Millie Kerr wasn’t in great shape when her father convinced her to check in to Houston’s Menninger Clinic. Anxious, distraught, possibly paranoid. But a few days of rest at a well-regarded mental health facility, one whose board her father had served for years, could make a world of difference. She decided when she walked in, and she could decide when she walked out. Right? Not so fast. Mimi Swartz’s feature is one of the most frightening things I’ve read all year—not because the scenario is so outlandish, but because it’s so possible.
In multiple interviews with nurses that day, Millie denied any suicidal ideation whatsoever, asserting that the events of the past week had been “incredibly traumatic.” (She described them to me later as “a perfect storm” of harrowing events that included the surgery, recovery, the fear her cancer had come back, and the breakup with her partner.) According to her medical records, Millie was cooperative, but her near obsession with being allowed to leave at any time was noted; she was, as the nurse wrote, “Hesitant to admit.”
Millie thought a stay of two or three days would be enough for rest and evaluation; the nurse, in contrast, wrote in the file that five to six weeks might be needed to assess and stabilize Millie for unspecified anxiety disorder and an unspecified depressive disorder.
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