She fought against making it easier to commit the mentally ill -- then found herself committed! [View all]
Last edited Sat Jan 31, 2015, 10:44 PM - Edit history (1)
The morning of the recommitment hearing, Alison Hymes sat in a small waiting area of a Virginia mental hospital in a navy blue sweatsuit, clutching a green composition book to her chest.
She’d scribbled down a list of arguments in favor of releasing her from Western State Hospital in Staunton, Va. They included: “Been here too long” and “Becoming institutionalized.”
“I don’t think they will listen to them,” she said.
Hymes had said similar things at the six other recommitment hearings she’d had over the previous 17 months, after a judge ruled that she was a danger to herself and involuntarily hospitalized her for the second time in three years. Her bipolar disorder had landed her in institutions multiple times over three decades, but never for this long.
The day before the hearing last May, she posted on Facebook: “Afraid I will be committed for two more months.”
Hymes was no ordinary patient. Before landing at Western, she spent years urging others with mental illness and their families not to let doctors, judges and social workers make decisions for them. She was part of a state task force charged with reforming civil commitment laws at the time of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, serving alongside doctors, academics, and law enforcement officials.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/she-fought-for-patients-rights-then-she-was-put-in-a-hospital-against-her-will/2015/01/31/c306f01c-a1b0-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read