EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
JESSE: What state do you live in?
GUEST #1: Massachusetts.
JESSE: What's a section 12?
Guest #1: I don't know.
JESSE: What state do you live in?
GUEST #2: California.
JESSE: What is a 5150?
GUEST #2: I have no clue.
JESSE: What is a 5152?
GUEST #2: What is a 5152? I have no clue what A 5152 is. Should I know this?
JESSE: What state do you live in?
GUEST #3: Maine.
JESSE: In Maine, what is a blue paper?
GUEST #3: What is a blue paper?
JESSE: In Maine, what is a white paper?
GUEST #3: I don’t know.
JESSE: What is a section 12?
GUEST #4: Oh, that is...that's involuntary..uh..Is that involuntary confinement?
JESSE: What is a 5150?
GUEST #5: Same thing, different name.
JESSE: In Maine, what is a blue paper?
GUEST #6: Same thing.
JESSE: Could you be involuntarily committed?
GUEST #3: I would hope not.
JESSE: Could you be involuntarily committed?
GUEST #2: I would like to think I can't because, I don't know, I don't meet the criteria.
But I am also fuzzy on what that criteria is.
JESSE: I have been involuntarily committed to a psych ward three times and now,
almost 20 years after my first commitment, I am trying to understand...how do
involuntary commitments work?
What rights are we supposed to have?
And how can you stop something like that from happening again?
Committable is a podcast about involuntary commitments where we'll interview
attorneys...
ATTORNEY #1: They're shocked that the doors are locked. They thought it would be
just like any other hospital unit. And they get initially very, very scared.
ATTORNEY #2: When it comes down to, “I wasn't really dangerous. I wasn't really
mentally ill. They thought I was.” You're going to lose.
JESSE: ...physicians...
PHYSICIAN #1: We all go to medical school and most people didn't go into that with
the plan or desire to, you know, involuntarily commit people.
PHYSICIAN #2: But I am left with it's better to have a traumatized patient than a dead
patient.
JESSE: ...psychologists...
PSYCHOLOGIST #1: You've got to put that first diagnosis down based upon maybe a
15 minute interaction.
PSYCHOLOGIST #2: You want to change the stigma of mental illness it's not the
doctors that are going to do it.
JESSE: ...and people with lived experience...
GUEST #7: It really becomes, I have to be so much more educated than the physician
I'm talking to, to prevent myself from being given meds that have literally put me in the
ICU before.
GUEST #8: They just didn't have the time or the patience for me because doctors don't
listen to crazy people.
JESSE: ...as we try to figure out what it means when you've been declared mentally
unfit to be free.
I'm Jesse Mangan and this is Committable.