You just get a ph. call says "your friend who was entered yest. into a psyciatric place for loosing their way?

Question

Whist the world at large consideres your friend a fine and well balanced person, and they now mentally had to be drugged and restrained,

Their condition wasn't good, and were pleading for you to come and get them out of this mistake.

What do you do?

Answer 1

The question I have is what do you mean by loosing their way?

Regardless I go and talk to the person, their family, who ever was around that admitted the person, as well as the doctors (if they will discuss it).  Find out what happened to get them placed in the institution.

It might be real and they need to be there.  

It could also be a horrible mistake or something else.  As for the drugs to calm an agitated patient if any of us were pick up and forcibly placed in a mental institution without cause I suspect most of us would be agitated also.  

The problem is that the receiving hospital usually only knows what they have been told and of course rarely listen to the patient since all say they are just fine and do not need to be there.  If there really has been a mistake, then the person’s friends and family need to go have a long talk with the hospital administrators.

However, that major of a mistake does not happen often.  I have seen one case and we did get the person out though it did take longer than any of us would have liked.  (The person was in a messy divorce who’s spouse worked in law enforcement.  Some of the officer’s friends took the person to the facility to try to show instability in regards to the child custody. Obviously the person at the time was according to the admission records “agitated upon arrival and needed to be restrained and calmed with drugs”.  Needless to say the legal battle got even messier after that stunt.  As well as other groups also got sued. That was also about 20 years ago.  Rules/laws are a little different now.)

However, back to your situation, I doubt it is that extreme of a situation.  The best thing for you to do is be a friend.  Visit your friend see what is really going on and be supportive.  For while a person can seem just fine to everyone, there can be something just below the surface that simply “snaps” one day.  The best thing to do is try to help them though it as best you can, depending on the situation the doctors will sometimes give suggestions to help your friend if you ask.

May Our Creator watch over you, your family and your friend.

- - - edit - - - -

If possible I would contact her immediate family (they have more legal rights to see documents and discuss matters with the doctors.)  Make sure there really isn’t a problem with her, drugs or something else that no one is aware of. Perhaps get an independent doctor, if there really doesn’t appear any problems other than being confined against her will, legal action from the family usually gets the medical department as well as the police departments attention.  However, it might be best to have her family contact the lawyer first especially if there were inappropriate actions made by the police officer.  Just to make sure there are no legal mistakes.

For if a police officer really did do such a thing, he needs to be removed from police work and have a major blot on his record to keep him from ever having that type of position again.

Police work is tough and challenging enough, without the few corrupt ones giving the good ones a bad reputation.

May Our Creator watch over you and everyone on your side of the screen.