Psychiatric Hospitalization?

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Hmm. Yes, I can only guess that they evaluated him quickly and found that he needed some kind of psychiatric attention. Sorry, I'm probably just stating the obvious but yeah, your hunch seems correct!

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Okay I'll go a bit further and say something a bit sensitive from my personal experience, which is that I did once pick up a knife and threaten someone close to me with it. But my intention was not actually to harm them, but to harm myself, and I could not think of a way to say that I wanted to stab myself with the knife right then, and it was more a cry for help than anything. Maybe this person you know was in a similar situation, and the person he chased knew he was doing the chasing out of self-destructiveness? Just a possibility. Alternatively, maybe he could have indeed done some harm, but police were called and this person you know was in such an obvious state of breakdown and confusion that the next step was to get him evaluated psychiatrically rather than taken into police custody. (Furthermore, not every police call ends in an arrest - if they determine everyone's safe and no lasting damage was done, they might just deal with any remaining pertinent issue (the perpetrator's obviously poor mental health status).

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Hi Lilah!

I am going to try to phrase my response in such a way that I don't come off as a crazy person in your eyes, but I actually can understand how he could become that angry that fast over that little thing. It sounds like what would be commonly classified in autism-speak as a meltdown of the "blind rage" variety. I personally can have extreme mood swings triggered by the seemingly tiniest of environmental changes (I'm referring to my living environment in general, my life and any person and thing in it) because I focus intensely on things and when something goes right or when something goes wrong it almost literally means the world to me (esp. when I'm in a particularly obsessional mood).

Being asked to clean the garage, for example, could dredge up all the resentment a person might feel at the asker he who feels he is unfairly treated by, especially if the person is already under stress from other sources in life (which could be things that are minor to an NT, like loud noise, too many people around, etc.).

Anyway, yes, I'm trying not to say anything more that makes me sound any crazier than I need to sound, but I do have a hair-trigger temper that has resulted in my throwing the nearest object at a wall on a fair number of occasions because I was so overcome by - I wouldn't even call it anger, but animalistic rage at a perceived injustice, even if the perpetrator of the injustice was nothing more pinpointable than life itself. I'm not sure I'll be glad I posted this publicly later, but if not, I'll just erase it in a week, and in the meantime, if anyone else reads this, it's a little educational glimpse into the mind of someone who could probably employ some anger management tactics.

In summary: this person's little rampage was not just about a dirty garage, it was about all his feelings of powerlessness probably, and it was probably not consciously directed at whoever he chased (though it's factually undeniable and important to note he did chase someone), but at the nearest animate target when he happened to enter this not-quite-lucid state.

Hopefully this was a bit of help and did not scare you off!

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Hi Lilah! Whew, good that I don't come across as completely crazy to you!

Hmm. Well it sounds like you don't know exactly how the chasing incident became known to any authorities, but I guess it could have happened any number of ways and you might just have to ask him yourself to figure it out (though it sounds like it's a touchy subject for him and he'd probably be evasive, so... maybe that wouldn't work!).

Someone can be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for any number of reasons. I spent a week in one because I admitted to my therapist that I was having suicidal urges that I didn't know if I could keep myself from acting on. I can only imagine that, whoever found out about your friend's incident or when they found out (as it happened or some time later), they or whoever they consulted with picked up on the fact that a mentally healthy person would not chase someone in a violent manner like that and that he need to be sequestered in a treatment-centric environment so he could get mental health evaluation and treatment and because he was a danger to himself and others.

(As it so happens psychiatric hospitals in my experience are not really treatment-centered at all and more just temporary holding facilities, though, which is a problem, but that's another issue.)

He was propably found mentally unfit to stand trail and was sent to the psychiatric hospital because of this. This means that he was charged, was bought before the court, but the court was given evidence that conviced them that he was not fit to be tried and so he was certified insane. The police do not decide whether someone is too ill to be charged, sent to prison or the like in any country that I am aware of. They can also plead guilty because of mental impairment and be forced to serve their sentence in a psychiatric hospital. These are not standard psychiatric hospitals that people go to usually, they are specifically built and staffed to hold people who have been deemed unfit to stand trail, found guilty because of mental disease or defect or the like.

If someone commits a crime and the person you describe has committed a crime, the police are legally required to charge them and take them before a court of law. They have a right to make any defence they would like and they could have made the argument that they were out of their mind at the time, depressed at the time, etc, etc.

Holding a knife that could be considered a weapon is very very different to actually attacking and assulting and injuring someone. Yes to some degree you could be charged with that in some cases, but it is hardly likely to result in you being charged and sent to prison. Yes police have some power to decide whether to charge someone or not, but in cases of serious crimes they do not have the power to simply say this person is too insane to be charged here. The person would have some form of criminal record, but it would say deemed unfit to stand trail, found guilty because of mental disease or defect, etc. And that can only happen if they have psychiatrists testify in court to that effect. In most cases both sides have psychiatrists saying totally different things, totally disagreeing with each other, etc and the judge and in most cases the jury has to decide which side to believe.

Psychiatric diagnosis is an art not a science. There is no doubt that there are some incredibly distressed and disturbed people out there, but put 10 psychiatrists in a room all interviewing the same person at the same time, take them all out and get them all to write down individaully condition the person has, whether they are mentally ill, etc, etc and you will never find more than half of them agreeing. And police are not and never will be able to detain someone for life because they have decided someone is mentally ill, too mentally ill to stand trail or the like.

Yes there are involuntary committment laws for people who are deemed a risk to themsevles and other people, not able to make informed decisions, etc. But that is very very different to people who have actually killed someone else. You can hardly put a depressed person in the same hospital as someone who is a mass murderer. Regardless of their condition they are totally different people and need to be housed in totally different places and conditions.

Those deemed unfit to stand trail, found guilty by reason of insanity and the like are housed in forensic psychiatric units, which very much prisons, they are not in the standard psychiatric ward of the local hospital. It would never be safe to put them there.

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The average length of stay in a psychiatric hospital these days is 4 days, they do not lock people up for long periods of time and nor do they need to be locked up for long periods of time. It is incredibly unlikely that he was there voluntarily, it was more than likely involuntary and yes it is incredibly common and was incredibly common to be released after only two weeks.

You have to ask what it is that you are dragging all this up for. It happened in 1998, it is now 2011, have you not heard of allowing someone to simply get on with their life. He is not harming you now, so leave him alone. He is working, living successfully, driving, etc, etc. Either accept him or leave him alone and let him get on with his life, he has not done and is not doing anything to hurt you. Just because you do not like what he does, does not mean you can have him locked in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life. I hate people who wear perfume, I hate peopel who talk loud, I hate people who play loud music, I hate people who eat foods that smell near me. It is my responsiblity to get up and walk away from them. If you do not like this person and how he acts walk away from him. What his medical history is and is not is none of your business. Unless you are willing to give him your whole medical history including all of your therapists notes about sessions with you, then you need to rethink what it is that you are asking of him. The other issue you really have to ask yourself is what is your obsession with this guy, why do you insist on knowing his whole medical and personal history, etc etc. If someone was prying into my life the way you are prying into his, I would not be responding to you either. Perhaps if he had committed mass murder or the like then I could udnerstand you being cautious, but then the solution is to just leave him alone. If he does have autism what do you want from him?? You can hardly cure that? WHY are you so obsessed hy him????

Most of the information given to the community about mental illness comes from drug companies which are there purely to make profits. Believe it or not, people can be acutely psychotic and recover without any treatment at all and never relapse again. But no drug company is going to allow you to hear that.

The so called anti psychotics that released everyone from the hospitals were in use for over 10 years as standard treatments for EVERYONE in the wards before ANYONE was released in any number. What the change was the really resulted in their release was a change in US federal government funding for medicare and medicaid and the like, and they also funded nursing homes for the first time. Over 70% of people who were released at that time were released to nursing homes, not to the community. Those that were released to the community did so in federal government funded housing and support. Until the federal government provided housing and support then they kept them in the hospitals, but the hospitals had been built and people locked up for life by telling the community that they were dangerous and risk to other people and the like. The community would not under any circumstances accept them and when it was proposed to release them there was total community outcry that they would all go and kill people, etc, etc. The psychaitric community had to come up with a way to convince people that they were safe to be in the community, and drugs that were said to be chemical labotomoies, that were known to not be treating any condition, had no antipsychotic properties at all - (these are all direct quotes from medical journals of the time), were suddenly labelled as "antipsychotics", they were now treating a specific condition and were now like insulin for diabetes.

Except for one small thing. They were until 1998 doing research in which they were deliberating taking people off medications and giving them illicit drugs like LSD and the like, expected to heighten their psychosis, all in the name of understanding the condition. If these drugs are as essential as insulin for diabetics you do not deliberately withdraw people from them and who would come up with reseach to deliberately make a diabetic worse than they already are.

The lies the psychaitric profession have told are just so huge that they beggar belief. That does not and never will mean that psychotropic drugs do not have a role to play, but we have to stop lying to people, the community and the like. There and never has been any such thing as a chemical imbalance in the brain, in fact the brains of people with these condtions are exactly the same, until they are medicated and then major structural abnormalities result and whole areas die off. Chemotherapy for cancer is hardly good for you, but we do not expect people to take it for life on the basis that they may get cancer again, that they have a high risk of developing cancer and the like. And yet we are putting new born babies on these drugs and causing permanent brain damage to them, becuase they had a parent that had at one stage had a psychotic break.

Have you ever checked to make sure have turned off an appliance more than once, yes, we all have, that means we can all be diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. Have you ever thought someone was talking to you when they weren't, we all have, that means we can all be diagnosed as schizophrenic. Diagnosis is an art, not a science, no two psychiatirsts come up with the same conculsions about anyone.

That does not mean that some people do not do really strange things, do not need to be removed for their own and others safety or that people do not suffer acute distress. It does not mean that these medications do not play a role for some people, good research estimates about 20% of people do well on low doses, but at present we tell people they have a chemical imbalance in the brain, need excessive multiple doses of medication for life and will never be able to do anything at all. There is no research at all to support anything that they are saying. Sure they can give you examples of people who have done well on medication, and they use those case studies all the time, but I can give you millions of people who have smoked for a pack a day of cigarettes for 60+ years and not developed lung cancer. Just because they help one person does not mean they help everyone.

I strongly suspect that this person simply wants to leave that part of their life behind them. It could have been that they had used some form of illicit drug at the time, as most of the people currently being seen in the mental health system do have drug and alcohol problems. I wet my pants in third grade at school, it is hardly something I want to be reminded of every single day and is hardly something I talk about on a daily basis. If you want to accept him for who he is do, but if not then it would probably be nicer to leave him alone. If they really did think he was a risk then he would not have been released and if he was released he would have been released on forced community based treatment orders. People living in the community can be forced to go back to hospital one day each week to have not just medication, but even electro compulsive therapy. Yet they claim to only use that as a last resort, surely if someone is well enough to live in the community, they do not need forced ECT a few times each week. There are people who have been given ECT every second day for over 20 years in the guise of treatment. If the treatment is so successful you would not need to give it to them every second day for 20 years!! !! They are still having this done and so called court ordered treatment to this day in all parts of the US and Australia, and many many other countries in the world, but they are not allowed to be present at the hearings, they can be medicated before being bought before the judge, etc and it is well known and stated in all medical journals and psychiatrists are trained that they MUST lie to judges, they must exacerate every single symptom, they must make up diagnoses, etc, just to ensure the judge agrees with them. How is that following their motto of do no harm??

Yet in many european countries ECT, even voluntary has been totally outlawed, most medications are used at less than a quater of the doses they are in the US and Australia and they do not have higher rates of mental illness or relapse, but lower ones. It is actually possible to treat people like human beings and they will actually respond.

If you want to accept this person as a friend as they are then do so, if not it would actually be nice to leave them in peace, what happened, happened a very long time ago and they should have a right to live their life without being reminded of it on a daily basis. If you cannot accept them with that in their past then don't, just ignore them and get on with your life and allow them to get on with theirs. They are not hurting you now, so why do you need to hurt them??

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Lilah, if you're not related to this person, no psychiatrist is going to give you private information about his diagnoses. It would be a complete breach of ethics. Whether you're concerned about this person or not (and it's obvious you are) there comes a point when badgering someone and trying to dig into their past becomes intrusive. Why, after all, should he tell you what his diagnoses was? If you were his wife, then yes, you'd be entitled to know that information. But you're not his wife, as far as I can tell you're not even his girlfriend. He may be mentally ill, but he deserves to be treated with dignity. If he wants to preserve his privacy, that's his choice. You can't force him to reveal intimate details about his past... I'm sure you don't mean to, but you're treating him very badly, as though he wasn't a proper person, deserving of respect and honour as another human being.

Let things play out. It's not up to you to conduct his life. It may mess up. He could well end up back in hospital. But really, it's not your place to control him.

I do not understand how you are coming up with these ideas. I am not asking him at all what his diagnosis is. I said he would not tell anyone. I can see my posts and they are not saying those things. Also, when I said go to a psychologist I never said his doctor. He does not have one. I said I would go to one to get some insight for myself. As for being his girlfriend or friend, we have talked about getting married. I am not real sure why you are reading this to mean something it doesn't or to assume that I am being cruel to this person but it is not true. It seems this is a sensitive subject for some of you and maybe you are projecting things onto me. I mean no offense to anyone but I would rather not be taken the wrong way with my posts so I will delete them.

Thank you for your replies. Purchase is the only one who did not jump to the conclusion that I was the bad guy here. I am the one trying to help someone who I care about a great deal. Someone who people are forgetting about and treating badly. I did not get into personal detail because this is a message board but may I suggest that when we read people's posts and they are going through a hard time please try to be understanding and give them the benefit of the doubt before jumping to the wrong conclusions and hurting someone's feelings. We never know what the person on the other side of the screen is feeling and what they are feeling could be a lot of pain or may even be in danger.

You said that it was an ex-friend, and now you are saying you are considering marriage to this person. Those are very different types of relationships. This happened in 1998, and he was only in hospital for 2 weeks. If you care about him and he is not willing to share this with you, then perhaps you need to consider whether the relationship is what you want it to be. The fact is it is in the past for him, and quite a distant past at that. What he was diagnosed with then is not even relavent, it is not as though they can do any tests to say this person actually has this condition. Put 2 psychiatrists in a room with the same person at the same time and they will come up with totally different diagnosises. You only have to consider trails where they do plead insanity the two sides have equally qualied and esteemed psychiatrists saying totally opposite things. You are making out that he still has the condition someone said he had 13 years ago, there is no proof that he even had the condition in the first place. Carry out some scientific test to prove the conditions actually exist and that you can accurarately diagnose them and then we might believe it. He may be trobled emotionally and he may have been in the past, but the fact is it is his life and he decides what he wants to do about it. If you believe he is a risk to either himself or other people then you would be able to report that to the states mental health authorities and they can force him to undergo and assessment, but I would be incredibly surprised if they would and it would not be an ideal way to establish a relationship with someone you care about. A person's medical records are there own private records and unless you are sharing all of your therapy records with him then do not expect him to share them with you.

No one has taken what you said out of context, they have simply replied to the information that you presented. You said it happened in 1998 and that he was an ex-friend and that a group of you wanted to know. If that was not the case then why did you say it that way. The fact is even spouses to do have a right to confidential medical information and doctors cannot inform people's spouses that they have been diagnosed with HIV-AID's, let alone anything else, especailly when it occured more than 10 years ago.

If you care about someone all you can do is to present information to them, it is up to them what to do with it. You can suggest that he sees someone, but he decides whether to do it or not. If you really are in an intimate relationship with him, then perhaps some couples counselling would be on the table as you clearly are not communicating well with each other. If he is a real risk to himself and/or other people at the moment then you can report those behaviours to the appropriate authorities, but it is up to them what to do about it and you will not have any right to know the outcome of any assessment, advice or related orders. People have a right to their medical information being kept private, if you are not happy with those laws then you need to talk to your member of parliament about it, since they are the ones who write the laws.

The fact that quite a few of us expressed reservations about your behaviour has obviously upset you, hence your removal of the posts. It seems to me, that rather than consider the possibility that we may be correct, you have removed your comments, so that you can retrospectively edit what you in fact said. So, now that there's no evidence to the contrary, you can suggest that you're this man's girlfriend, that you're discussing marriage, etc, despite there having been no suggestion of this in your posts. In fact, you said he was an "ex friend.," rather than a potential life mate.

The fact is, those of us who read your original posts remember what you actually said, and therefore can see through this ruse, even if you yourself cannot. You accuse everyone who disagrees with your intrusive and controlling behaviour as "projecting", yet ironically don't see that this is what you yourself are doing to us. I really think that instead of expunging your behaviour from the boards, and, by extension, your mind, you should consider your own motives and attitudes. You seem to have no respect for anyone suffering from a mental differece to the norm.

I do wish you well, and hope that you can come to terms with whatever issues are causing you behave in so controlling a manner towards your "ex friend."