That should have been the turning point, the beginning of her healing. And it was—just not the way we expected. Because we made a mistake at that point. A big one. And I’ll never forget it.

We thought the worst was behind us, and in that hopeful mindset, we decided to look for some external support to help her in those final steps. That’s when we turned to the psychiatric system, thinking that maybe, this time, with her finally starting to open up again, someone might actually care, ask questions, maybe even listen.

They didn’t. It was a big mistake.

There was no interest in her story. No interest in the trauma she had lived through. No bloodwork. No diagnostics. No time spent trying to understand what brought her to that state. Just a rapid, cold diagnosis of schizophrenia, based purely on symptoms and delivered with the same weight and finality as a death sentence.

As she turned 18, her volunteer request for help was dishonestly transformed into an involuntary detention in the psychiatric ward where they injected her with the highest available doses of paliperidone.

In just a few days, everything she had gained—the spark, the will to fight, the human presence she had finally begun to recover—was gone. She was an empty shell, her thoughts gone, her emotions shut down, her connection to herself and to us completely severed. Sitting empty with her forehead down on the table, I saw her slipping away in real time, but this time not to a hallucination—this time to a drug imposed on her under the threat of not letting her out of the hospital and back to her family.

The system around her was deaf. Deaf and blind. They started treating her like an inferior being, with no rights of her own. No one was willing to question the diagnosis. No one would even consider that a mistake might have been made, or that there could be more to the story.

It was like reasoning with someone who had already decided the outcome before even starting the conversation – it was exactly like reasoning with a lunatic. Not only there was no room for reasoning, there was no room for humanity, no room for doubt, and definitely no room for love.

They told her she would be disabled for life. They told her she would never be able to live without medication, never be functional, never be safe without them.

And when I stood in the way of their methods, they turned their attention on me too. – Nurses began telling her she needed to detach from her family and become “independent,” meaning, of course, fully under their exclusive care (it’s funny how they redefine words…).

And when I questioned their words, their tone turned sharp and hostile, their eyes filled with suspicion and pride—because nothing threatens their illusion of control more than a father who refuses to nod and obey and does not recognize any “authority” in them.

All of this happened while her condition, under their treatment, kept deteriorating. No sleep at all, insomnia was worse than ever, suicidal thoughts began to appear, and a second round of medications was added. Eight months passed like that. And the idea of a Community Treatment Order was always on the table—a legal way to force her into medication indefinitely, whether she agreed or not.