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Chained locked door
She was a middle-aged homemaker hospitalized in a locked psychiatric unit where I was a graduate student working as a psych technician. Our lives intersected in 1974, a year after Roe v Wade was decided. And, as it turns out, her hospitalization and that landmark Supreme Court decision addressed a key question. Who gets to decide what we can and cannot do with our bodies?
This woman (call her Ruth) had been pressured into seeing a psychiatrist of her spouse’s choosing who diagnosed her with major depressive disorder. Then, against her will but with hubby’s concurrence, she was sent to a locked psych unit which prohibited visitors or phone calls without the attending psychiatrist’s permission. So, Ruth was held incommunicado, unable to speak or correspond with family or friends. Basically, she was a prisoner who had no rights.
Assigned to Ruth, I was responsible for interacting with her frequently, as well as recording my observations of her mood, thoughts and behaviors. She was immediately placed on antidepressant medication and the nurses were ordered to confirm she took it. The psychiatrist’s notes indicated Ruth’s husband was aware of and in full agreement with her course of treatment, and that she would be scheduled for Electro-Convulsive Therapy, or ECT. Basically, her body was under their control.
Sexist Psychiatry
After several hours of interacting with Ruth, it became obvious to me, even if just a grad student, that she was not suffering major depression or any other significant mental illness. She was agitated and angry about being confined against her will, but other than that, she was as sane as the day is long.
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So why was she hospitalized? Because her husband considered her stated plans to become more independent by going to college and starting a career as a sign she was mentally unbalanced. To him, a woman’s place was in the home, period. He called his psychiatrist golf buddy and, together, they conspired to keep her in what they felt was her place. It’s called sexism and misogyny. And, sadly at that time, what was done to Ruth was perfectly legal. Due to the biases and whims of two men, she had lost control over her body, her person.
So, when she asked if I would call her attorney friend and apprise him of her conundrum, I had to mull it over. Should I be found out, it would cost my job and perhaps threaten my career. After all, at that time, psychiatrists were like gods. Patients and families didn’t question their judgment, and on a locked psych ward, their wish was the staff’s command. But there wasn’t much to contemplate. Like many of you, I have this thing about fairness, human rights and the freedom to control one’s health care decisions, and Ruth’s dilemma hit all three. So, she gave me the attorney’s name and number, and after leaving work, I made the call.
Self-Determination
I was on the early shift the next day, had slept little, and was near the unit door when someone on the outside started pounding. I opened it to behold her attorney who asked that I summon the head nurse. Once she arrived, he stated his intentions.
“I have a writ of habeas corpus. You will release Ruth to me immediately,” he told us, handing the nurse the paperwork. After a flurry of phone calls, release her they did. It didn’t take a genius to narrow the main suspect for this insubordination to yours truly. When confronted, I came clean. Were it not for the intercession of another psychiatrist who shared my values in this matter, I would have been fired in short order.
Today, laws regulating involuntary commitment for mental illness make a repeat of Ruth’s situation unlikely. But make no mistake. There are plenty of people who, whether out of self-interest or holier-than-thou ideology, will readily deprive others of their right to self-determination, given the opportunity. Historically in our nation, their primary victims have been women, people of color, folks with mental illness, LGBTQ individuals, Native Americans, the homeless and the developmentally challenged. It’s a self-inflicted wound that hurts us all.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. told us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
For more, visit philipchard.com.
