You weren't "sent away" or "locked up". You attended an outpatient program where you were free to leave for lunch, etc.

You can discuss thoughts about death and hopelessness with a therapist without being hospitalized. You were doing more than just expressing thoughts when you were asked to attend the outpatient program. You were actively suicidal as evidenced by your actions that you have discussed elsewhere. There is a difference.

Honestly, what happened in your case is relatively minor in the scheme of things that could and have happened to others in similar situations. You were not forcibly put in a court-ordered inpatient facility where you could have been kept for a great deal of time if deemed a danger to yourself.

I am sorry this is hard for you to accept, but it isn't a life sentence. People go for mental health treatment pretty regularly these days. It doesn't follow you around like a scarlet "A" on your chest.

My gut feeling about you is that you have subconsciously substituted this "trauma" for the real trauma you have been through in your life, and your childhood was truly traumatic. You are unable to really look at and work through the childhood trauma you have experienced, so you have made this whole hospital program thing the focus of your trauma. It seems displaced. Kind a strange sort of transference or something.