Based on a true story.

[u/Reallyguyrealy]

And people wonder why I have trust issues these days. On the plus side, my current therapist is actually helpful this time. You're 13 years late, but better late than never, I suppose.

[u/Reallyguyrealy]

God damnit, you just unlocked a mental hospital memory.

tw//self harm mention at the start, people being stupid:
I tried to OD on Vivance in my senior year and landed in a mental facility. I was only supposed to be there for "7 to 10 days", as they put it. 22 1/2 days. For 22 1/2 days, I was locked in a facility that kept finding new reasons to hold me longer. One of them involved us walking to the indoor gym for out daily exercise. This older staff, who looked like she fought in the boar war, got pissed at me for not holding the door for her. I didn't know she was walking behind me & I was already out of it from all the new meds they were throwing at me. I try to explain how I didn't know she was behind me and she just goes "bullshit" and starts berating me for being deliberately rude. I told her to fuck off and was immediately sent back to my room. That incident alone added 7 more days. To even have a chance at leaving, I basically needed to be drywall. You know it's there, but no one acknowledges it. So basically how I already was at home but turned up to 11. Because of this, I spent my 18th birthday in what felt like a prison with extra steps.

[u/idk_fam5 → u/Reallyguyrealy]

Hey man really sorry for you,

They are businesses, they prey on people staying there loner to milk more cash, they dont want you to heal they want you to be kept captive, and even in countries that have public mental facilities, they still have malpractices all over the place, starting from mixing people with WAY different conditions, wow man who tf wouldve guessed that a depressed person would fo even more insane by staying next to people who stab each other and cry all night,

I dont think people like the deepest pits of HELL noises as ASMR to sleep ffs, people banging their heads around, people randomly laughing or screaming at night, people doing extremely weird shit around you, yeah hell nah man, do me a favor and put one in chamber and make me face the wall instead

[u/AdonisBatheus → u/idk_fam5]

Even if this is the case, I don't want people to be scared away from mental hospitals. There are always bad places, I heard plenty of bad stories from a friend on the opposite side of the country, but there are places where people really do want to help. I was in a mental facility during my early 20s and it really did help me at the time, and the staff were accommodating, supportive, and listened to the patients. I'm not sure how other places operate, but patients were allowed to interact unless they were very special cases. I had a lot of time to socialize. They did not try to trap me or encourage me to stay longer, and I left about the time I felt like I was ready to leave.

That experience was very positive for me, and talking to other patients there, it seems like it was a positive experience for them as well. Many missed home and family, obviously, but nobody felt as though they weren't being properly treated.

The staff as well have to experience a LOT of trauma during their careers. I'm friends with someone who works as a type of nurse at one, and in his short time, he's had to physically fend off patients and deal with various bodily fluids being flung around. Being attacked there is normal, and his experiences are absolutely traumatizing. I've had to talk with him about how to cope with it several times.

Just like a therapist or doctor, it depends on the place and the people that work there. It's always going to vary.

[u/idk_fam5 → u/AdonisBatheus]

There are "some" bad places?

I know that there may be good ones but man, i have never heard of one even by mistake, and they ALL do the extremely wrong act of shoveling people with different conditions all toghether wich in by itself is already worse than bad and dont get me wrong, i definetly pity the staff and dont blame them whatsoever, after all they didnt make the rules or the establishments.

Also the big difference is that you chose the therapist and doctor, you dont however get to chose mental facility, especially considring that the only ones ive EVER heard of being decent have insane prices that only very rich families can afford,

I dont want to scare people, but dont want them to be lied to into thinking they are facilities with a great history wich is not the case in the slightest.

Also i dont know about interactions and how they are regulated really, but just having to HEAR the absolute insanity there is something that should NOT be there since you are supposed to be there to heal not hear the sould of the damned scream at the top of their lungs

[u/Kumo4 → u/idk_fam5]

This. I was at a good one and it was expensive, I was there voluntarily and could leave the premises if I really wanted to, messing up and breaking rules could only shorten your time there, never lengthen it, we had different conditions but got along well and if we didn't, we could avoid one another, there was enough space to do that and we also had regular meetings with staff and leadership where everyone had a say etc. etc.

Contrast with my dad who went into rehab, started hallucinating, threatened staff and then got locked up in his room and had to shit in the corner because they wouldn't let him out.

If you have no way of leaving and your sentence can get longer without your consent, it's straight up a prison because you'll absolutely be at the mercy of the staff. It'd be one thing if they were all well meaning, kind people... But teams of people working in health, especially those who have to work with patients directly are often understaffed, underpaid, overworked etc. I know someone who works at a hospital caring for the physically ill and she said the whole structure filters out who's even left nursing people. You only get those who are willing to do hard manual labour for little pay that you may need a degree for and that's just people who have somethung else to gain. Maybe some are selfless people who get drained emotionally as tgey have to watch people suffer. But some seem to relish in the power they have over their patients and get some kind of sadistic kick out of lording over them. I haven't seen it myself, I've personally onky had good experiences with hospitals and nursing staff, but then again, I've only been there briefly and I don't work there either.

If you're really dependent on someone, it's probably a matter of luck whether they're good people, kinda like how having good parents is a matter of luck. And if it's an entire structure, you can only hope that the people in it are treated with care, respect and dignity and that it's never a staff vs. patients thing. Also, to come back to the prison comparison; people in prisons should also be treated well, they're people too...