Julia Eubanks
Content Warning: This article contains discussion of mental illness and suicide that may be found emotionally triggering to some readers.
There’s an unspoken notion within the medical world that expects adults to advocate for themselves entirely. Regardless of your condition, most of your care from the second you step out of those sterile curtains in that doctor’s room is, really, up to you.
Now, a week’s worth of prescribed antibiotics can work wonders, but I am not talking about that. I’m talking about my 18-year-old self being wrongfully diagnosed with bipolar disorder with no rhyme, reason, or resources to follow because I was feeling depressed.
I’m talking about my chronically ill mother who is being continuously wrongfully released from the ER as her condition continues to be chalked up to her being “anxious”.
I’m talking about my childhood best friend who was wrongfully diagnosed with borderline personality disorder under unjust diagnostic criteria, despite her Autism being clearly present from birth.
I’m talking about my best friend being raped by two men when she was 15 and being shamed by her family doctor for being in “the wrong place at the wrong time” and being given selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) to help her “adjust”.
I’m talking about my best friend being given full access to the medications she overdosed on not 72 hours before she tried to commit suicide with the same medications.
I’m talking about the thousands of people a year that go home after being dismissed from the hospital and take their own lives because they did not receive the care they should have. Because they weren’t listened to. Because it was easier to just let them go. Because it was cheaper. A human life; a daughter, a mother, a best friend. A person in need trusting the system that is here to help us.
Tell me, how did we get to this point. How can we trust the system to take care of us as we blindly put our consent into the hands of these institutions, only to be set free completely blinded. Well, I guess it’s as simple as these places are essential and they’re the only places we can go. The system knows that and continues to take advantage of that. Cui bono? (To whom is it a benefit?)
There are fantastic doctors and healthcare workers out there that are, arguably, some of the most selfless and resilient people on this earth, but they are only human and are ultimately at the hands of the system at large. Just like you and me. I don’t know where we can go or how to fix what needs to, so desperately, be fixed. I don’t know how to fix the things that are in between the blank spaces within our world that are causing the collective headaches we are feeling. I am only human outside these sterile curtains and I simply don’t know.
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