People not auction items

How does it feel to be an item auctioned off to the first bidder?  What if at that time you are feeling alone, facing a crisis, cycling through an illness and just wanting to go to  a place where people at least know you and you're close enough to home where friends/family can visit and support you? 

 

People with mental illness going through the inpatient process know this feeling all too well.  I just went through this just a week or so ago and I witnessed another go through the same thing at the same time.

 

In my experience when a person is going through the psychiatric inpatient process they either wait in a busy emergency room or another area while social workers find a bed for you in a psychiatric hospital.  Sometimes your wait is short and other times it's days, it all depends upon what available and where.

 

During the process even though you' voluntary come in to be evaluated you can lose all of your rights and have no choices of your own as to if you can leave or where you will be sent for treatment.  It all depends upon how you 'present' when you are evaluated.  If your deemed in need of psychiatric treatment your right to leave or where you go are determined by many things but definitely not you.

 

You become an item to be auctioned off the first bidder who meet your insurance requirements.

I have come to learn that people with mental illness are viewed as 'lesser than'.  Events can happen to us and there isn't even a blink of an eye.  If it happened to the general public there would be uproar.

There is much to think about when one thinks about the stigma associated with mental illness.  It's far more outreaching than one can even imagine unless one lives it and experiences it every day and in every aspect of life.

M.E.M
August 20 2013