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A young woman has revealed how she was mistakenly placed onto a psychiatric ward when her symptoms were taken for a psychotic breakdown.

It wasn't until four months after Lucy Dawson, 24, had been sectioned, that she was eventually diagnosed with a medical condition called Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a serious medical condition caused by inflammation of the brain.

Lucy, from Market Rasen, had just entered her third year at University of Leicester in October 2016 when she started to notice something was wrong.

She started experiencing intense migraines and had become extremely depressed and subdued, isolating herself away from her friends and sleeping often.

(Image: Lucy May Dawson)

Lucy says that initially her friends thought she was struggling to cope with the pressures of university and encouraged her to see a doctor.

She said: "At first my friends thought I was stressed and so got me to make a list of everything that was worrying me to take to the doctor.

"During that time, my symptoms started getting worse. I would find myself in my room screaming my best friends name, sat in the middle of the floor shaking and I wasn't able to speak properly.

"One morning my best friend found me in my room, I had completely trashed my room and I was sat on the floor with my eyes bulging. She rang my mum and she tried to speak to me but I wasn't able to say anything, I just kept giggling manically.

(Image: Lucy May Dawson)

"My mum drove over and took me to hospital. We had to try around five different hospitals because we couldn't find anywhere that would take me because I was from Lincolnshire and we were in the wrong area.

"While we were driving, I kept making attempts to get out of the car. We eventually made it to Lincoln County hospital.

"In the waiting room, I was ripping down curtains, swearing and shouting at nurses, repeating random words over and over, like the word oranges. From the outside, I looked like I was having a psychotic episode."

Lucy was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 and admitted to the Peter Hodgkinson mental health unit at Lincoln County Hospital, as staff believed she was suffering from a mental breakdown.

While Lucy was in hospital, an investigation was carried out into what could have caused her apparent breakdown, which led to police officers pouring over hundreds of personal messages to try and piece together what might have happened.

(Image: Lucy May Dawson)

Lucy said: "The night that I was sectioned, I felt like I had been put in prison. I was completely out of it, I wasn't really sure where I was but I kept thinking that someone was attacking me.

"While I was in hospital, I was gradually getting worse and had started to become incontinent. Gradually my body started shutting down and I became catatonic, which meant that I couldn't feel my body.

"Eventually staff at the hospital pulled my parents aside and told them that I was dying and that they were going to try electric shock therapy as a last resort."

On Lucy's 21st birthday, she received three rounds of electric shock therapy. Miraculously, the shock therapy caused seizures which effectively reset Lucy's brain.

Lucy was placed back onto a ward in Lincoln hospital where she continued to have seizures.

Lucy said: "I was placed with four pillows underneath me. I continued to have seizures, and my body was still in a catatonic state.

"During one of my seizures, I fell off the bed and onto an exposed section of radiator piping. Due to my catatonic state, I couldn't feel the burning.

"I laid there until eventually a patient noticed and screamed for helped.

"I was left with a burn on my left bum cheek that had burnt all the way through my sciatic nerve."

(Image: Lucy May Dawson)

Lucy was eventually able to recover but has been left permanently disabled due to the damage to her sciatic nerve.

She thanks her grandparents who played a huge part in her rehabilitation.

She said: "For months I could do nothing but sleep.

"My grandpa had been a teacher and was able to help me by bringing crosswords and games of lexicon to help me engage my brain again. I was able to go onto short walks with my walking frame."

Lucy was able to go back to university in 2018 and complete her degree in criminology.

She now hopes to raise more awareness of encephalitis, a condition which is commonly misdiagnosed.

Lucy said: "The rate of misdiagnoses for encephalitis hasn't improved since the 1930s.

"I believe there are gendered implications in diagnosing the condition. Women are more commonly diagnosed with mental health issues, and despite me not having any history of mental health conditions, I believe there was an assumption that was the case.

"I also believe there is a distinct lack of education around the condition.

"Medical professionals are always told 'if you hear hoof beats, think horse, not zebra' which means, go down the diagnosis route that seems the most obvious and don't expect it to be a rare disease.

"In this case, I was the zebra - with encephalitis."

If you want to learn more about encephalitis you can visit the encephalitis society website here or follow Lucy on Instagram at @luuudaw.