Experiences With Health Care Workers and Psych Wards?

[Ob La Dee]

I'm just wondering what your experiences are with doctors and psych wards. I have been hospitalized numerous times for suicidal ideation and once for two failed attempts (in the same day).

I find that health care workers, while they mean well, are pretty much useless. It's as if they have a script they fall back on when it comes to suicidal people. "How do you think your family/friends/spouse would feel? Would you say that you have anything to live for? Is there anything I can do to help?"

As for my experiences in hospitals, well it's more of the same. Depending on the hospital (some are better than others, at least as far as food and activities are concerned) there are any number of things that go on. At one hospital we were expected to attend daily meetings held by a nurse (Nurse Ratchet?) He would ask us things like "What color do you feel like today?" And they would go around the room, as if this was actually useful. I have been in this hospital several times and this meeting is actually a part of their routine and it never changes. Day in and day out it's "What color do you feel like today?"

I have to admit that I can't think of a way they could actually be helpful. I am too far gone and there's no turning back. That's why I have turned to a website like SS. I feel like I need to vent without the "up with people, kumbaya" responses to my words. I don't get that here. People here understand where I'm coming from and for the most part I have been made to feel welcome and accepted.

Please share your experiences with health care workers and psych wards.

 

[archipelago]

I'm sorry to hear of your struggles. I've never attempted, and I plan for my first attempt to be successful and therefore my only one. I can't speak to being in a psych ward.

8 years ago, I did some outpatient depression group classes at the hospital. It was 3 days a week, from morning until noon.

I think I felt somewhat better. It was mostly CBT stuff, and the homework was very regimented. But mostly, I think I felt better because I was around people who were generally kind. Even though I was at what I considered a very low point then, things were much better off then than they are now. By a huuuuuge long shot.

There was one woman there around my age (I was 25 at the time), and we enjoyed getting coffee together in the morning before class started. There was also an elderly man there who was from the same background as one of my parents, who treated me in a very grandfatherly way. He was so kind to me.

He had been dealing with a benign brain tumour and missed the last day of class due to a surgery. I didn't get the chance to get his contact info. By chance, later that year I saw him at a festival during the summer. It was so good to see him again. The following year, his wife called to tell me that he had passed away. It felt uncomfortable to ask how, so I didn't ask. His wife told me that he thought of me like a daughter. It was so kind that I cried. I went to his funeral and it was surreal seeing him. I still think about him.

im sorry that this went on a side track, but I think my point is that it wasn't so much the treatment itself that helped, but being around kind people did.

edit: I just realized that I posted in recovery. I think my message still stands but it's not personally what I'm looking for myself.

 

[timf]

I knew a gal in the early 1970s who was working as a psychiatric nurse. She said they had finally been given permission to speak more honestly with patients like, "Bill you're acting a little crazy now, lets calm down". I guess this experiment with truth didn't last.

I guess one reason is that back when doctors were individuals, they didn't have enough money to make them worthy targets of predatory lawyers. Now that doctors and nurses are employees of corporations, they have to follow rules from exposing them to lawsuits. As a result, patients get treated in less helpful ways.

That you can see with understanding the predicament they are in is a credit to your own ability to see truth. That you seek an alternative environment that can be more therapeutic for you is also a testimony to your capability.

 

[whywere]

HI! I have 2 attempts with psych wards experiences afterwards and at least in my experiences the 2 times in psych ward was HELL on Earth. We had to be in bed and our feet could not be on the floor, except going to the bathroom from 10:30 pm to 6 am. The food was horrible, it still makes me sick even thinking about the food, YUCK!

The nurses were generally good, BUT the Doctors and the higher up personal were just the worst. On my 2nd stay I was on suicide watch and one evening in the large common room where the tv, games. frig...etc were one of the managers came over to me and asked if I thought I needed to stay on suicide watch. Of course there were a lot of other patients around the area who could hear what the manager was asking me and it was so embarrassing, as he should have taken me to one of the small rooms and talked to me.

When I did not wan to do what a doctor asked me to do, I wanted time to think it over, I got hauled in front of a judge in a court room and had to argue with the judge so I would not get a 6 month stay. I wound up with a 2 week stay.

I would NOT wish a stay in a psych ward for even my worst enemy ever.

Walter

 

[LastWhisper]

I have been in different psych ward 2 times, and experience is almost the same. At the first time it may seem that nurses and doctors there are friendly and nice, so you can be open with them. But once you say something 'incorrect', they can give you meds that makes you like a zombie for a day-two. And then they again smiling and 'nicely' asking you "How do you feel now? Better, right?" and you have to say yes, because if you say no, the same will happen (or even worse). It can be really better for some illness and/or episodes, but they don't care if you have ones. So you have to say things carefully, but it's probably not a big problem.

However there are good sides too. Once you figured how to 'properly' acting there, it's possible to stay there for a while with almost no big issues. I'm even thinking to going to it again lol (it's not an advice, just in case).

 

[tabletop]

I definetly would agree that psych ward treatment wasnt effective.

That being said I am a weirdo who liked being in there. It was an eacape from life. Even the others in there for suicidal thoughts hated it in there. And I dont blame em. Its like a jail in the sense that you have no freedom. But for me it was an escape cause I was free from responsibilities and expectations.

I also didnt have a job at the time. Nor did I have rent to pay. I was living in a hell called Teen Challenge. A Christian drug "rehab" program. I only smoked weed but was a dealer and i let my family talk me into it cause I was depressed and frightened. I had been targeted for robbery. Teen Challenge is a living hell i wouldnt reccomend going but some did actually like it.

Just saying though, my circumstances effected my feelings. Now that im back to paying my own rent no i dont want to go to a psych ward. But only cause i would lose money and have big bills for it with no actual help.

But if the system wouldnt charge me for it and I could stay permanently I would. I was taken care of well enough. Private room and bath. Staff was nice. I always went to bed early so no issues with being told to go to bed.

Low expectations. They loosely followed a schedule where we would at most do some sort of group therapy for an hour at most four times a day. Sometimes they locked us out of our rooms from 9am til 3 pm. That a the worst of it.

I was fed and clean and sheltered with no responsibilities. Boring as hell but for me so is life in the real world. I felt safe there including safe from myself as everyone was checked on every 15 minutes.


I gotta get into work or I would say more. Summed up treatment didnt work. A nice eacape only to be thrown back into the real world on 2 weeks or less suicidal still or not.

 

[motel rooms]

At one hospital we were expected to attend daily meetings held by a nurse (Nurse Ratchet?) He would ask us things like "What color do you feel like today?" And they would go around the room, as if this was actually useful. I have been in this hospital several times and this meeting is actually a part of their routine and it never changes. Day in and day out it's "What color do you feel like today?"

I feel like red, nurse. What does it mean?

 

[Kattt]

Inpatient treatment apparently helps someone, but i really couldn't say who.
You're proised peace and relaxation and on tap therapy
You get mayhem, random attacks by psychotic patients and possibly institutionalisation.
These people didn't even notice me walk into the ward, off my box with a crack pipe stuffed in ny knickers
If they can't see that, something's amiss
The thing that alwys amazes me is how they ask questions and aatually believe everything you say
haven't they ever heard of lying and pretending?