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The Forced Psychiatric Treatment of a Child [madinamerica.com]

 

A tremendous amount of courage is required to share about my childhood forced psychiatric treatment experience. It has necessitated decades of actively addressing the trauma caused by the coercion and oppression, in order to be able to tolerate the fear that comes with publicly expressing personal involvement with the psychiatric system as a mental health professional. In America, there is a taboo about mental health professionals seeking treatment in the same system they work in, with fears over licensing boards deeming the individual incompetent or unfit to provide services if they have their own mental health struggles. This stops many mental health professionals from speaking up.

This is my story of forced psychiatric treatment as an eight-year-old girl, from my perspective as an adult mental health professional. Currently I am a 37-year-old licensed psychotherapist with over 16 years experience working in the mental health industry. From my overwhelmingly painful experience as a girl, I will explain the attachment trauma and brainwashing that occurs when a parent violates the trust of a child in order to appease the psychiatric system.

I was born in 1980, and since birth have been an introvert, highly sensitive, and extremely empathic. To some degree, I believe my personality characteristics and temperament set the stage for the medicalization of my childhood. My mother experienced postpartum depression when I was born, and was prescribed an SSRI during the first year of breastfeeding me. Unbeknown to my parents or me, I had a dairy allergy that was creating chronic ear infections. Around the age of six, I was repeatedly getting ear infections, which necessitated close to one year of antibiotic treatment. The antibiotics destroyed the balance of good bacteria in my gut, and I began experiencing anxiety and insomnia. At the time, my medical community was not aware of the risks of chronic antibiotic use in children, and instead of addressing my gut issues and food allergy, I was prescribed a sleeping pill at the age of seven. The sleeping pill caused many daytime issues with my mood and behavior — my pediatrician and parents were unable to notice the connection between this and the introduction of pharmaceuticals, which began the psychiatric diagnoses processes.

[For more on this story by By Kelli Foulkrod, MS, LPC, go to https://www.madinamerica.com/2...reatment-of-a-child/]

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