/feels/ - personal experiences

I spent a week in a psych ward after I experienced disassociation and was having suicidal urges. This is in the US. My roommate was a 50-something-year-old schizophrenic who had been there for years. He was the most "normal" out of everyone, for the most part, and I lucked out with him as a roommate. My first two days were a total blur because they drugged me pretty good with Klonopin. I only remember bits and pieces of meetings with doctors, being extremely nauseous, not being able to think or talk straight, and laying in bed the whole time. They eventually realized the drugs were too strong and gave me different ones that had less of an effect on me.

The rest of the time I was struggling to eat the poor quality food they served (I went in suffering from anorexia), "socializing" with the other patients, and waiting to get out. There were daily activities that were supposed to act as therapy and recreation, but they honestly just made me feel more like I was broken than I was being put back together.

The place smelled like urine and bleach, the nurses and doctors were alright generally, and ultimately I left there with a new appreciation for myself and the life outside. Only because of how uncomfortable and traumatic being in the psych ward was. That appreciation has since passed and I loathe daily living again but at least I know what I would be getting into if I felt the need to choose to go back.

I'm also from States, so my experience with them will be much different from others.
I've been to psych hospitals and treatment centers at least 8 times in my life, they're all pretty awful. Long post ahoy.

The childrens units are pretty hellish. Imagine a bunch of emotionally disturbed children just freaking out for the entire day. Since you're a child, you can't really advocate for your own treatment plan, and the adults around you usually don't care since they're probably underpaid. Good luck if you have a soykafty parent advocating for you too. Longest I stayed as a child was 3 months because they were getting me off of medication and wanted to document the effects but just left with was trauma.

The units I went to as a teenager were split up depending on symptoms. One unit for angry patients, one for depressed and so on. I got stuck with the suicidal patients. It was separated by sex, but didn't stop the patients from sneaking by during the night to get their horny on. Again, hard to advocate for yourself as a minor. I've had doctors insult me in my face or make up symptoms on my records so they could just give me pills and leave.

When you go to psych as a child, sometimes you'll be forced to go to "school" there and it creates a whole bunch of issues with school papers and such. Whatever work you did there doesn't make up for what you missed in class, but you're still told to go or else you're not allowed to go eat lunch and dinner.

As an adult, it's not as nicely separated as it is with minors units. You'll be 18, in a unit full of 30 somethings and 70 somethings there for every issue under the sun. I've been sexually harassed by older patients and telling the nurses on unit don't really help. If there's an issue, then you're hallucinating it, they'll ask the doctor to give you a different medication.
I've had doctors in adult units tell me the reason I'm there is because I'm obese and need to lose weight and not the fact that what led me there was an overdose of 200 pills.
You can try and advocate for yourself, but people can twist your words since you're the ill one. Doctors would threaten me to go to court to give me medication. You can't leave. At least as a child, you have the option of having your parent take you home but with the risk of getting CPS called. As an adult you're just fucked, especially if it's involuntary.

About the only thing all these experiences have in common is the only form of therapy is group therapy. You have to share your issues, your trauma, with a bunch of nobodies. There's no sense of privacy. Nurses check on you every 5 minutes even if you're taking a soykaf or a shower. Doctors just prescribe meds, they don't care why you're there or what you were diagnosed before. To them, everyone is bipolar and needs Seroquel and Lithium.
And everytime I stayed minus that one time, it was always 2 weeks. If you refuse medication they keep you longer but not too long to the point they'll get sued.
They're just inhumane and I haven't even scratched the surface.

>>2645
>>2646
Thank you so much!

I'm sure psych facilities vary widely, but I've repeatedly heard that criminal psych wards are worse than prison.

>>2644
The experience varies from hospital to hospital. I imagine they are not dissimilar from minimum security prison. Overall I had a good experience. It probably saved my life.

>>2683
My only advice for people is if you need to go, there is no shame in going

I spent more than 3 weeks in inward psychiatric hospital after suicidal experiment and psychosis. This is Eastern Europe.

The first thing after i went there: They bondaged me to a wheelchair and beat the soykaf out of me, than bondaged me to a bed and left me there for hours. These wasn't the doctors, just "nurses". In the morning they put me in a room and give me strong sedatives(well, they wasn't that strong for me, because they didn't know i was a benzo fiend so it was just comfy, the really strong was when they started to give me antipsychotics). left me there without anything. I didn't have a change of clothes, i didn't have anything, fortunately they gave food and there was water in the tap. They didn't allow me to call anyone (confiscated my phone like anything else) to go and get me some food and clothes and shower gel from my home. Then a few days later they transferred me to another part of the hospital, put me in another room. This was the first time a doctor talked to me more than 3 words, and allowed me to call somebody with the hospital phone. It was a room with 4 people in it, steel bars everywhere, we couldn't do literally anything at all, just sit on our beds and talk to each other. We've seen a doctor every half a week, and even then he/she didn't talk to us. Then finally they sent me to a psychologist, then at the end of my stay, maybe 2 days before my dispatch, finally a doctor talked to me, for something like half an hour. In there it was mostly peaceful, but there was some fuckhead dicksoykaf guy who steal soykaf and tried to summon conflicts between people, and a guy who had beaten up some other guy. Then the funny part: when they dispatched me the doctor called me in her office, and she was waiting for me to give her thanksmoney. I could kill her. I sweared on the life of everyone i know that i will demolish that place with a bulldozer one time.

>>2841

i almost forgot: they give me all kind of bullsoykaf like antipsychotics, benzos, anticonvulsants, liver-protectors. But i was dependent on SSRIs at the moment and they didn't give me that and didn't allowed someone to go to my home and get it for me. They didn't even try to taper me down, just cold turkey down to 0 in one day. It's a really bad WD, constant suicidal ideation, hellish anger, constant partial seizures in my brain feels like someone is electrocuting me…

>>2646
I was there when I was a ward of the state. They put me there because the orphanage was full. pretty much everything here is true, except the staff would often beat up kids out of camera range, especially ones that were from the orphanage because there wasn't any parents to ask questions. Only caseworkers that's hands were tied.

They will insult and demean you, and the larger staff if you talk back to them or scream at them back they would grab you by the back of the head, trip you, and then grind your forehead against the hospital carpet till your bleeding and then write in your file that you self-harmed. They would also take you into a room that was locked with electromagnets and the walls reinforced with screws and plywood and keep you locked in there for hours. One of the ways they would get kids to comply would be by pinning them down and contorting their arms in ways the bone doesn't allow. I still get random spasms in my shoulder if I move my arm in a certain way.

If the doctor didn't like you he would put you on a pill called 'REMERON' which made the kids who willingly took it black out. like literally just out ounce it kicked in. Sedate isn't a strong enough word.

The private hospitals are not as evil as the government run ones, and staff in the private ones don't generally put hands on people unless a last resort. The government ones hands were put on kids any moment they got. The staff even jokes about it amongst themselves.

The food in the government ones is some kind of cross between pig slop, astronaut food, and prison slop. The eggs for example where always green due to the way they were made. It was some kind of powder than you added water to and heated.

Because of the rampant systematic child abuse going on they were always short on staff. Especially when an 'investigation' was going on. 80% of the staff would quit and then would all get re-hired when the investigation was over. During the low staffing time a lot student-doctors would intern from colleges. This didn't last long because the students would quit as well after witnessing what was going on.

I have been involuntarily committed 4 times, each one for 5-7 days. Same behavioral health hospital every time, which mixed both the voluntarily and involuntarily committed. There were 3 separate floors for the 3 major problems. 


Group 1: Addicts trying to detox. One of the worst subsets of normal humans. Impulsive, loud, trashy, criminal minded people who ought to just be in prison. 


Group 2: Violent/borderline retarded psychotics. These are the most far gone you could say. Many do things like try to fight orderlies, soykaf themselves, drool on themselves . The psychos are just there because they skip medication and end up doing something that gets them hospitalized. I understand why people would want to be off something as mind dulling as anti-psychotics, but I guess certain types can’t be left alone without them. Underwhelming and uninteresting people though, if you buy into movie stereotypes about mental illnesses. A disproportionate number of these people were black.



Group 3: Depression/anxiety/suicide attempts. My group every time. Unfortunately the most normal of all with the highest concentration of self checked in. Boomers who got cheated on, anorexic succubi, that sort of thing. A disproportionate number of these people were women.

Everyone always hated me. The first time I went in I tried really hard at group therapy despite how much I hated it, as I assumed it would get me out earlier. It didn’t matter at all so I never participated again. People saw me as weird, callous, and uncooperative. Any time I talked, I seemed to say something too harsh or inappropriate. The medical care is also awful. One doctor per 25-50 people that sees you once a week for 10 seconds to lie to your face. I only encountered one person I liked who I later found out was in for holding his own son at knifepoint during a police standoff. From my visits I have concluded that involuntary commitment only exists to get you back on medication and to set you up with a doctor for the future. If some nurse talking to you like a baby is going to persuade you not to kill yourself you should just go to AA or make a friend. 

Worst of all sex happens in there.

>>2846
Glad to know I wasn't the only one who suffered physical abuse from a government run psychiatric.
It breaks my heart knowing that these kind of establishments won't ever correct their behavior, they just want more kids in for more money.
This is what our taxes go to.

>>2847

This reminds me of my own experience, but we were all three groups rammed together in the same little space. Fun times.

I was a "voluntary" comitee, in that they offered to get a judge to commit me and I figured going along with it would reflect better if anyone digs this up on my record. Only one actual interment though, for less than a week.

From what I could glean it seemed that (for many people) a big part of the reason to put anyone there was to get them on medication, wait long enough for the meds to take effect, and keep an eye on them long enough to address any serious sideeffects. Not so for everyone of course, but for a lot of people. My interactions with the doctor were very brief and useless; all they had to offer were drugs, and I was fairly stubbornly in the opinion that I wasnt going to take any drugs, and in the end they let me out having swallowed not a single pill.

Some of the technicians were fine, very nice, respectful, sympathetic. At least one I got the impression had an experience being in such a hospital as a patient. One was pretty spiteful, especially against certain patients (it was mutually deserved, from what I observed).

There were visiting hours, some people used them, I did. Time was a little limited but you could get at least an hour, my memory isnt perfect. There was definitly some courtesy as far as privacy with your visitors (could get one of the techs to let you outside even when it wasnt normally scheduled type of thing (but they'd still watch)). Outside of course meaning into our narrow concrete yard with double layered fences the height of two and half men. Not great but what do you expect.

Overall was an interesting experience, I dont really think it had much effect on anything for me directly, but I think it may have been a call to attention to some in my family.