On Friday, 8 April 2022, I boarded a plane to Johannesburg from Melbourne, Australia, where I’ve been living for almost five years. A reluctant immigrant, I did my best to live between the two cities because the essence of my life’s work was in South Africa, but my heart, also known as my two children, resides in Australia.  

Another factor was my mental health status. I have been living with a bipolar type 1 diagnosis since December of 2016. Bipolar is a mood disorder that sees its patients on a spectrum of depression to mania at any given point.  

There are two types of the condition and mine is the more severe one. After an emergency hospitalisation in 2016, I went through a suicide attempt in January 2018 and was in an Intensive Care Unit for five days. I was almost put on a liver transplant list and it was this little piece of news, more than anything else, that kicked the ball over the line for me. I somehow went from zero to hero in my efforts to manage my mental health better. 

Jump forward to 8 April 2022. I am finally taking my two boys home to South Africa to see my family after over two years of Covid-19 lockdown. We’re all terribly excited. In fact, with the daily pressures of work and everyone’s pandemic-related anxiety, I find myself not sleeping at night – a big no-no for any bipolar sufferer. 

This issue gets exacerbated when I take the 25-hour flight home and get zero sleep. I land in Jozi stretched thin and liable to snap at a moment’s notice because I am exhausted.  

However, what I experience as being just another over-exhausted human blows up big for the rest of my family, including my estranged husband. Their perception is simple: no sleep = erratic behaviour = bipolar manic episode. And, for some reason, this now gives them carte blanche to run my life. 

Two days later, on Monday, I am in a crisis as family pressures around me mount. The police have been called to the holiday home where we are staying to de-escalate the “situation”. The situation sees me fighting hard to remove myself from a potentially dangerous situation and ultimately, a patriarchal and reductionist style of treatment that will push me into an involuntary psychiatric admission. 

That little scenario does eventually play out (exactly as feared), but not before I am escorted by a private ambulance to the local public hospital. This next part is written with all due respect to the hardworking staff and healthcare professionals working in the public sector.  

Many public hospitals in South Africa are a shitshow. They are dirty, forgotten, neglected and, in my opinion, the worst places to recover from an illness, never mind a mental illness. My eight-hour stint at this semi-urban hospital sees me in casualty first and later admitted to a psychiatric unit. When I say picture a Silence of the Lambs layout, I am not exaggerating. There is a lockup isolation cell in the middle of the unit. It has a padded interior and a bolted metal exterior with bars at eye level to look into the room. I cannot imagine the scenario where this facility becomes an option for a human being. 

By mid-morning on Tuesday, the ambulance has to come to collect me again. I enter the vehicle and fall asleep instantly, waking up almost two hours later at the site of my first diagnosis a few years ago: a private hospital on Johannesburg’s West Rand. 

The first time I was here was over Christmas 2016. I am now admitted in Easter 2022. I’m not sure what beef God has with me, but the irony isn’t lost. I am admitted to a ward reserved for suicidal and homicidal patients. I am neither. I am also here against my will. I am an involuntary patient. To the best of my limited knowledge, they are only allowed to keep me here for 72 hours. Thereafter, unless they can prove that I am a danger to myself or society, their legal oversight ends and I must be allowed out. 

Apparently, I am the only one who got that memo though. After two days of largely sleeping due to being injected with something to calm me down, I am “released” into the freedom of Ward 1, a ward for “normal” patients suffering from depression or anxiety. 

However, it takes less than a day for me to piss the system off again and by that afternoon I am stuck in a corner, like a hunted animal, surrounded by seven nurses and one security guard who are trying to inject me with a tranquilliser in order to take me back to the high-security lockup ward.  

Why? 

Because I asked to be released after their legal period for holding me was up. 

There are several more nuances to this story that I don’t have the time or space to get into in this piece. The last thing I want to leave you with is this: when my psychiatrist discharged me a day later, she left me and my mother with these words: “If Leisl does anything we don’t like, I’ll call a policeman and they’ll bring her back in here, no problem.” 

And this is why I’ve decided to make this a matter of public interest. When a mere doctor feels she can play God in this way, who knows what else has been done in the name of psychiatry, psychology and mental health? I write this today to advocate not only for myself but for every man, woman or child living with mental illness. You are, each and every one of you, some of the bravest, most intelligent and kindest people I have met. I dedicate this to you. DM/MC