Abusive parents of a young woman in Greece who lives with severe ME/CFS have forced her onto a psychiatric ward against her will. Katiana is now trapped in a Greek hospital with no contact to the outside world, in an environment that poses a serious threat to her life.
With the help of members of a long Covid support group based in Greece, Katiana’s friends have been urgently trying to petition for her release.
Severe ME/CFS: destroying lives
Katiana is a 26-year-old woman who has been living with severe ME/CFS since 2021. ME/CFS is a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease which impacts millions of people worldwide. Similar to, and sometimes overlapping with long Covid, it affects nearly every system in the body and causes a range of symptoms that impact patients’ daily lives. These include influenza-like symptoms, cognitive impairment, multiple forms of pain, and heart, lung, blood pressure, and digestive dysfunctions, among other significantly debilitating symptoms.
Significantly, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME/CFS, which entails a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.
Crucially, Katiana lives at the severe end of the scale for ME/CFS. People living severe ME/CFS are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. On top of this, they are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information and are fully dependent on others for their care.
She also lives with a number of other chronic health conditions that frequently crop up alongside severe ME/CFS. These include mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and craniocervical instability (CCI), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), dysautonomia, and probable Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS).
Hospitals “mistreating” Katiana
Katiana previously spoke to the Canary about the increasingly dangerous situation Greece’s dire medical system was trapping her in. Specifically, that there’s “widespread disbelief in the existence of” ME across the Greek healthcare system. In previous correspondence, she had told the Canary how:
I have been mistreated during many hospitalisations.
She expressed how:
every doctor dismissed my illnesses and further assessment or imaging. At best, they told me they couldn’t help.
Katiana also previously told us how clinical staff have made her condition significantly worse. She’d said that:
I went from moderate ME to severe in a year.
Now, Katiana is once again at the mercy of hospital clinicians gaslighting her severe ME/CFS. And horrifically, it was her parents who put her there.
Katiana had detailed to the Canary the pattern of narcissistic abuse her parents had meted out against her. She had told us how they persistently neglected her care needs, expressing how:
Their care oscillates between neglect and harmful intervention, making my condition deteriorate further. In other words, they’re exhibiting all the characteristics of narcissistic abuse, and with it, making my health inordinately worse.
She also told us that during previous hospitalisations, her parents:
instead of advocating for her, made her worse by pushing her to the edge
Vitally, her parents have repeatedly refused to accept the existence of severe ME/CFS. This has now escalated to the point where they have involuntarily hospitalised her in a psychiatric ward.
Involuntarily hospitalising her in a psychiatric ward
On Friday 4 October, Katiana had posted on her X account that:
I’ve spent all afternoon talking to them. They don’t believe me. They say there is no proof of an illness like that. They told me they are going to sign, in order to get me into a psychiatric unit. I’m afraid of my life. I have nobody to call.
They have threatened to involuntary hospitalise me in a psychiatric unit, to shave my head against my will, they’re constantly opening windows, leaving doors open, bursting into my room, shouting and yelling. And of course gaslighting, blaming for my illnesses. Everything.
Then, on Saturday, she posted in Greek how:
I am in the process of being involuntarily hospitalized by my abusive parents in the Volos hospital. I’m already getting worse from the whole process. I will never have a cell phone on me again. Please make it heard. Psychiatric patients with severe ME/CFS and long covid!!!
Amy, a friend of Katiana – who also lives with severe ME/CFS – told the Canary that:
they came to Katiana’s bedroom on Saturday morning and signed some papers and took her away. After a few hours they were waiting around to be seen in the emergency clinic at Volos, and after that her phone was taken away and she was placed in a psych ward.
Katiana is now in a psychiatric ward at the General Hospital of Volos.
Josh, another friend with severe ME/CFS, was in regular contact with Katiana until the involuntary hospitalisation. He shared the harrowing final messages Katiana had sent him before the hospital confiscated her mobile phone:
What we’ve been dreading has happened: my friend Katiana (@katiamek) is on her way to being involuntarily hospitalized. Her family believes she is not sick, same with the doctors there. She has VERY SEVERE ME/CFS and this could easily kill her.
She and Josh (@ProperChels34)… pic.twitter.com/a0WB9IE9rv
— Amy (@alexandrite113) October 5, 2024
Psychologising stigma surrounding ME/CFS
Under Greek law, Katiana’s parents would have contacted the local public prosecutor. They would have ordered an assessment by two psychiatrists.
However, the psychiatrists must establish that a number of criteria are met. Notably, among these, is the requirement that the patient suffers from a mental health disorder.
Obviously, this is not the case for Katiana – since ME/CFS isn’t a mental health condition. Despite this, it didn’t stop the psychiatrists at the General Hospital of Volos from involuntarily hospitalising her.
Evidently, they have psychologised Katiana’s severe ME/CFS. Her final post on X expressed how in her assessment, they had stigmatised the disease as psychological in origin:
I will not have a phone after this post. They told me there is a cure about me/cfs and this is antidepressants. They were like “you have no proof other than dysautonomia and that’s only low bp”
Please share. I’m very severe.#severeme #longcovid #longcovidgreece #mecfs https://t.co/MvOiFlASPI
— Katiana Mekka (@katiamek) October 5, 2024
The Canary has reported at length on the psychologisation of ME/CFS by a vocal group of clinicians and scientists across the globe. The result has been the trivialisation, gaslighting, and abuse of ME/CFS patients like Katiana.
So unsurprisingly, Katiana’s experience isn’t an isolated incident – as many people living with ME/CFS who have been sectioned will attest. The most prominent example of this is Sophia Mirza – the very first person to have ME/CFS recorded as her cause of death in the UK. This was after NHS doctors sectioned her under the Mental Health Act and incarcerated her in a mental health hospital without even basic nurse care. It caused her severe ME/CFS to worsen, and ultimately led to her death in 2005.
Of course, this is the unconscionable situation her parents and gaslighting psychiatrists are putting Katiana in too. As the inquiry into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby-O’Neill recently underscored, the catastrophic hospital care and disbelief in the physiological basis of severe ME/CFS, can and has killed people.
Now, Katiana and her friends are afraid she could be the next Maeve unless the hospital releases her as a matter of urgency.
ME/CFS and long Covid community fighting to #SaveKatiana
Greek law also states that Katiana has the right to legally appeal her involuntary hospitalisation. So far however, the Canary is not aware that she has been offered the opportunity for this – though it has been unable to definitively confirm it.
Katiana’s friends have been in contact with a long Covid support group in Greece. People in the Facebook community have been trying to advocate for Katiana. However, she had told the Canary in September how her father had threatened legal action against doctors, her supportive psychologist, and organisations who’ve tried to advocate for her needs.
So, when people from this long Covid group tried to help Katiana prior to her involuntary hospitalisation, he wrote to them that:
I will ask that none of you ever deal with my child again. Because you are only doing harm to my family. If you want to help, there are other purely medical ways. And I would appreciate it.
Any help of this type is really appreciated.
Anyone who reports again about persons and people of my family will have legal sanctions. Please leave us to our pain.
However, his threats haven’t stopped people in the community trying to lend their aid. They’ve attempted to contact the hospital, but a nurse ultimately dismissed them. Now, they’re no in the process of drafting a letter to the psychiatric ward at the hospital:
Update coming soon. Katiana’s main contact and friend at the Greek LC association is drafting an email to the unit+hospital where she is staying. The letter states necessity of listening to consider the likings of Dr Levine and Dr Weir, and links to patient deaths due to neglect
— Josh (@ProperChels34) October 6, 2024
However, what Katiana needs most vitally now, is a Greek doctor willing to advocate for her. Her friends and the long Covid support group in Greece have so far been unable to find one to do so. They’re appealing for anyone who knows a Greek, or Greek-speaking doctor to reach out.
It’s now crucial that an informed and compassionate Greek-speaking doctor comes forward to help Katiana. The situation poses an extreme risk to her life – but as it stands, healthcare professionals in Greece have not been prepared to listen.
Of course, it highlights that systemic medical abuse of ME/CFS patients isn’t isolated to the NHS – but a worldwide problem. The healthcare systems of countries across the globe are not simply failing people like Katiana – but actively harming them.
However, Katiana cannot become the next Maeve. Everyone who can must speak up, and do everything in their power to end her unconscionable detainment in the Volos psychiatric ward.
Feature image via Katiana
