A man attempts to kill himself by cutting a gash in his wrist three inches long. It was not a scratch; it was deep and needed stitches. According to the man, The Mental health doctor at the Hospital released him three hours later with no meds.

A local man claims he tried to kill himself because he needed meds for depression. He claims he was depressed and slit his wrist. According to him, the police Baker Acted him which is an act in Florida designed to protect a person in mental health crisis who may harm himself or others. The act can require a person to be confined to a hospital for a period of 72 hours or until the doctor feels that person is not in harm’s way.

This man claims he was released in just a few hours and claims the doctor told him that the reason why he cut his wrist was because he was homeless and just wanted a place to stay. To me this so called attempt to seek shelter is a little more than that. Yes, it is true that sometimes homeless people do claim they want to hurt themselves because they want to be admitted in to the hospital to get off the streets but this man clams this is not true and by the look of things this cut in his wrist was more than him looking for shelter. To me and others, it was not an attention seeking type of cut for it was very deep. The Hospital released him with no medication for depression and no antibiotics. They did treat him medically and did a great job on the wrist.

It has been known that some hospitals have two sets of doctors that are on call for mental health issues.One doctor for insurance and one doctor for patients who have no insurance. In a lot of the cases with no insurance it seems there is a pattern of patients who need to be admitted and are not getting admitted.

I can’t say what really happened here because I was not there to hear the conversation between the patient and the doctor. I am only hearing what the patient told me. However, it seems that this man should have been admitted at least for a short while and maybe given meds because to me if someone has to resort to cutting their wrist there is an issue of some sort that just maybe could have been better addressed a little better.

Was this manipulation on the man’s part? Was it the fact that he had no insurance? Was it because the doctor should have used better judgment? Or is the system just as broken as this young man who needed some help? Sometimes the staff and the doctors are forced to make decisions based on what the Hospitals administrators tells them what to do. To be fair to the hospitals they only have so much money and it does seem to be true that many homeless do abuse the emergency system.

We all must work together to make a better system that treats the homeless better and saves money in all institutions