Rudy’s Story
I have been forcibly hospitalized three times. The first time was while serving in the army in 2009, and the second and third times were in 2014 about a month apart. All of these hospitalizations were traumatizing for a variety of reasons, but the third time was by far the worst.
In 2014, I was in community college and was experiencing a great deal of stress due to pushing myself too hard. As a 26-year-old college student, I felt like a failure for having taken so long to begin college. I also felt ashamed of having a mental health diagnosis and being discharged from the army for that reason. I never felt like I quite fit in with my classmates or with students taking part in the extracurricular activities I participated in, such as my theater group. I was scared that I would never fit in or be normal.
One day, as I was driving to rehearsal for my theater group, I began to panic. I felt intense anxiety due to not being able to learn my lines as a result of the psychiatric medications I was taking. When I arrived at the theater, I became catatonic. The director called the ambulance, and I was put in restraints and taken to the emergency room. Although I was only in the emergency room for a few hours, the experience felt traumatizing and further isolated me from my peers.
Wanting to put that experience behind me, I continued with school and theater. However, the pressure kept building up. I started to feel like I couldn’t handle it, and I didn’t see a solution. I did not wish to drop out of school, but I also could not see myself making it to the end of the semester.
One day, just a few hours before rehearsal, I isolated myself in my room, hiding under my covers, feeling like everything in the outside world was just too much. A friend came to check on me, and I was unresponsive. My friend then called my roommate, who called the police.