“My experiences of being sectioned have been on a spectrum of life saving to useless.”

The first time I was sectioned I was taken off the railway lines by police and detained on a Section 136- a power to detain you and take you to a place of safety if they suspect you are suffering a mental illness and require immediate help. For me this meant I was taken by ambulance to my local 136 suite at the psychiatric hospital, where I would have to wait to have a Mental Health Act Assessment.

I was on 2:1 observation whilst I waited for the relevant professionals. I remember being terrified, unable to contact anybody to let them know where I was or hear a reassuring voice on the end of the phone. I was agitated and the nurses did their best to calm me down and distract me with YouTube videos. The room was small and claustrophobic. I felt caged up, they suggested I tried to sleep a little, so I curled up in my chair with a blanket.

Because I was in a safe place and no longer in the community, I was not a priority to be assessed so there was a long wait. I was exhausted and engulfed by my depression which meant I didn’t remember much about what was discussed.

Although I don’t remember much, I do remember that some shitty things were said to me about my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. They assumed that I must have been attention seeking. If I wanted attention I could think of much better and less painful ways to get it.

I was devastated that I was at my lowest and still people wouldn’t treat me with respect and listen to what was happening for me. I was on the tracks because I was going to kill myself, not to cause a scene or manipulate people. I was at my lowest and no amount of my sobbed words seemed to convey to them how despairing and desperate I was.

Despite the prejudice and stigma of my diagnosis there was no denying I was poorly. I was deeply depressed and hearing command hallucinations to hurt and kill myself. I wasn’t safe and I was desperate for someone to help me.

As a result, it was agreed I would be admitted into hospital as a voluntary patient. I was cooperative with them and wanted help, whatever that looked like. Had I refused help, they likely would have discharged me home because of my diagnosis and the prejudiced beliefs about ‘PD patients’ being a waste of NHS resources. This felt abhorrent because I know that I would have lost my life without intervention.

This was just the first of three occasions where I have been sectioned by the police and taken to a place of safety. Though many people have bad experiences, I have to say I cannot fault the police I have met during these times of crisis, they have treated me with the care and respect that should be given by all professionals.

I watch a lot of videos on TikTok of people in the back of police vans being detained by police officers, sometimes as if its trendy but honestly for me these times have been very traumatic. Being bundled into the back of a police van is terrifying and having to be transported in secure transport across the country with someone in arms reach of you is humiliating. Not being able to go to the toilet alone, being thoroughly searched and being restrained are disturbing experiences too. I often think it’s a good job I was so unwell and out of it because if I remembered the trauma of it then it would haunt me.

The last time I was sectioned I was already an informal patient in hospital, but I was deteriorating and very poorly with delusions and hallucinations. I don’t remember what led up to this day as all the days blurred into one during this time. I was barely sleeping, I was low, and I was paranoid. To be honest I was a complete mess and not sure how I even made it to this point.

I left the ward and whilst I have patchy memories of what happened that day its not something I am entirely clear about. I was reported as a missing person and the police found me about eight hours later in a highly dangerous situation. I was found by a group of six officers and a police dog who did their best to usher me safely into the back of their van without making a potentially fatal situation worse.

Back on the ward I had to agree to keep myself safe. The next day though in a meeting it was decided that I wasn’t well enough to stay on the ward, it was a mental health rehab bed I was in so you had to be ‘well enough’ to be there, whatever that means. To be honest it just felt like they were fobbing me off, dead people on the ward doesn’t look good for them.

The irony is though that I tried to leave the hospital by climbing over the fence and in doing this got restrained and sectioned. Cue my transfer to an acute ward until I was ‘better’. This put me in a ridiculous situation that I was shipped back into acute care that doesn’t provide the long term help you need but unable to return to a therapeutic ward until I was ‘better’. It’s like telling a diabetic that you will give them insulin once they’ve controlled their blood sugars.

So, my experiences of being sectioned have been on a spectrum of life saving to useless. I know that I owe my life to having my freedom taken away from me, but I can’t help feel that early intervention would have prevented some pretty scary scenarios. I feel we need to get better as a society at helping people before they get to a point where they are too ill to help themselves.