Month: October 2020

This account of my experience is purposely anonymised because I am not ready for those in my life to know the pain that mental health services and police have put me through. This began during a difficult period of my life in which I was the victim of physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse in a relationship that I truly believed was impossible to leave safely. I had been under mental health services for most of my life not by choice and had made a lot of progress. Without being too graphic, the abuse started almost instantaneously and I was kept in line with the threat of harm to himself and me. He controlled me and he ran my life for nearly six months during which I attempted suicide a number of times. The police had a lot of involvement in my life at this point, every time I survived, I became more determined that I was the plague on this earth and that ending my existence would solve all the problems we see throughout society. I had graphic nightmares in which I survived and had to watch those around me be tortured and murdered and struggled immensely with trauma symptoms. 

My suicide attempts have been labelled as ‘a cry for help’ when in reality, every time I was saved, I thought I could feel someone else die as a result of my ‘failure’. At the time I wasn’t told about this but my local team and police force made a ‘crisis plan’ detailing how to ‘deal’ with me in a crisis and avoid ‘reinforcing’ what they believe to be attention seeking behaviours. This plan was in place for four months before I was made aware it existed and I was not shown a copy of this plan I had supposedly agreed to until two months after this. Six months in total.

The plan states that if I am found in public in a crisis situation, I am to be taken to hospital for a capacity assessment. If I am deemed to have capacity the officers involved must arrest me for any offence that they feel appropriate. 

When I was told about this plan the explicit instructions I was given were “to not commit suicide in a public environment”. I was also told that I could “do what I wanted in my personal space” AKA I can take my own life as long as it does not inconvenience any other people.

This plan has destroyed my faith in mental health and police services and has meant I am now unable to talk freely about my mental health as I fear arrest if I am honest with how I feel. I also know that I can’t risk surviving future crises and I am sure that if I was to get into such a desperate situation again, I would not walk it off. 

Mental health services are designed to treat a very specific range of presentations. As soon as you fall either side of their ‘worthy of treatment’ parameters you become a disposable commodity like I and so many others have. Knowing that those who should care have no desire to work with you is the total opposite of help. I was in a vulnerable situation and those meant to help me turned their backs leaving me in dangerous and damaging situations because of how they perceive my suffering. 

I am not a criminal. 

I am a survivor and I will not stay quiet any longer.

For the past two years I had hid my shame and embarrassment. I felt like I was to blame, even though I was the victim. I was told I was to criticize, and it was my choice; my choice to be arrested and my choice to die.

My crime? I tried to kill myself, believe it or not, dying is hard, so I was slow, and I was able to be saved for better or for worst.

In 2018-19 I found myself miserable and just wanted to die, I was expiring the consequences of another person actions against me, I was expensing the symptoms of PTSD or C-PTSD. I did not see a way forward, life felt so painful, and I felt that my death was the only way forward.

I had just been discharged from my first hospital stays in a psychiatric unit. I was just kicked to the curb I had not been told what would be happening, I was told to go home in to the community with no preparation or help. Just after an admission is a time that the NHS have admitted increases rise of death though suicide. I felt so loss and hopeless, I stupidly publicity tried to kill myself, I regret it now, the police took me to the ED, and I was told “I had capacity” after the nurse talked to the police who voiced their concerns and the mental health team told them I was not feeling real depression and the trauma in my life was fictitious. How does one have capacity when I had actively tried so hard to be dead.

The police were left without much of a choice and arrested me. What choice did the police have when I was dead set on killing myself.

Believe it or not, being arrested when you did nothing wrong was traumatizing. Every day I carry the burden of my arrests and I feel my skin crawl with every mild flash back. I went through the normal booking routine, and I was informed that they did it to try and force the hand of mental health services into helping me and that I would most likely be out the next day. I complied with the whole booking proceed, and I was dumped in a concrete cold cell in a paper dress. My mug shot was taken and fingerprints. The police admitted I was mentally unwell and added several comments about how poor the local mental health hospital is, lack of bed and constantly having missing patients (over 200 patients reported missing in just 2 years). I was let go after 14 hours with not even a mark against my name.

This arrest just catapulted my problem and I spun out of control. I felt like I was marked with another label, the label of a criminal. I keep repeating in my head that I should have competed the suicide. That marked my second attempt to end my life and acted as catalyst for my year of hell.

Imagen being abandoned by the NHS at the start of your mental health journey, forced to live though the forced unparalleled consequences of actions that everyone saw as mental illness. A custody cell and under trained police officers is not equal to mental health support. Custody cells should not be used as an extension of the mental heathy system, they are not a resort to be use in times of mental health crisis. Police can not deal with people like me, I, by their own admission had committed no crime. The crime that they did arrest me with was a ‘breach of the peace’, an arrestable offence in Scotland

I find myself here today. Nothing has really changed; police are still being used as an extension of the mental health services without any of the training that come with it. Why should a health emergency be treated the same why as a criminal matter? Why is this acceptable?

How is locking someone up in a custody cell a punishment for trying to end one’s life? Why does someone need to be ‘punished’ for a mental health emergency.

If the NHS trust continues to view the police as a first responder for a mental health crisis, they should be open and honest about their use with the NHS mental health system.

Why did the NHS allow an 18-year girl to be locked up because of a lack of mental health services?