Using College Mental Health Services Can Lead To Students Getting Removed From Campus

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/07/college-mental-health-services_n_5900632.html

As a freshman who had dealt with severe bulimia and anorexia in the past, Williams developed depression. While at Yale Health Urgent Care to get bandaged in January 2013 for cutting herself, a university psychiatrist came to speak with her.

Williams said she was explicit when she told the psychiatrist the cuts were not a suicide attempt. It was self-destructive behavior, she conceded, but it always made her feel "more in control." Still, Yale officials suggested she leave the university, at least temporarily, and get admitted to the hospital for immediate treatment, she said.

"I realized after a few minutes it wasn't a choice," Williams recalled to The Huffington Post. "I had officially lost my autonomy."

Authorities locked Williams inside the Yale-New Haven Hospital, and later transferred her to the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital for a week. None of it was voluntary, she said. Days after Williams was released, she was told by the university she needed to go home to continue therapy, withdraw from college, and apply for readmission in the fall.

Remember this the next time there is a campus shooting with the inevitable link to mental illness. And as a Yalie with a condition that has a number in the DSM (the Bible of mental illness in the U.S.), I can relate.

[NYC_SKP]

1. The lack of freedom to be honest has a chilling effect on the quality of care we receive.

If a person had a substance abuse problem, for example, they might deny it to their providers and then suffer as a result and, in the end, cost society more than if they could be completely honest with the doctor.

Once upon a time I smoked, but I didn't tell my doctor because I didn't want it on my chart.

I knew it could be used to punish me one way or another.

I guess HIPPA doesn't go far enough.