Guest Post: Girl, Interrupted – Consequences of Psychiatric Abuse of LGBTQ+ Juveniles

BY:TIFFANY MARLOW

My story starts out differently than that of Susanna Kaysen, and takes a different path completely than that of Ms. Kaysen, but we share something in common….the experience of psychiatric hospitalization, and the experience of a system that sees us as less than human, a system that allowed inhumane political rhetoric to influence the practice of medical science, thus creating a new system based on junk science. This era marked a shameful return of eugenics, and the targets were vulnerable people, children & adults alike.

My name is Tiffany, I live in Chicago, and by the time I was twelve years old, I had been hospitalized twice. Several hospital stays followed those, and none were worse than my juvenile hospitalizations.

I was always a friendly, pleasant, gentle, kind, loving, analytical, deep – thinking, intelligent, curious, questioning, outspoken, creative, diverse person. I never stayed with one thing too long. I was always easily depressed by mundane routine, and always had a routine of my own that felt right for me.

Have you ever thought you could write and sing songs on a big stage with lots of lights and a sold – out venue?

Have you ever dreamed of flying among the stars of outer space?

Have you ever dreamed of being the person who brings peace & closure to a victim of a violent crime by helping to put their offender away?

Have you ever dreamed of writing big headlines and news stories that meant something to the world? Communicating your heart and passions to the world?

There are only two things on this list I’ve never done. I was always a dreamer, and the world saw me as crazy. I was labeled with this and that over the years. People like me were never popular with society.

My first hospital stay occurred at nine years old in a northwest suburban hospital close to Chicago. I was being violently, chronically, bullied by a classmate while also suffering the effects of trauma from a parental kidnapping during which I was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by my biological father. My kidnapping occurred in the early 1980s after my mother was awarded sole custody by the court during a divorce proceeding based upon physical & mental cruelty.

During my first hospitalization, I stayed for 40 days, and had several experiences with being placed in a padded “quiet room”, which I promptly destroyed and escaped from on each occasion. I didn’t destroy and escape from that room because I was dangerous and evil, I was less than 10 years old and I was away from my home in unfamiliar surroundings, without all of the things and people that made me feel safe, supported, and cared for. I was scared! I was panicked! I wanted to be loved and cared for!

What I got instead were several staff members holding me down, and injecting me with Thorazine. I was left in that room for up to three hours, or just under that. The behavior that led me to these encounters? Being a child! A traumatized, suffering, scared, anxious, hyper, gender – dysphoric child! They say hindsight is 20/20, so looking back on that experience in the late 80s, the adult medical professionals should have known what they were dealing with.

After that 40 days, my psych doc told my mother flatly that they “have no answers”. So, at nine years old, the mental health profession psychiatrically hospitalized and medicated me, but they didn’t know why. Without answers, the school system had no idea how to place me, what kind of assistance I required, what accommodations to make, or what my proper diagnosis was.

An important note here is that I had already been psychologically tested at school system expense, and my test scores were off the charts. I broke one of the personality tests, which would have resulted in FBI investigation had it not been for my age.

I was now caught in a tangled web of medical instability (medications that did nothing for me and had serious side – effects), a world of politics and bureaucracy, stigma and social judgement. This means I went from school to school until around 4th grade.

By the time I was 11 or 12, I was admitted again and placed on a combination of medications that we know today were dangerous. My doctor decided to mix Lithium with Tegretol. Weekly blood levels determined that everything seemed fine, but yet, I would become very sick without warning on several occasions. My Lithium and Tegretol levels were taking turns spiking dangerously high and then dangerously low. At this point in time, I’m in puberty, the WRONG puberty, so yeah, of course I’m moody and I’m terribly depressed & anxious….even distressed from the combination of my trauma history and dysphoria!

There were other LGBTQ+ kids on the unit with me. This meant I saw how they were treated. I learned from my peers that their parents couldn’t accept their sexuality or gender experience / gender presentation. I was already too horrified to openly say I was actually a girl who wasn’t exactly straight, but now I knew saying something would mean certain danger.

At the time of this second hospitalization, the practices of psychiatry, psychology, and social work were anticipating a massive change. The year was 1989, and the Reagan administration was close to ending in November of that year. George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s Vice – President, would become U.S. President 41. Under Bush came “mental health reform” and a massive shake – up with health insurance.

Psychiatry and Mental Health would re-invent themselves as “Behavioral Health” and the mantra became “Psychiatric challenges and associated symptoms are a choice”. With this mantra came whole new psychiatry programming in which the patient in need of care, support, and improved quality of life, became the person to blame. The profession now embraced an official endorsement of victim blaming.

The behaviors that inherently came with having a real brain condition were now divorced from the illness itself, and the patients were informed “not to blame their illness” because “you made the choice to be like this!” “your behavioral manifestations of your illness weren’t caused by your illness, you made the choice to behave a certain way”

Of course, the profession itself knew they were wrong, and they knew the harm this came with. They forged – on forward, anyway, and never looked back. The staff on inpatient units now had more power over the lives of juvenile and adult patients than ever before, but the focus was on juveniles. Inpatient units were outfitted with new beds that had solid steel restraint bars under the mattress at the sides. The era of therapeutic holds was now over.

The era of leather restraints came with an increased use of solitary confinement in hospitals. In the hospital I was in, the staff quickly found the combination of leather restraints and “emergency medication” as the answer to every challenge and difficulty with a child.

Mere civil disagreement, the mere dropping of the “F – bomb”, being argumentative / standing up for yourself, and childhood pranks normative to adolescence were met with a call to the hospital’s newly militarized contracted “public safety department” who had absolutely no medical or clinical training, to join the psych unit staff in literally tackling the juvenile patient and applying hard – leather restraints.

I was one of at least four other patients who were put into these situations, placed in restraints, and left for days without basic human needs. No access to bathrooms, no access to water or food. Staff would often wait for 45 minutes and even up to 24 hours AFTER a situation had passed to use these procedures.

There was a girl on mu psych unit suffering horribly. She was way worse – off than any of us, and at one point, the hospital had a new “quiet room” built that had a thick, clear, heavy door behind a thick steel door with a key – lock on it. Either or both doors could be used.

One day, a staff member intentionally initiated a conflict with her and the entire goal was to push her to become violent so they could put her in this room. I witnessed the staff member pursue this with her from the beginning.

This patient was a black girl, and the staff member was a white male in his 40s. A white female nurse and other white staff members became involved. At least two of them beat her to the ground BEFORE calling security and placing her in restraints.

This girl was placed in the new quiet room for months. At first, she was not checked on. Unit staff members openly debated her rights to basic human needs. At one point she was told that her rights didn’t matter and was told that basic needs such as meals and bathroom access were “privileges”.  None of us even saw this girl’s psychiatrist come to the unit to see her, except once. He sat outside the door and spoke with her as if she were in a prison.

My time in solitary came after I engaged in a childish, factually harmless prank towards a staff member. I placed a styrofoam cup on top of my door to my room with water in it. I fixed the door so that when the staff member came in, SPLASH!! This was during my 3rd hospitalization of my life. The year was now 1991.

This got me placed in a separate pod from the other patients in restraints for THREE AND A HALF MONTHS!! I was left there with no human contact, no access to water, no access to a bathroom, no therapeutic care of any kind to ease anxiety and depression, no doctor’s visits, no communication with my family or even a patient advocate.

Even prior to this, I was treated as a violent criminal under the new “behavioral health” model. During my time in solitary, I became DANGEROUSLY panicked, depressed, and at one point I became suicidal. I had no clue what day or hour it was, so I totally lost track of time and only had my physical body to be aware of.

There was one kind nurse or two who objected to such inhumane conditions, and they’d do their best to sneak over to me, bringing me their companionship, comfort, and extra food and drink. Toward the end of my time in the hospital, somehow, they decided to allow me my battery – powered walkman and a couple cassettes. Amy Grant had just released her “Heart in Motion” album, and I had it in my walkman. Only at this point was I receiving full meal service and the ability to order my own meals from the hospital menu like the other patients.

Neither the unit staff nor my doctor told the truth about the extent of the situation to my mother. She found out from me after I was discharged, but my claims were dismissed as not being believable “because these things don’t happen” which I’m sure is what the staff told her.

How did all of this fly under the radar? It’s all in how hospital staff document everything. The language used in psychiatric documentation was always intentionally vague, misleading, and routinely the exact opposite of what truly occurred.

I was a patient who routinely defended the rights of my peers and refused to allow them to be mistreated, marginalized, or abused. This placed me in the sights of staff, but it was also my tight bonds with my fellow LGBTQ+ peers that also got me noticed. I never acted stereotypically male, and as a matter of fact, prior to my first hospitalization I made it clear that I wanted girl things and identified as a girl….but my mother thought it was a phase. After being ignored for a while, I felt hopeless, so I shut up. I shut – up and I suffered.

My LGBTQ+ peers were told that their mere existence was “inappropriate” and their relationships were also “inappropriate” even though it was those very relationships and bonds that kept them from committing suicide. Their self – expression was constantly under attack, they were told they had to change or forever be regarded as less than worthy of equality and human rights.

My third hospitalization was one in which exercising my right to freedom of speech was the ticket that got me seen as mentally – ill, thanks to the APA’s wrong-headed theories that were rather popular in the era of the DSM – III.

This is my story. I was a girl, interrupted.

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