Something that happened to me months ago

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It still bothers me a little even though it happened months ago. I was thinking about what made me such an angry person and I thought about this as one of the things that made me angry.


I was looking forward to going to the Harris County Psychiatric Center because I thought it would be a positive experience. Jack was also thinking about going himself, being depressed and thinking about self harm, but now after how I was treated he doesn’t want to any more. I had been admitted to the HCPC one time before and back then I was treated fairly and with respect (expect for some exaggerations on the court-order papers). The same thing is true for when I stayed at the Neuropsychiatric Center for 5 days another time, voluntarily.

Lies or one or maybe more nurses and/or techs told Dr. Svetlana Malkina about me (if not lies, then they were misinterpreting of what was going on): that I had to be prompted to shower, that I refused to shower, that I said something about people sending me messages through the TV. None of this happened. I had just asked a group of people watching TV if there was anything good on, they said what was in, I said “That’s okay” and went to my room. As for the showering, I did shower, and one nurse, Lovely, told me to shower when I was going to anyway later that day, but I felt peer-pressured into doing it right then, which may have made it look like I had to be prompted to shower. Also, the only reason why my therapist wrote “Take a shower and wash face” on my list of goals for every day was so that I would remember to wash my face outside of the shower. Malkina was probably shown that and did not have it explained to her, and once again made an assumption about me based on the little she knew. Even if I hadn’t showered, I would still probably be cleaner than most of them, as mentioned below in the next paragraph.

Assumptions Dr. Malkina made about me: that since my hair was up in a big knot that couldn’t be combed out and that I had acne, that meant I also had other hygiene problems. She also thought and said that because I had a yeast infection, that meant that I didn’t keep clean. That is not true. I did have an infection but I didn’t have it for that reason. (I told them that I was cleaner than all of them even if my hygiene was bad, because they just wipe with paper after pissing and sh*****g while I use soap and water. Malkina said nothing.) Later Malkina admitted that my imperfect hygiene was due to my disorder and needed treatment.

Malkina also said that my baby would be taken away if I continued to have bad hygiene. If that was how things work, she herself is very overweight; why was her medical license not taken away because of that? I told her that. She said, “Well, yes I am overweight, but I take care of my patients, that’s why my license was not taken away.” How does she know I would be any different than her and neglect my son because of one hygiene issue, when she has a health issue she neglects and expects to remain a doctor under that kind of rules, which don’t exist anyway?

Malkina said, after the subject of adoption was brought up, that with me and Jack being bipolar, our son had a 77% chance of being bipolar. I said that if that were true, he was better off with us and we would understand him, rather than with a “normal” family who would discipline and punish him for not being normal. I do not trust anyone else to raise our child. This was traumatizing.


I should have told her that this isn’t Soviet Russia, and that if it was her license would be taken away. But I didn’t.

Furthermore, on Saturday, when I wanted to get out a nurse (the Asian female one, I don’t know her name) told me I couldn’t because I was involuntarily committed. I said I was voluntary. She said she would look it up, then reported that I was involuntary. I hadn’t received any papers, or a lawyer, like I had last time I had been there involuntarily. Therefore I had been unable to appeal like I had the right to do. She said that I would have to talk to Dr. Malkina on Monday. The law says that they would have to get a doctor, whatever doctor was on call, in within 4 hours and he would have to assess me and if I was found unfit, my status would be changed to involuntarily. She used that to dissuade me as well as that I wasn’t stable on my medicine yet, still having side effects. But that was just her opinion. Many people live at home and aren’t yet stable on their meds. The only real reason to keep someone is that they are a danger to themselves or others, which I wasn’t, at least by that time. The doctor on call is supposed to assess that anyway.

The next day, a friendly tech, DeWayne C, said he would check to see when and why my status had been changed to involuntary. Later that day, my caseworker, Hasu, the one that had all of Dr. Malkina’s patients, informed me that I was, in fact, there voluntarily and that a mistake had been made before.

That night, I was able to get out because this time they brought in a doctor who was on call less than 4 hours later. (It was a different nurse at the desk this time.) The doctor determined that I could go.

I could not stand to be with Dr. Malkina. Once I shut myself in a bathroom and Malkina said to come out and talk to her, that she promised she wouldn’t ask me if I washed myself this time. It wasn’t her asking that was the problem; it was her assuming I didn’t.


They all said that they don’t mean to hurt me and are trying to help me but their attempts, due to their assumptions about me, were ignorant and embarrassing. I still feel oppressed, humiliated, and like I can never go back there if I need to.

Malkina also wrote on my report that I got upset because they suggested I improve my hygiene. That isn’t why I got upset, and I even said so. I got upset due to her specific assumptions that I had particular hygiene problems that I didn’t have. The suggesting I improve my hygiene was inappropriate anyway, since dysfunctional people don’t choose to be that way; they’re depressed and CAN’T do it. Or did they think that dysfunctional people are just ignorant of the fact that they have to so they have to be told? Either way, it’s untrue and humiliating. Not that any of that was going on with me anyway, however, but they didn’t know that.

She also said that I would, for example, put a new diaper on my baby without cleaning him first.

In the report they also put the results of tests I never had.

Also, on the discharge medications paper, they said I was on 5 mg of Haldol but they had actually put me on 10.

Jack took me to the police to report the false imprisonment but the cop we talked to said what they did was legal… even though Jack went to a lawyer when I was still in the HCPC and the lawyer said that was bad.


Anyway, I haven’t done anything about it and it’s getting late and I'm wondering if I should.


(And just so you know, my hair was messed up because when I was on a road trip without a comb for a few days part of my hair got all tangled and combing it out would mean ripping out a large part of it (and I didn't think of other ways to get it out), so then I just gave up on it and put paper clips, rubber bands and bobby pins in it to make it look interesting and made part of it into really bad dreadlocks. It stayed that way for months until some friends of mine tried to get it out but made it look like it wasn't even done on purpose any more. Sounds stupid, I know. So then it looked like I had REALLY let myself go for months (I was planning on growing it out and either cutting the tangled part with stuff in it off then, or keeping it in a ball at the end of my hair as a style.)

Wow. I can see how that would be very upsetting. They really jumped the gun on assuming things. The false thing about not showering would have driven me insane and I would have probably attempted to do something really stupid which would have made the people assume more crazy stuff. Sorry it took so long for anybody to respond to this thread. Also I'm sorry that I can't say anything much more helpful than what I said. I want to complement you on how helpful you've been to other people in The Haven. And I think it's so unfair that no one turned around and responded to this thread before me.

Hope you get this sorted out!

I guess I wanted anything, as long as it was polite. Thanks for empathizing with me, UberElvis. And I'm glad you found my posts helpful. Agon, thanks for replying just to show you get me and you care. I should do that way more often (but in PMs so that the board just has actual advice). What's scary is that she was going to give me ECT if I didn't improve on the Haldol and Celexa within a week. She probably just wanted to wipe my memory of her injustice. (ECT does that; it wipes memories.) She DID sound embarrassed when on the phone with my boyfriend talking about her assumptions and how they upset me. She said that since I was pregnant she would only give me ECT with my permission. So she'd give it without my permission now if I went back there? (An d yes, unless a doctor stops working there, you do get the same doctor when you come back.)


But she's from Soviet Russia; what does she know about America and freedom and all that?

I can assure you, there's much more freedom in Russia than in the US.

Is it not an option for you to perhaps change clinics? Surely there's more than one in your city. You could just say that you were treated badly.

Oh, that was at the mental hospital. At the clinic I'm at now that I'm out I'm treatedd very well. My doctor is so nice, and he's a good doctor too.

Ugh what a cow. I can assure you thought it is nothing to do with being Russian, I dated a Russian man and he was awesome. Nothing like her. She just sounds like one of those I-am-so-superior-type therapists, that can no doubt be found in any country, lol. Luckily there are great therapists around too.

She wasn't my therapist, just my psychiatrist for the 7 days I was in the psych ward. She was also bossy. I can't stand people who are so full of themselves they think they can control other people. She and most of the staff will defend her and say she was just trying to help me but she has to stop doing that with her patients. She can be friendly and suggest things instead of insisting in a bossy way. They'll say she meant well, that it was tough love, but tough love is torture. It's a last resort for people who find it impossible to be positive even though it's always possible. Yes, I'm being negative about her, but at least it's in retaliation to something she did to me.


I still feel I let her walk all over me, even though I did explode at her and refuse to see her and all that.

You should've asked Dr. Malkina very personal questions about her hygiene,then condescendingly praise her for washing herself.


E.g. "Yay,good for you!" or "I knew you could do it!"

God; one of the main reasons I was there in the first place was because I was angry and sad, and I was angry and sad because nobody ever showed me any respect in my life (and I don't know how to respect others as a result). So I go there and get shown the opposite of respect and so my condition is made worse.


I keep posting and posting in here because I'm still really mad!

You have a right to be, god, talk about mistreatment. And the fact that nobody would even listen to what you had to say either! And for some obese woman to suggest taking away your baby because of personal (and not even related to how you treat your child) hygiene reasons (which seem mainly based on the fact that you have messy hair for crying out loud). Hypocrite.

The ECT thing freaks me out the most because she thought she could do it without my consent. She treated me like her property. This bothers me even more than the fact that she lied about what the law was in order to keep me in there.It's the fact that she would do ANYTHING to me without my consent, even give me meds or something small like that, that bothers me. And that's not even legal, but she was so arrogant she thought that either it was or she was above the law.