Why I Was Involuntarily Hospitalized

Let me start by saying that leading up to my hospitalization I was doing everything right. I was taking my medications, I was going to therapy, I was still showing up for work and school. Sometimes prevention plans don't completely work. Sometimes we need an extra level of support, and that's okay.

Like I said, for months before my hospitalization I was completely med compliant and working hard in therapy, but I was still headed in a downward spiral toward depression. I remember going into my therapist's office for a few weeks in a row telling her I just didn't feel right. I wasn't motivated to do any extra projects let alone the projects that were being assigned to me in school. I was starting to fall behind in my classes, and I had midterms coming up. I'd been depressed before, but at those times I didn't have the insight into my illness. This time I did, and it felt like a death sentence. I became obsessed with the idea that my treatment wasn't working and that my illness would cause me to be unable to achieve any of my goals. It seemed pointless to go on trying.

So week after week I went to see my therapist, where she would ask more and more questions about my suicidal ideations, trying to nail down exactly how serious I was. On a Monday afternoon, I was on the phone with her, crying because the voices were telling me to kill myself and helping me make plans. She convinced me to hold out one more day and to go see her in person the next morning, so I did. Once there, it became clear that I wasn't going to be convinced that any plan besides ending my life made enough sense to me to not do it.

After about half an hour of talking, my therapist picked up the phone and had someone bring in paperwork to have me officially placed on a 5150 hold. (I live in California.) I had gone to her office that day convinced that we could come up with some other plan that would let me go home after the appointment, safe and feeling more hopeful. It's hard to explain why I had no hope left, from an outsider's perspective things weren't going so badly. Sure, I was sleeping a little too much and not showering as often as I should have been, but it seemed like a situation I could move past. At least it seemed like that to everyone except for me. My therapist probably saved my life that day, and I'm still working on being grateful for that.