Memorial Day: Interview with Veteran and Psychiatric Survivor Damaris

For the original Spanish version go here.

In honor of Memorial Day, we share the testimony of Damaris, a Puerto Rican U.S. Army veteran and psychiatric survivor. Her story offers an honest and authentic look into the impact of military service, racism, and the mental health system on her life. Through her own words, this interview brings visibility to the invisible wounds of many who have served and who continue to struggle to survive outside the military.

Damaris shares:

I had never seen a war movie. I thought it was an opportunity to learn English, to be independent. No one explained what the military entailed. The shock was brutal—cultural, linguistic, psychological. I felt alone, ignored, and lost.

Laura: And was that the idea that led you to enlist? How did you end up… I want to understand how you ended up enlisting then? Because for many people it’s out of need, or adventure, or the benefits…

Damaris:

Well, just like any innocent young person who doesn’t know. Since I passed an English test, they placed me in the general population with people who only spoke English, but I didn’t understand anything. They yelled at me, punished me, and everything was constant confusion. It was “monkey see, monkey do”—I just imitated others to survive.

I cried while holding a grenade. Everyone else was tough, and I was the only one crying. I felt weak, alone. I don’t know how I survived. Many women do well in the Army, but I didn’t. I wasn’t emotionally or culturally prepared. Someone should have seen that I wasn’t okay. I felt alone, and I didn’t know how to survive in that environment. The system never saw that I was a young girl who didn’t understand the language, who came from a different background.

I was stationed at Fort Riley. I never went into combat, but I lived in constant fear. I had nightmares, night terrors, panic. The military system isn’t designed to care for you emotionally if you don’t fit in. And when you speak up, they punish you.

They yelled at me, made me do extreme exercise. Every order felt like a punishment—not because I disobeyed, but because I didn’t understand. They would say, “García, gimme twenty.” And I just wanted to get through the day without being humiliated. One time I said, “Permission to recover, drill sergeant.” I had been punished, I did the pushups, and when I said that, they yelled at me, “You’re faking it, you know English!” Just because I knew one phrase, they thought I was faking everything.

I was so afraid of speaking English wrong that I preferred not to speak at all. And when I did speak, they punished me more. I didn’t understand what the sergeants were saying. They made me do exercises until I collapsed. It wasn’t training—it was punishment because I wasn’t like them.

I remember one time we were running, and I fell. No one stopped. No one asked if I was okay. They just yelled at me to get up. I had no energy, physically or emotionally. I felt invisible—less than human.

Laura: What has been your psychiatric experience?

Damaris:

My first encounter with psychiatry was at Fort Riley, Kansas. I attempted suicide while I was still on active duty. They pumped my stomach and then sent me to some groups—I didn’t even understand what they were for. My mind is traumatized. I don’t remember much, but I do remember how I felt.

Well, then after the Army, I went to college, and I was still struggling, still making mistakes because I enrolled in university. I experienced racism, harassment, classism. At the university, they rejected me for speaking English with an accent. They told me I couldn’t represent Latinos. I was a student group leader, and they removed me because I didn’t sound like them.

Every time something like that happened, I would have a crisis. I’d end up in the hospital. Sometimes I didn’t even know what I was feeling—I just knew something was very wrong, that my body couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been in multiple hospitals. Every time I experienced racism, exclusion, or discrimination, I ended up in crisis. Sometimes they judged me for speaking with an accent. Other times just for being a woman, for being Puerto Rican.

Once I got an anonymous email: “We’re all happy you left the psychology department. You and your family are lunatics.” I went into a catatonic state. I collapsed in front of my family. I couldn’t speak. “I need to go somewhere—I don’t know what’s happening to my body. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m in, in, in—I can’t explain my body. I can’t explain it. I feel like…who did this to me? Who is this?”

When I got to the hospital, I broke down crying, on the floor. I collapsed—completely collapsed from a nervous breakdown—and there was a nurse there. “Get up, why did you throw yourself on the floor?” And still they treat me like that. I didn’t throw myself down on purpose. I collapsed, my God, and they treat me like that. I start saying, “Oh God,” because I had already studied about what happens when they take children away from mothers. So I start, “Oh my God, they’re going to take my daughter, oh my God.” It was a whole drama—well, I don’t like using that word, “drama,” but when people—fear, it was fear about what could happen, and I was stressed. Yes, I was expressing fears, like, “They’re going to take my daughter, my God…”

So they take me into a room, and someone comes. They gave me a pill to calm down. I was like, in that moment they gave me a pill. I said, “Oh—” and they asked me questions. At no moment did I say I was at risk at home. At no moment did I say—no, I just said, “I wish to—I wish this situation, basically—I wish this was all over, oh my God, I wish this was all over.” I was trying to express what I was experiencing in that moment. I never said, “I want to kill someone.” I never said, “I want to kill myself.” I have a reason to live—I have a daughter. And then this person from the hospital, very kindly and all, said to me, “You know, if you’d like to rest for the night…”—they told me like that—“…if you’d like to rest, if you’d like to stay for the night, we can take you to the third floor.” And I didn’t know then what that system was like. They said, “We can take you to the third floor and you’ll be able to rest there.”

Oh my God—once I went in, it was another trauma. Another trauma. Because from there…the things I experienced from the people in there, I experienced harassment from men there—my husband saw it himself.

Laura: So, this led you to that hospitalization—and how was that psychiatric hospitalization experience? You told me they pumped your stomach, and then…

Damaris:

They used those words to lock me up. That’s not care—that’s punishment. They gave me pills that made me worse. Confused, paralyzed, terrified. It wasn’t treatment—it was punishment. They didn’t explain anything. They wanted to silence me, not heal me. And despite everything, here I am. I’m still alive. I’m still speaking. Because this story, even though it hurts, must be told. Because I’m not the only one. Because many of us have been silenced, medicalized, criminalized. And we survive.

They injected me with Haldol because I refused to take medications. They threw me to the floor and forced me. I couldn’t move. I felt like my body no longer belonged to me. My family didn’t know what to do. My sister tried to talk to lawyers, and the hospital staff got angry. When I went to court, they transported me in a police car. My husband begged them not to handcuff me. They put me in the back, completely drugged, barely able to speak. I said the only thing I could: “I was not this way until you medicated me.”

They assigned me a legal advocate who didn’t even listen to me. She didn’t let my family speak. I felt abandoned, betrayed. She just saw me as another number, a burden. I wasn’t human to them—I was a file. They treated me like a criminal. They took me to court in a police car. Drugged. Humiliated. In the hearing, the psychiatrist said I was a danger. They never let me speak. They never said I had entered voluntarily. The defender they assigned to me didn’t listen—didn’t let my family speak. They sent me back to the hospital.

I was placed in a padded room. I couldn’t even blink. A patient said to me: “I’m glad your smile is erased.” I felt dehumanized. They attacked me for being a woman, for being Latina, for being vulnerable.

At the psychiatric hospital, they offered me to stay for just one night. I ended up locked up, drugged with Haldol. I couldn’t move. They said I was suicidal, when I never said that. I was just desperate. I wanted to be with my daughter. In court, they said I was a danger to myself. But I wasn’t like that before the hospital. I said it clearly: “I was not this way until you medicated me.” They silenced me. They took me back to the hospital under a court order.

They gave me medications that made me hallucinate. Patients mocked me, yelled at me. Said horrible things. One man said: “ICE is coming.” I thought they were talking about actual ice, that they were poisoning it. My mind was trying to make sense of things, but it couldn’t.

My family suffered. They didn’t know how to help me. My husband, my sister, my father… all powerless, watching how I was being destroyed. They tried to get me out, but the system shut them out.

I’m here because I keep fighting. Because I speak about it. Because many people can’t tell their story. They were destroyed in silence. I’m still standing. With wounds, with fears, but with a voice.

My parents didn’t understand what was happening to me. They told me to pray, to have faith. But I was broken inside. What I went through in the military changed me. It took away my innocence, my joy, my sense of safety. I no longer trusted anyone.

Every time I had a panic attack, they treated me like I was crazy—not like someone who needed help. They gave me more pills. No one ever asked what I felt or what I needed. They just wanted me to be quiet, to stop being a problem.

At the hospital, a nurse told me, “You need God.” He was a psych nurse—a white man—and he said, “What you need is to repent for all your sins.” He pulled out a Bible and started reading me verses. I was vulnerable, crying, not understanding what was happening. And what I got was judgment—not comfort.

My daughter was little. All I could think about was seeing her again. It broke my heart to think I could lose custody just for being hospitalized. No one understood that fear. No one assured me that I wouldn’t lose her.

During one hospitalization, another patient touched me without my consent. I tried to ask for help and they told me “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” But I knew what I felt: fear, violation, humiliation. They made me feel guilty for speaking up. I was hospitalized—I was supposed to be safe. No one protected me.

After every hospitalization, I came out more confused. They handed me prescriptions, diagnoses I didn’t understand, instructions without context. I felt like an experiment—someone they tested different chemicals on until I stopped talking.

I’ve lived with the label “mental disorder” ever since—not as a tool for support, but as a barrier. That label has closed doors for me. It’s distanced people from me. It turned me into someone society fears.

I had to relearn how to survive outside the hospital. I didn’t trust doctors or therapists. I thought anyone could lock me up again. I lived in constant anxiety, in hypervigilance, as if I were still in combat.

One time I tried seeking help in a support group. When I spoke, someone said I was exaggerating. That the system wasn’t that bad. I left crying. I realized that not even among survivors is there always solidarity.

For many years I believed I was the problem. That something in me was broken, defective. But over time, I realized it was the system that broke me. That what I went through was not normal. And that I have the right to speak about it.

Psychiatry failed me. The military failed me. But I didn’t fail myself. I’m still here, resisting. Talking about this hurts, but it also heals me. And if someone reads this and feels less alone, then telling it was worth it. When I left the hospital for the last time, I didn’t leave cured. I left more afraid, more confused. They told me I needed outpatient care, but they didn’t give me resources, they didn’t offer real options.

I had to choose between working or seeking help. I couldn’t do both. If I asked for time off, it was denied. If I said I was in treatment, I was judged. They said I was unstable, unreliable. I lost job opportunities, friendships, family ties. People don’t understand what it means to have been institutionalized. They think you’re dangerous, unpredictable, incapable. They shut the door before getting to know you.

In my community, mental health is still a taboo. I’ve often been told I’m exaggerating, to just pray, to stay busy. That what’s happening to me is “all in my mind.” But this isn’t imaginary—this is my life. It’s real. I’ve had to build my own support system. People who believe me, who don’t judge me. Who help me name what I lived through as violence. Who understand I was a victim of institutions that claim to help but also cause harm.

I lived with fear—and even today, I’m telling you—I’m afraid of the armed forces, terrified. I don’t even know how I’ve survived, you know? The hardest part is that many of us don’t have a space to tell our story. They silence us, ridicule us, discredit us. But we keep speaking because we know there are others like us out there—listening in silence.

My hope is that one day mental health care will stop being a punishment. That being diagnosed won’t mean losing your rights. That asking for help won’t be a sentence. That we can heal without fear, without coercion, without violence. Today I speak for myself—but also for those who didn’t survive. For those who were locked away, medicated, erased from public discourse. For those who died while still alive, institutionalized. May their memories not be erased.

I am more than my diagnosis. I am more than a veteran. I am more than a patient. I am a woman who has walked through hell and lived to tell the story. And as long as I have a voice, I will keep denouncing and resisting.

Damaris sends her wishes to all Puerto Rican women veterans in our collective—may they find the support and the tools they need on their path to healing.