I've been under care of mental health professionals myself. I have been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and had PTSD. The G.A.D. was a symptom of a neurological issue I was born with where the Inner Ears and Sensory Processing System for auditory and visual sensory processing is damaged.
The medical protocol for G.A.D. is antidepressants. That's fine and dandy if your issue is a need for it. For persons like me it simply overtaxed my already damaged system and would cause crashes. The doctors meaning Psychiatrist were insistent I take their antidepressant flavor of the month. Reality was only Xanax was helping me. They didn't want to give it too me because it is the Hollywood choice of drugs to take. I get no buzz, no utopia, no chill, from it rather I'm at least able to function enough to care for my wife and myself at home. I became disabled in 1994 at the old age of about 37.
I made the connection of the G.A.D. to my Inner Ear and vision issues thanks to a book I found linking Anxiety to Vestibular Disorders. Convincing a Shrink that this was the problem took several doctors before I found one who understood it and agreed to using the benzodiazepines rather than antidepressants.
What happened to my wife could have easily happened to me. Actually one doctor put me on Paxil. About two weeks into taking it my bladder stopped working. At first I thought well it's my nerves. Then I sensed I was fixing to go into Dysreflexia a condition of shock and got to an ER and got cathed. The condition is common to spinal cord patients is how I knew about it and what was happening to me. But it can happen to anyone. I had to keep a Foley in me until the medication left my body two weeks later. Not once was I warned the medication could cause that in men. Other drugs had bad results including about five more. Headaches and stomach aches when taking antidepressants is a sign hey the doctors needs to rethink things. Most are clueless. Many doctors writing scripts for antidepressants never heard of Serotonin Syndrome or hadn't 12 years ago anyway when it hit my wife.
The PTSD for me to be rid of it took five years of therapy. Two of it one on one and three in group. In period of a few years I lost my first wife to a massive heart attack when she was 23. I met someone else and we had just gotten serious and she went quadriplegic in a few hours time on a date. She nearly died as I was taking her to the ER with two scared kids in the car. She had a six month hospital stay three of that in spinal rehab. In the third month of it we married. Over the next few years she had several close calls health wise and our daughter was in a serious car wreck that when I arrived on scene thought she was dead because they were covering her body. She was pinned in the wreck and they had to cover her to cut her out. She was bed-fast at home for a couple of months.
A couple years later while still dealing with the legal hounding {other guys fault BTW} of debt collectors I was in a wreck where a woman rear ended my 78 K-5. Her Honda Accordion was totaled. In the front seat in a car seat was a baby. I got out to check for injuries and the baby I thought was dead but slept through the whole thing.
The sum total triggered the onset of the extreme sound sensitivities that trigger seizures in my upper Torso. My brain could only juggle so many things and something had to give. I never had to spend a day hospitalized for it. I was a threat to no one and had no desired to harm anybody.
After a couple of years when I finally got the Xanax in the correct consistent level in the bloodstream so I could function somewhat. IOW I needed my sensory system toned way down to a level my brain and Vestibular System could process without triggering anxiety. Most Shrinks still do not recognize Vestibular Disorders as a cause of Anxiety Disorder. Go tell most doctors that you take Xanax and are a regular user and they will tell you it won't work. For me it is the safest drug I can take.
Mental Health has a lot of catching up to do in recent research and so do the current laws on the books. Most persons with mental illness the cops interact with are chronic or repeat needs patients. For them there has to be a better way. Family should have enough legal standing to have someone in obvious need admitted involuntarily for 72 hours observation without it requiring an act of court or state. After that point the examination and opinion of two qualified doctors should suffice if needed to keep them there.
Appoint a patient advocate {Guardian Ad Liten} similar to what foster kids get to keep it honest but changes need to come so families are not at the mercy of LEO and the courts for getting someone help..
You certainly have been through a lot of tragedy. I’m sorry about your first wife. 23 is so young. And I’m sorry about what happened to your second wife. Hope she’s doing well now.
I’ve always had a mistrust of psychotropic medications, but I do understand that they’re necessary sometimes.