Member-only story
Should You Have a Psychiatric Advance Directive?
Hospitalizations for mental health can be helpful, but for some people they can create traumatic memories, and distrust of doctors, especially if the facility is less than ideal. My own personal experiences with hospitalization have shown that facilities can vary greatly, and that advocating for yourself in advance is important to the type of experience you may have. As an adolescent, I entered a local behavioral health inpatient program where the entire floor of teenagers were given depakote at night regardless of diagnosis, which almost resulted in liver failure for me by the time I was discharged. I had a strong distrust of medications and mental health professionals for years after. As an adult I have re-established a healthy relationship with mental health care, but avoiding the gap in care due to a quality lapse in an inpatient experience would have been most beneficial.
There are many conditions and symptoms that may cause you to become unable to make your own decisions including substance abuse disorders, psychosis, PTSD and more. My experiences with hospitalization combined with years of working in the healthcare field showed me the importance of advance directives and raised a question for me: As an adult who suffers from mental illnesses, how would I like to be treated in a mental health emergency situation, and how could I make those wishes known?
