Have psych hospitals been positive or negative?

[Caspers]

There have been many discussions about psych wards and I was thinking a poll would make it clearer what people's average thoughts on psych wards are. I am aware public and private can have different qualities, so I'll add those in too. This is multiple choice with private votes

 

[whywere]

I have been in them twice, adn both times it was demeaning, humiliating and dangerous. The first time I was in a room with another person, who had addiction problems and it was not a good experience. Also some of the "staff" were clueless and mean.

 

[puppy9]

It's negative, I was hospitalized due to self-harm. As soon as I arrived there, they told me why the self-harm? You should've find the nearest river or building and jump, it's easier, and if you kill yourself you will burn in hell.

The doctors are manipulative, (gaslighting); they put words in my mouth and do the thinking for me, because they think that I'm not fit to do it myself.

Now I'm traumatized and afraid of everyone irl, because the potential of being open to abuse. Shrinks are scary as fuck because they access the darkest, painful, and vulnerable part of one's psyche. So it's a game for most of em. I'm sad.
I'm on the verge of tears, just writing this. I've changed hospital, but I can't trust shrinks no more. I'm afraid, very afraid.

I'm there just to prove myself that I'm sane. They're the gatekeeper for that. It's hard to prove oneself sane almost impossible. It's easy to prove oneself insane though.

 

[Bootleg Astolfo]

Been to the hospital twice (thankfully let go the next day both times) and the nurses kept treating me like absolute trash. Insulting, humiliating, dehumanising, complete garbage. Thankfully i'm canadian, so i get to be treated like a piece of shit by the healthcare system for the price of free.

 

[LastWhisper]

Mostly negative. They can ask you about your issues and then write everything wrong in your med. card. They won't say to you your diagnosis and the meds you took there, if you will persistent ask them they will just make you an injection to make you sleep until a next day. You can be fine enough there if you won't say much, say that meds are good and you feel better and you love life and such, otherwise you can stuck there for a long time with no success. You should realize that in the moment you enter a psych ward you're an crazy agressive psychopath for all of them and now it's your task to prove that you're not.

 

[albino_elk]

I loved to feel nothing at all so at first it was relaxing out there

 

[glitchgirl]

The most traumatic 2 months of my life

 

[Symbiote]

Psych hospitals in the US, whether public or private, give you a lot of time and space to ruminate about your thoughts. Activities every hour, for about 15 minutes, then 45 minutes of nothing. Sometimes they'll let you watch TV. Sometimes they'll let you walk around the hallways. The orderly does 30 minute checks 24/7, jotting down notes of what you ate, what you did, what medicines did you take, what are your social habits, etc. There is a zero contact rule. You are not allowed to fight a staff member and a staff member can't touch you. But in their clause, they didn't say that another patient can touch another patient. So another patient can beat you up and all the staff can do is stand there and ask the patient to calm down, "please stopping hitting", etc.

It's like a watered down jail except you're paying a $75k bill upon release. 75k dollars for a person that could maim you because they didn't like the way you look or the voices in their head told them to hurt you. If I had to involuntary go in, I'm always on my guard. If someone came at me, they're head is going first thing through a window. Jail rules are in effect at a psych hospital. US has made it clear that they are not there to help you.

 

[Spitfire]

I stayed in a psych facility once. It was a weird experience.

I was confused in the beginning and kept thinking I got put in the military for some reason. I could not figure out why we never went marching? I tried to escape during a fire drill one morning. I thought I was made invisible and the fire drill was a planned and staged event designed to help get me out of there that day. I tried to literally just walk out during the chaos when the doors swung open for someone, and followed them out, but they stopped me. I was not made invisible...

I had a few wounds and spots on my skin that needed cleaned and taken care of, but the staff and nurses did not care to help. They just took pictures and made jokes about having to do wound care on me.

I remember having a guy sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed each night. He would follow me around everywhere during the day for awhile too. Another guy would walk in my room at night clicking his flashlight on and off several times shining the light onto my face, checking on me every fifteen minutes. I could not sleep any at all because of this for a few days.

I never gave them a chance though. My thoughts stayed my own. I never really talked to any of the people at this facility. I was delusional and thought I could hear conversations about me and talk going on, in their heads.. and so I listened to those conversations instead of what they actually had to say directly to me. I could tell they were getting frustrated with me.

The doctor who decided things threatened to make me stay.. "another four more days", again, and the therapist was telling me to just do this and that etc. None of what I said made sense to any of them, especially this doctor. It was not on purpose. I remember him dropping his pen and closing my folder, and then just looking at me for a long time on our last meeting. He never said a word after that and I was discharged, but he never told me.

And before I knew it.. I was out of there, being driven back by courtesy of a police van which was heading and taking me back to where it all began.