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What It's Really like in Mental Hospital

Recently, a friend asked me what life is like inside of a psychiatric hospital. As I have been to two different hospitals since October 2015, I decided to give an accurate, real life description of an “asylum”. The general population’s concept of what a mental hospital is like is based on what horror movies and Hollywood have decided to paint it as; a terrifying, abandoned, ghost/demon infested labyrinth where stupid teenagers or ghost hunters hold séances. While I have never been to an abandoned mental hospital, I can assure you that today’s psychiatric facilities do not use barbaric torture devices on those who suffer from mental illness. 

When you first get to a psychiatric hospital, whether by ambulance or police car if you’re being transferred from a hospital or whether you come on your own either voluntarily or involuntarily by a friend or a family member, they will take you to a room to do a “skin check”. This is to see if you have any self-inflicted wounds such as from self-harm or a suicide attempt and to document any tattoos/scars/piercings you may have. If you came by ambulance or police car, you probably don’t have any clothing on other than the gown they gave you at the hospital and the clothes you were already wearing that day. You may not even have any ID or your phone or your wallet, and if you do, the nurses will have taken it from you and put it in a bin that will be kept behind their desk until you are discharged from the hospital. 

You will be taken to your room. It will be small, with two cots and a bathroom. You may or may not have your own room, and if you do have your own room, rest assured that within a day or two, someone will probably join you as new people come in every day at all hours of the day and night.

You can’t have certain things, things that people on the outside take for granted, like belts or shoelaces or floss. Some places let you use a fork, knife and spoon, while others may only give you a spork. Some places let you keep your toothbrush, shampoo and conditioner, others don’t. Some places allow smoking, others don’t. Some places let you go outside, others don’t. If you’re a woman, you can’t wear a bra with underwire. You cannot wear any clothing that has ties or laces or strings. The night shift nurses will wake you up early every morning to take your blood pressure and temperature and will also do it at night before you go to bed. 

Nurses and therapists are always watching you and writing down everything you do during the day. You never get a moment alone except for when you go to the bathroom. If you want to shave your face or legs, a nurse will have to come with you to supervise you. You will see people are the absolute lowest point in their lives. You will meet people who hears voices or see things, or who talk to themselves and have full conversations with no one there, and you’ll have people who don’t, or can’t, talk. You will hear stories from people’s lives that sound as though they come straight out of a horror story; stories of abuse, neglect, addiction, death, dysfunctional families, incest, pedophilia, trauma, the list goes on. Some people sleep a lot, either because they hadn’t slept in two weeks before they got to the hospital or because the medication the psychiatrist put them on is making them tired. Some people don’t sleep at all, or very little, which is often a result of their medication or for other reasons. 

Some nurses care about the patients more than others. Some are amazing and will go out of their way to help a patient, whether it’s talking them through an anxiety or panic attack, or holding them while they cry uncontrollably, and there are some who are mean or cold and you can tell they really hate their job. While you’re in there, you will do mostly the same things every day. Eat your meals, go to group therapy sessions, sleep, take your medication, maybe see a therapist in a one-on-one session, and see your psychiatrist so they can keep tabs on how your medication is working.

Group therapy sessions can either be talk based or art based. Art based therapy can include playing board games, coloring or painting pictures, and music. There is only so much you are allowed to do while you pass the free time that you have in between group sessions; you can’t have your phone or listen to any music. You can watch TV in the common area, but you can be sure that the channel will soon change once other people join you. The best ways to pass the time are to color or to read, as you are allowed to bring your own books. The food will either be somewhat decent or terrible, and if you have any kind of food allergies or are diabetic, you need to make sure a nurse knows so that they can accommodate you. 

The two psychiatric hospitals I have been to are what are known as “short term” hospitals, meaning a person stays there one to two weeks, depending on the severity of their mental illness, as they are not equipped to deal with long term patients who require more intensive care. 

As some of you may also know, I once was hospitalized for my eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, back in 2007. I stayed there for 81 days, including my outpatient therapy. I celebrated my seventeenth birthday in that facility. But it was different from the two I have been to recently. This place was only for women suffering from eating disorders, alcoholism and drug abuse, along with other emotional issues. This wasn’t exactly a typical hospital, as they employed the use of equine assisted psychotherapy, meaning they used horses in many therapy sessions. Every morning, the nurse would come wake you up and weigh you. You were never allowed to look down at the scale. They also employed the twelve step program, which is common with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and only once you reached a certain step were you allowed certain privileges, such as being able to receive mail, make phone calls to family and receive phone calls, or go to the bathroom without having a nurse go with you (you were never allowed to shut the door all the way or lock it, because they didn’t want anyone throwing up.) During meal times, the nurses would sit and watch you, documenting everything you ate. If you didn’t finish your meal, it would be saved for you to have at snack time. If you didn’t eat it then, you would be forced to drink an Ensure meal shake. I did that only once and I never made that mistake again (Ensure is disgusting, by the way.) 

Here's the bottom line: psychiatric hospitals are not at all how Hollywood likes to portray them. Yes, they do have a history of violence and abuse, but they aren’t like that anymore. They are places for people to get back on their feet after they have broken down. They are a safe place for a person to get the mental health care that they need in order to function. 

What Is Depression?

What is Depression?

Movies, television shows, and the media often depict depressed people as being sad all the time, or being very negative and mean people, or even violent and evil people who go on killing sprees. The truth is, Depression can take on many different forms. 

Depression can feel like nothing. It can leave you feeling void of any feelings, positive or negative. You feel numb. 

Depression can be crying in the shower because you don’t want anyone to hear you. 

Depression can be sleeping all day because you have zero energy or motivation to do anything. 

Depression can be not sleeping for days on end.

Depression can be smiling during the day, at school and at work, but then at night coming home and crying yourself to sleep because it’s hard to be strong.

Depression can be not having any motivation to do the things you love or to do the things you need to do, like take a shower or eat food or go to work or get homework done. 

Depression can be slicing your wrists open or your thighs because you just want to feel something in the never ending sea of numbness and nothingness. 

Depression can be drinking at all hours of the day and night because it keeps you from having to deal with your emotions and the pain. 

Depression can be your mom coming in your room to find you hanging from a noose in your closet because you just couldn’t take the pain anymore. 

Depression can be feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness.

What does Depression look like?

Depression is looking into a mirror and not being able to recognize who you are. The person staring back at you is a stranger. Depression looks back at you with dead eyes that once held so much joy and light. When Depression smiles or laughs, you can tell that it comes not from a place of happiness, but instead comes from a place of hurt and pain, but a smile and a laugh can be all the mask you need to cover the pain and hide it, because Depression makes you want to stay away from people so that you don’t burden them with your problems. 

What does Depression feel like?

Depression is feeling void of anything. You aren’t sad, you’re numb. You feel nothing, not even sadness. You try to enjoy the things that once brought you great delight but all to no avail. Nothing brings you happiness. There’s a heavy feeling in your chest, like a bag of rocks is sitting on your heart. You feel drained of everything; emotions, energy, life. You have nothing left to give to anyone or to yourself. Sometimes you do feel sadness, and when you do, it overwhelms you completely. It engulfs you, consumes you. And then you wonder why you feel sad, and when you can’t think of any “real” reason to feel sad, it only makes you feel sadder, and the vicious cycle begins. 

What does Depression sound like?

Depression is crying in the shower so no one can hear you. It’s lying awake at night, listening to the gentle snores of your partner and doing your best to sob as silently as possible so you don’t wake them up again like you did the night before. It’s the voices in your head telling you to end it all. The voices that say;

“You’re a f***ing coward, you don’t even have the guts to kill yourself! Just end it already!”

“You’re a failure. You’re a terrible human being who isn’t worth a d**n thing!”

“Do the world a favor and kill yourself already!”

“You’re pathetic! Just get it over with!”

“You know where all the knives are in this house. Just start cutting at your ankles and work your way up.”

“There’s a whole bottle of wine in the fridge, and you have a bottle of antidepressants. You have no reasons to stay, so just do it!”

What is Depression?

Depression is doing a Google search on “ways to kill yourself” and trying to find the best possible way of getting the job done. 

Depression is going to school and putting on the mask you have to wear so that no one knows that you are slowly dying on the inside. 

Depression is a slow form of death. Anorexia is a slow form of suicide. Suicide isn’t that easy, because your body overrides your mind’s desire to die. You can’t bear another second of misery, your instincts to breathe are hard to overcome, but your heart just refuses to stop beating. 

Depression is continuing to wear the plastic bracelet they put on your wrist when you get taken to the hospital after you said you were going to kill yourself and that you have a plan to do it, because you’re afraid that if you do take off the bracelet that you will do it. So you continue to wear it as a reminder until the day when you feel like suicide no longer an option for you. 

Depression is knowing how to be an expert at lying and faking it; fake the smile, lie about why you look so tired and sad, fake the laugh, and your automatic response when someone asks you, “How are you today?” is always to smile and say, “I’m fine, how are you?” because you can’t tell the truth. The truth that you’re not fine, you just spent your entire weekend seriously contemplating taking your own life, and that some days you can barely function enough to take a shower or eat or even get dressed. That you are so far behind in work or school that you know you will either lose your job or fail your classes, but you can’t bring yourself to even care about that, because what’s the point anyway?

Depression is feeling like you’re outside of your own body, watching yourself as you pour out the bottle of sleeping pills into your hand along with your antidepressants, then tossing them back after drinking the last bottle of Smirnoff and lying on your bed, waiting to drift off into nothingness.

Depression is ending up, again, in a psychiatric hospital, almost a year after your last visit.

Depression is lonely; you want to reach out for help, but you don’t want to be a burden on your friends and family, so you keep quit, silently suffering. 

Depression is wanting to get better but not having the motivation to do the things you’re supposed to do, like find a psychiatrist to help manage your medication or finding a therapist, because part of you doesn’t think you can ever get better. 

When someone asks me, “What is depression like?” I never get mad or feel offended. There are some people in this world who are lucky enough to have never experienced depression so deeply that they have thought about taking their own life. Trying to explain depression to someone who has never experienced it is like trying to explain color to someone who was born blind; they have never experienced it before, they have no idea how to process that kind of information. 

When someone says, “Oh, I know how you feel, I was depressed for a long time after my dog/dad/mom/sister/brother/cat/family friend died” or inset any other kind of sad event where people are allowed to be sad, no, they don’t know how I feel. I know they mean well, but, let’s face it, when a person experiences a loss, society allows them to feel sad, because that is... well, sad. But when someone with depression tries to explain why they feel such intense sadness, society likes to say,

“You have no real reason to feel sad! Your life is perfect!” Would you ever say to someone with cancer, “It’s all in your head! You aren’t really sick, just get up and start doing something! Stop being so lazy!” No, you wouldn’t. 

What if we started treating mental health like physical illnesses? What if we all realized that sometimes people get stuck in the hole that is their life and they can’t get out of it? What if, instead of shaming and stigmatizing people with mental illness, we accepted them and treated them like the human beings they are? We aren’t monsters. We just need understanding, love, and acceptance.

What This Blog is About

This blog is for the sole purpose of documenting my journey through life while dealing with depression. I am hoping that this will help educate and inform those who have never experienced depression or who have been given misguided and stigmatized information about mental health and mental illnesses like depression. I will share my own personal stories as well as links to other articles regarding mental illness.

Depression can often feel like a lonely battle; you wake up every day and deal with the suicidal thoughts, the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, the isolation, the despair and self hatred, the numbness of not feeling anything, the lack of joy or happiness, and the overall sensation that your life is pointless. You fight this battle alone, for the most part. Sure, you have your family and friends, your psychiatrist and doctor, your therapist, but at the end of the day it's just you.

This blog is also for those out there who feel alone and like no one understands what you are going through. I do understand. You are not alone. We fight our own battles on our own time, but we are all living in the same hell, just dealing with different devils. I am hoping to use this as a way to not only help and educate people on mental health but also as a way for me to cope with the depression and feelings of isolation. Sometimes just typing out how you feel and what you're experiencing makes it better, even if the relief is only temporary. I will try to keep this blog updated as often as I can; dealing with depression can often mean you don't feel like doing anything at all, making it almost impossible to get chores or any work done.

I hope you enjoy my blog. Until next time.