to talk to someone in my condition. He did spend a bit more time talking to my family behind my back but they must have been of a similar opinion. And so, I found out what it meant through google. Can you imagine how frightened I was when F20 decoded turned out to be schizophrenia?
There was also this time when a policeman handcuffed me when I was at home, sitting on the sofa and watching TV. I was taken to the hospital again. The ambulance guy asked me if I was sure I needed to go to the hospital as I was making a lot of sense as far as he was concerned. I said I didn’t and that I didn’t want to go anywhere but then who would listen to me? This time they injected me with a sedative. I was stripped and dressed in a hospital gown. I was put in the canteen for the night. I slept on the mattress on the floor between the tables.
After this forced hospitalization my family had a great idea of legal incapacitation but then they gave it up.
These are just a few of the humiliations that the system routinely offers, but I didn’t get used to it. Altogether I was hospitalised four times. I am healthy now, but when I look at my experience from a bird’s eye view, I wish no one had to suffer from such a nightmare and I hope I won’t have to anymore either. In spite of my illness I have stayed professionally active. I am in a loving, understanding and enriching relationship. I have a wonderful circle of friends. I have my passion. I feel that my life is full, and this would not be possible if my own voice had not returned to me. This I owe to many different factors but the most important of them is the persistent and arduous work I have done myself. I had suffered a 5-year long nightmare, and today I hope that SOP is a questionnaire that will help us all to make sure the nightmare does not last that long for anybody.
The Standards of Psychiatric Care questionnaire has grown out of my intuition that there are many stories...


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