psychiatric hospital

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I took another overdose this morning.
Currently in hospital on a drip.
Tomorrow (assuming I'm medically cleared) they are transferring me to psychiatric hospital.
Rather scared of that.

It's not a psych hospital, it's a detox center.

When I tried to kill myself I got thrown into one of these places. I was sequestered in a hallway and only allowed to enter two rooms. The room with my bed(You'll be expected to share the room.) and the "group room" Every hour we were let outside into a confined area with a basketball court for a smoke break. (I don't smoke.) I was subjected to 6 group sessions a day, which were not so much sessions as people trying to sell you prescriptions or get you to come to anonymous meetings. The staff treated me like a common criminal, the kitchen staff kept trying to feed me food I was allergic to, and if I was too depressed to go to the meeting, nurses kept harassing me to go.

Worst of all, everything is on a strict daylight hours schedule. I've always been a night owl, I worked a night job for years. I don't sleep at night. I would wake up at 2am and they'd tell me to get back in my room. Eventually around 3:30am they'd give in and let me sit in the group room, but I had to keep lights low and be quiet and I couldn't watch TV or anything. All I had was a Sudoku book and a paper cup of water.

I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just relating what happened to me to help you know what you might expect. Hopefully your experience will be better than mine.

You have my sympathy. That is a stressful and scary and all-around low situation. I hope that the hospital can help you in one way or another, medicine-wise or otherwise.

Is that hard to believe, probably, especially when you have an IV stuck in your arm and all that, but it's meant for you.

<--- Spent two days in an acute hospital followed by two months in a psych hospital. DiscardWhisper's experience seems like mine. Not a very pleasant experience.

It mainly depends on the hospital. In my experience, I was confined to a high-security unit that was locked and purposefully located down a huge maze of hallways in case someone did manage to escape. It was okay I guess, though, the lack of being outside and no internet affected me greatly and I went through a bit of withdrawl. If I stayed there any longer, I would have totally lost it. It was like they denied you outside and all of the pleasures of life so that you would want them more and therefore behave more. Looking back on it, that was sort of evil of them. Plus, I got my period in the hospital and they would not allow me any ibuprofren without the psychiatrist's approval which took several hours to get and all of this time I was in excruciating pain.

We had that system, where you earned your way to increased privileges. One of them was actually going outside, and having smoke breaks. I don't think I ever got off of the first step, because I refused to engage with anyone. I didn't want to be "examined" like I was some sort of unusual insect to poke at.

Well, Michigan law bans smoking from all hospitals. Their logic is that hospitals are supposed to promote healthy behavior so therefore ban smoking from the hospitals and help treat those with nicotine addiction while on the unit.

But yeah, nobody was ever let outside... ever. Not until you were discharged. The only other time someone was allowed outside the unit was for other medical treatments in different sections of the hospital like some other people had to have and even then, you had to have at least two escorts.

However, the one thing they did understand was that I had Asperger's so they were a little more forgiving with me not being able to engage with anyone or me often feeling overwhelmed and having to leave during groups because I felt extremely overwhelmed and uncomfortable and they realized that isolating myself, though a common symptom of depression, was due to Asperger's and not depression. They were also smart enough to talk to my mother about ways to make my experience better and a little less traumatic, that was one plus to my visit.

You may get lucky and find people who know about Asperger's or have some experience with it while others may be a little more old-fashioned and clueless. Hopefully, as time goes on and autism and Asperger's become more well-known, people working in psychiatry will know how to treat it better, at least that is ideal.

The day treatment program they made me go to afterwards also knew about Asperger's, but they often tended to single me out and talk about my Asperger's during group therapy which they loved to talk about more than anything really so yeah, I get what you mean about being "examined" because those people in day treatment did that with me a lot and I hated it. Also, because I was allergic to peanuts they had to make me order food from a menu, prepare it in the main kitchen of the hospital and deliver it to the kitchen in the psychiatric unit even though I tried to explain to them that I wasn't THAT allergic, but because inducing an allergic reaction was my method of choice, they did so anyway. I got really sick of ordering stuff due to all of the choices that I was like "Can't you just pick?" and yeah... ultimately I just brought my parents in and they convinced them that I wasn't making any progress in day treatment and I was free to leave.

I'm glad that things are moving in the right direction. I was hospitalized in the early nineties, and while there's been a lot of progression about autism, it doesn't seem to be enough over the past twenty years. I'm glad they were able to accommodate your needs somewhat.

Yeah, totally, in the 90s it was still kind of a new thing and I had a lot of abusive teachers because of that since I was actually one of the first children to be diagnosed with Asperger's as a kid and not classic autism as I was diagnosed at the age of five when most people get diagnosed in their teens or later, but as more research is coming in about how people with Asperger's have a higher suicide rate, then more doctors worth their salt are starting to become informed thankfully.

I learned that if they ask you too much questions about Asperger's, it is not that they want to interrogate you, it's just that they want to learn more about the condition.

Glory of the NHS... no available beds means I get to go home now I am medically fit instead of psych hospital.

Clearly a system well worthy of a bizarre 20 minute tribute in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I assume Mary Poppins is gonna tuck you in when you get home too?

Don't take that too seriously. American medical care is just as f'ed up in it's own special ways.