In 2024, I used to be forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric establishment — not as a result of I used to be a hazard to myself or others, however as a result of I spoke out.
I’m a Libyan physician and entrepreneur. I constructed my firm from nothing. I believed in freedom, human dignity, and the fitting to suppose in a different way. I shared my concepts on social media: I criticized terrorism, non secular extremism, and what I referred to as the “Gaddafi ideology” — a poisonous legacy that turned many minds into closed fortresses of worry, hostility towards the West, and blind obedience to authority.
However in Libya, difficult the system usually makes you the issue.
Someday, I used to be staying at a lodge in Tripoli when it started. My brothers and father all of the sudden arrived — with a psychiatrist and a group ready downstairs. They didn’t come for a household go to. They got here to silence me.
I felt it instantly: one thing was incorrect. I slipped away earlier than they reached my room. My coronary heart was racing. I exited via a aspect door and disappeared into town. That night time, I hid. I knew they’d come once more. I used to be proper.
The Raid on My Home
Days later, they got here to my non-public home. Not the household residence, however the one the place I lived independently, away from their management. This time, they introduced muscle — a coordinated group, an official psychiatrist, and my father’s signature on the involuntary admission papers.
I attempted to motive with them. I attempted to inform them that I wasn’t sick — simply vocal. I used to be held down, injected with sedatives, and transported to a non-public psychiatric clinic.
There, I used to be stripped of my telephone, remoted, drugged, and — worst of all — subjected to Electroconvulsive Remedy (ECT) with out my consent. My solely “crime” was considering freely. My “prognosis” was nonconformity.
The Second Arrest
You may suppose it ended there. It didn’t.
I fled to Tunisia for restoration, hoping for house to rebuild. However the nightmare adopted me. One morning, the Libyan Consulate in Tunisia intervened — to not assist, however to detain me. I used to be forcibly taken once more, this time to a clinic in Tunis. They handled me like a felony, not a affected person.
I used to be then forcibly deported again to Libya and transferred to a public psychiatric hospital. No authorized listening to. No choose. No impartial medical assessment. Simply silence, coercion, and stigma.
A System Constructed on Concern, Not Therapeutic
In Libya, psychiatric care — whether or not public or non-public — is commonly constructed on coercion, not compassion.
In public hospitals, sufferers might obtain satisfactory meals, however what they’re denied is dignity. Many are stored in locked wards, with restricted or no entry to the surface world. Bodily restraints are used not simply in emergencies however as routine self-discipline. Sufferers are not often listened to. As a substitute, they’re ordered, threatened, or ignored. Consent just isn’t a course of — it’s a checkbox signed by household.
Within the non-public sector, the atmosphere might seem extra civilized — clear beds, painted partitions, higher meals — however the remedy is not any much less oppressive. Employees usually act as if they’re accountable for prisoners, not caregivers to folks in misery. Sufferers are belittled, silenced, and given heavy psychiatric medication with out dialogue. The psychiatrist’s phrase is absolute; disagreement is labeled as “noncompliance,” and noncompliance is punished.
Many sufferers go away with deeper trauma than once they entered.
What I Was Actually Preventing
I used to be by no means violent. By no means suicidal. By no means indifferent from actuality. I used to be combating one thing way more harmful than insanity — I used to be combating a tradition of worry and suppression masquerading as psychological well being care.
I had used Fb to query the authorities, to talk of freedom, to dream of a Libya that respects minds as an alternative of medicating them into silence. That alone was sufficient to place me in handcuffs.
This isn’t simply my story. It’s the story of many dissidents, artists, reformers, and free spirits internationally — from the Soviet Union to the Center East — the place psychiatry is used to not heal however to erase.
A New Starting
I can’t be silent. That’s the reason I’m launching an advocacy platform for psychiatric survivors, reformers, and significant thinkers throughout the Arab area. We’d like an area to problem compelled remedy, restore human rights, and reclaim psychiatry from the palms of energy.
I’m calling on the worldwide neighborhood — from Mad in America to the UN — to take heed to our tales and help the battle for dignity in psychological well being.
My title is Mohamed. I used to be compelled, drugged, and shocked — however I’ll by no means be silent once more.
