“On Thursday January 9th, I was transported by the Pardubice Region’s Rapid Rescue Service after an examination at the Choceň clinic and on the recommendation of my general practicioner, first to Pardubice to the psychiatric department of the local hospital (supposedly for examination by a psychiatrist). There they refused to accept me, saying that I was going to Svitavy. In Svitavy I was led to a closed department (patient admission apparently did not work at the time). I refused to enter the ward, wanting to stay in the corridor and wait for my wife who followed us (already from Pardubice) by train. Finally, I succumbed to constant verbal and mild physical pressure and entered the closed ward. Here I underwent a breath test and was eventually taken to a room where I was forced to undress and was strapped to a bed. At the same time, blood was taken from my right arm and two injections were injected, each into one thigh. I knew that if I fought back, it would only make my situation worse, so I contradicted only verbally. I didn’t have time to express my disapproval of the blood being drawn from my right arm. When I asked if one of the injections injected was the one to put me to sleep, I was told that it did not. A little later (time was getting very subjective by then), the nurse told me that my wife had been to see me, but she had already left because I was asleep. I knew I hadn’t slept, I heard my wife talking in the hallway behind the door, and I waited for her to walk into the room, which didn’t happen. I got worried that she was also hospitalized (I knew a similar case from NEKLID.net). I didn’t get lunch or dinner Thursday.
On Friday the 10th, after breakfast, I was released from the straps at the doctor’s instruction and was free to move around the closed ward. My wife also visited me in the afternoon, which partially calmed me down. She told me that on Thursday, the doctor told her that I was strapped to my bed, and that I was asleep. No one prevented her from entering the room, but she responded with tears and did not go to the room because she did not expect the doctor to mislead her.
I’ve been through Saturday and Sunday quite peacefully, with nothing special going on in the department. They took one patient into isolation and put on the bed, who was in convulsions after being given some “medication.” Immediate isolation and courting were, I think, the only forms of help this person. In doing so, other patients were rushed into their rooms so they wouldn’t notice.
By that time, I was already spitting administered “drugs” (fearing I would be exposed as an uncooperative patient), fortunately no one noticed anything and the use of prescribed psychiatric drugs was not consistently controlled. I was mentally helped by regular visits to my wife and also by visiting a social worker from the Pardubice Vida centre.
I was crawling down the corridors and pretending apathy so as not to raise suspicion that I was not using prescribed (strongly suppressive) psychoactive drugs. I kept repeating in rounds that I didn’t understand why I was actually hospitalized. According to a doctor’s note, it was said to be because of my bizarre behaviour (I was wearing underpants on leggings and leggings on my bare body under my corduroys – but that’s how I dress normally in winter, and it could only be noticed when I was forced to undress in a hospital room, so it could hardly be a reason to be hospitalized).
On Monday 13th, thanks to a co-operating doctor, I was released on so-called negative revers. So, according to the spa doctor, I must have had to sign my consent to be hospitalized, but I’m not aware of anything like that.
I beleive I have signed only the lesson (instruction) that I was at risk of deterioration of my state of health or even death in the event of “early” discharge.
Such (in my opinion unfounded) risk I was willing to take to get out of an environment that I certainly did not see as supportive, but much more as an environment for my mental and physical health inappropriate and directly threatening.
I rate my overall health after involuntary hospitalization as significantly impaired, however manageable in home care. In the period from March 17th to April 6th this year I completed a stay in the spa (on the proposal of my outpatient psychiatrist) shortened with regard to the declaration of an emergency in the Czech Republic by one week.
I am aware that from the point of view of conventional medicine ,”I suffer from a long-term and practically incurable mental disorder”. I know I’m not in perfect order from a medical point of view. I know that I would need to be hospitalized from time to time (but I want a hospitalization that would be beneficial to health – conducted, for example, in the spirit of Diabasis or Soteria), but I do not see any facility in the Czech Republic offering or allowing such a thing, state or private).
Soteria does not operate in the Czech Republic and Czech Diabasis does not offer hospitalization, only cooperates with Prague Bohnice, where it sends cases in which it sees hospitalization as necessary. Plus, there’s a therapist who’s already failed my trust once and indirectly caused my first forced hospitalization in 1998. But I’m already writing too much.
P.S. On Tuesday, June 2nd, after exhaustive inquiry into the circumstances of my involuntary hospitalization the Svitavy District Court ruled after three hearings that there had been lawful reasons for the forced hospitalization and even for the restriction in movement by strapping me to the bed. These had lasted from Thursday January 9th to Monday January 13th, 2020.”
J. B., The Czech Republic