"A Section 136 only lasts a maximum of 72 hours, at which point you are released, or, like Nikki, placed on a Section 2, which gives your mental health team up to 28 days to assess and treat you. I was told that the unit was a low stimulus environment so there wasn’t much going on. However, the organisations must reassess your needs before reaching that conclusion. "It's a comma in a sentence," says Dr Salter.
Being sectioned meant that I was in a place of safety until the crisis had passed.Six months on, my mental health has greatly improved – largely due to the treatment regime that was devised for me in hospital – and I’m glad to be alive.It’s thanks to being sectioned that I’m still here.For emotional support you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on Writer and mother, passionately outspoken about living with mental illness.What it’s really like behind the doors of a psychiatric hospitalHow to sort out your drinking as we come out of lockdown - and what tricks actually workGrandma's monthly manicure 'saved her life' after her nails revealed lung cancerKim Kardashian focuses on babies Psalm and True after tense reunion with Kanye WestCreeper star 'believed he could kill people by blinking at them' during psychotic episodeI felt like I had to 'man up' instead of talking about my mental healthHow lockdown has transformed the rules of dating (and how you can still find love)Please don’t drink hand sanitiser just because it has alcohol in itGrandma’s monthly manicure ‘saved her life’ after her nails revealed lung cancerMenthol smokers tell us what they’re going to do now the cigarettes have been banned in the UKHow to cut back on drinking alcohol as we come out of lockdown – and what tricks actually workDentist shares trick to tighten your face mask if it’s too loosely fitted While Claire, who after her night in a police cell was eventually sectioned in hospital, says patients would gossip about staff members.Many people I spoke to felt that their discharge was too soon or that there wasn't the right care on the outside. Mental health, emotional wellbeing & personal developmentBeing sectioned means being detained under a ‘section’ (paragraph) of the While you’re sectioned, you can be held in a hospital, or receive treatment while continuing to live at home (known as a community treatment order).
Being sectioned meant that I was in a place of safety until the crisis had passed. They also must provide reasons for their decision. My husband and I put the case for discharge to the doctor, and I was allowed to leave.The 10 days that followed were a terrifying descent into a darker place than I’d ever been before.A condition of my discharge was that I was seen regularly at home by the local That afternoon, I was visited at home by three mental health professionals whose job was to decide whether I should be re-admitted against my will.When a Mental Health Act Assessment is ordered, three people have to agree that it’s in your best interests to be sectioned.These are usually approved mental health professionals (AMHP), such as a mental health nurse or social worker, and two doctors, one of whom is normally a Ideally, one of them should know the patient, although this wasn’t the case for me as I was being assessed late on a Sunday afternoon.Over the next half-hour, they questioned me about my symptoms and intentions – a process I found intrusive and upsetting.I was actively planning my suicide, and no one was going to convince me otherwise.Eventually, I was asked to wait in the kitchen while the mental health team decided my fate in the living room.I thought I’d done enough to stay at home. Laura works closely with her community mental health team and is at university studying psychology. And if they can't make a person safe in that time, they can turn a Section 2 into a Section 3, which gives clinicians up to six months to treat someone, and can be extended beyond that, but each time with provisions for appeal by the patient or challenge by the nearest relative, which is a long, ordered list of people stretching from partner or cohabiter through extended family. I was a millimetre away," she tells me. If you have been sectioned (detained for treatment in a psychiatric hospital), any mental health aftercare you may need when you leave hospital should be provided free of charge.
Of course it was a relief to go home, but it was also difficult re-adjusting to home life after 5 weeks in hospital.
This can lead to a revolving door between community and in-patient care, which he believes frays the relationships with friends and family that are so vital to staying well.For most people, being sectioned is not the end of the story, but a turning point.