Addressing the Healthcare to Prison Pipeline
I’ve always struggled with my mental health. Being an adopted Chinese woman growing up in predominantly white areas of Florida and North Carolina, I’ve been forced to consider my identity from a young age–and each time a new part of my identity came into the spotlight, I spiraled.
I’ve been hospitalized to psychiatric wards four times: twice as a child, and twice as an adult.
Many of us already have some knowledge on the school-to-prison pipeline, which The National Education Association defines as “The practice of pushing kids out of school and toward the juvenile and criminal justice systems.”
As it turns out, the education system is not the only channel in which individuals with “lower” status (due to a number of factors such as socioeconomic status and racial identity) are sieved to delinquency and eventually prisons; the healthcare system can also pipeline to prisons.
This is my story about being institutionalized as an adult twice within the same month, and how lucky I am to have escaped.
During my freshman year in high school, I realized that I was gay–well, not entirely. I still liked men, but the same kind of feeling you get when you have a crush applied (for me) to women as well. I kept it a secret throughout high school. My dad was a pastor, my whole family Christian, and I attended a Christian school at the time. There was no possible way I could tell anyone without becoming an outcast.
In July 2020, I lost my dad to a 5-month battle with cancer. He died without knowing the truth about my identity. I never told him. I let him die with a false version of myself in his head.
Flash forward to June 2022. After attending my first Pride Parade, I was met with nothing but love and support from my friends and family. It didn’t make any sense to me. I thought they should be hating me, despising the dirty sin that I cloak myself in everyday. I couldn’t accept the fact people could be interested in my heart, regardless of who it beats for. I spiraled.
Manic, I ran away from home. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was convinced that the birds outside were guiding me on a grand journey. I followed them down the road until I reached the church that sits less than a mile from my house. I didn’t connect the dots at the time, but I was at the church of whose gym my dad and I used to play basketball together at. I had ran straight toward a physical manifestation of my trauma: the religious trauma telling me that who I am is inherently bad, and the trauma of losing a parent as a teenager.
The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital gown. My well-intentioned mother had driven me there, concerned for my safety. I was admitted to the behavioral hospital, or psychiatric ward, on an IVC Petition.
IVC stands for Involuntary Commitment, and is described by NC Health News as the following:
Involuntary commitment (IVC) is a legal process in which a layperson or medical professional asks a judge to order mental health or substance use treatment for an individual against their will. It’s supposed to be used when a person is an immediate “danger to themselves or others.” It results in the temporary loss of an individual’s right to make their own health decisions and forces people to have treatment.
In other words, I was being held at the hospital against my own will as an adult. My decision-making rights were overruled, leaving me in the hands of medical professionals. I had no idea what any of this meant–nor did my mom. I was taken away from her and placed in the psych ward without a clue as to what was happening to me. Covid-19 restrictions also kept my mom from visiting me at any point during my admittance.
Being in the psych ward as a child is very different from being in the psych ward as an adult–specifically, a young adult. I was surrounded by people who were decades older than me, each with their own mental health struggle, telling me what to do. Some tried to tell me how to escape, where others told me to “enjoy my stay.” It was not just overwhelming, but terrifying. I was an adult like them, but I’m only 20; if a 50-year-old patient tells me I’m going crazy, I’m going to believe them.
The doctor who treated me–a psychiatrist–diagnosed me with Bipolar I, a mood disorder characterized by manic-depressive episodes. For me, it was the mania that gave it away. Remember the birds I followed?
The problem was that she (the doctor) didn’t explain to me what Bipolar Disorder is, how she reached that diagnosis, or what the new medications she prescribed were going to do to help me. I spent 9 days in the ward throwing back mystery pills.
Two weeks after I left the hospital, I was still experiencing extreme mania. This time, I was convinced that someone (completely unidentifiable) was on their way to hurt me. Once again, I ran away from home. But this time, I wasn’t at home with my mom; I was home alone at my college apartment. Nobody knew I was “missing.” I just started running.
I found myself wandering aimlessly around my college campus until I spotted a shadowy figure in the distance. Suddenly, a wave of anger pushed me forward, and I followed him through the backdoor of a local restaurant. I was determined to find the person trying to hurt me; I thought I could fight them.
Inside, I caused a commotion. Fully manic, I jumped atop the tables and demanded the workers tell me what was going on (as if they had any clue). Suddenly, I saw bright flashing lights from outside. They had called the cops on me. I was detained and transported to the nearest hospital, screaming the entire time. I feared for my life. I’m lucky my skin isn’t any darker than it already is.
I woke up the next morning wearing scrubs in a triage room. My mom had been contacted, but she was told she couldn’t see me due to Covid restrictions. Before I could switch back into “manic mode” and make a dash for the lobby, the county sheriff arrived and told me she was taking me to another hospital. I was once again being IVC Petitioned.
This second hospitalization hit harder than the first. My fellow patients were closer to my age–albeit, still a generation or two older–and were more open with their stories. This made the overall stay a lot easier. I felt like I had friends.
What didn’t change between the two hospitalizations, however, were the doctors who lacked any sign of empathy. This particular doctor, a man, made me confess to being an addict–all because my drug test came back positive. I’m 20 and in college. Sue me! I thought I was being treated for Bipolar I, not substance abuse. I began to wonder if I really was an addict, and how stupid I was for ever thinking of myself as being above such a title: Addict. Ali the Addict.
When sharing experiences with my fellow patients, everyone seemed to have something in common: a long history of drug abuse, mental illness, and for many, homelessness. Very few of them had received an education beyond high school; many hadn’t completed high school. The majority of us were racial minorities.
The goal of psychiatric wards, as they claim, is to get us on the right medical track so that we can be “stable, functioning adults” beyond the institution. But how can we feel stable when kept within the bounds of a ward, only seeing the doctor once a day for no longer than 20-30 minutes? This is where problems arise. Where I was lucky enough to have a family waiting to pick me up and take me home, most of my fellow patients were making arrangements for Oxford Houses, or “peer-driven, democratically run, and self-supported group residences for individuals in recovery from a substance use disorder.” One patient ended up back on the streets upon his release. So, are IVC Petitions really doing their job?
According to Rafik Wahbi and Leo Beletsky (2022):
Involuntary commitment links the healthcare, public health, and legislative systems to act as a “carceral health-service.” While masquerading as more humane and medicalized, such coercive modalities nevertheless further reinforce the systems, structures, practices, and policies of structural oppression and white supremacy.
Throwing mentally ill individuals into a pit with other mentally ill individuals for days to weeks at a time is NOT premium healthcare. It is a way for hospitals to say they’ve done their job before releasing us back out into the world, largely still disoriented and confused, only to end up back in another institution.
I will never forget the feeling of being lifted from the ground by police officers telling me to stop crying. I will never forget being strapped down to a gurney, unable to move my extremities. I will never forget the faces of those I met within the psych wards, who offered me more support and comfort than nurses who disregarded my reports of being sexually harassed within the ward. I will never forget what it felt like to be a prisoner, even if I wasn’t technically in a “prison.”
The big takeaway from all of this: increase funding to American schools and healthcare facilities, decrease funding to American prisons and police officers who couldn’t care less about the well-being and safety of us citizens.
Our education matters. So does our health. We all deserve equitable access to quality schools and health facilities that will actually serve us–not throw us in wards or prisons every time we act out due to previous systems’ failing us.
My 10 Cents 