EXCLUSIVE I was WRONGLY locked up in a psychiatric hospital at 15 for a whole year - and I am still haunted by the trauma READ MORE: Diary of my weeks in a mental institution , by RUBY WAX By Banning Lyon For Dailymail.Com Published: 12:31 BST, 22 June 2024 | Updated: 12:51 BST, 22 June 2024 e-mail 13 View comments I was 15 years old when they locked me up in a psychiatric hospital. I spent 353 days away from my teenage life, forced to spend up to 12 hours a day sitting on a chair and staring at a wall.
The experience set me up for a lifetime of traumatic memories, which still haunt me now, at the age of 52. My disease? According to my doctors, I had major depressive disorder and was a risk to myself. This came as a shock to me, given that I did not feel depressed.
Six years after my year-long hospital admission, my suspicion that I was falsely imprisoned was validated. I learned that the ordeal was part of a money-making scheme dreamt up by the Texas hospital. A subsequent legal investigation revealed that the hospital kept kids in the unit so it could collect insurance money.
School counselors were given financial rewards for sending kids like me to the psych unit. Still, all these years later, now that I am happily married and have a job as a backpacking guide, I often wonder, how could this have happened to me? The ordeal began in 1987, with a skateboard. My friend at school had broken his and, wanting to be a good friend, I offered him mine and bought a new one, in the h.
