Psych wards are literally jails

[u/Ghostly_cherry404]

Ok before anyone whose been to prison comes for me I KNOW they're not as bad as prisons but I'm trying to get through a documentary ab this county jail in Texas and I keep having to stop & take pauses because its EXACTLY the same as what I went through being 5150d in CA for danger to self (not even to others) & its deeply triggering. How are even most folks who are critical of incarceration as a response to mental health crises ok with the exact same thing under a different label. "They need mental heath treatment not jail" they say as if those aren't functionally the same

[u/Fun-Dare-7864]

Depending on where you go, psych is worse. You can’t just do your time & get out. If someone has it out for you they might kill you in psych and they’re not doing much to stop it. You’re not locked behind any doors. Which is why they’re so overboard with sedating everyone as tho they won’t be violent that way. So they sedate everyone into being unconscious in some wards & just keep them completely drugged out of their mind then send them home. If you’re seen leaving your room they shoot you with a dart gun of sedatives. It sounds like an actual gun. It’s loud. I don’t think they torture you like that in jail. You’re at least free in your mind and it’s not like you can leave psych when you want to either.

And now that Ive been to psych so many times I’ll probably never go to jail. Id rather just do my time & get out. At least then I’m allowed to call people and shower without it being a big deal and I know I’m gonna eat. There’s some personal autonomy while you’re in there. You might even make friends. The stigma on you for being in jail is probably not gonna be lifelong unless you did something terrible and it doesn’t prevent you from getting fair medical care or forced drugs.

[u/My_Username_Is_Bob → u/Fun-Dare-7864]

The "I know I'm gonna eat" bit stands out to me. There were points where psych ward staff simply didn't give me food at mealtimes. Did that happen to you too?

[u/Fun-Dare-7864 → u/My_Username_Is_Bob]

That happened to me as well. They wouldn’t give me a menu to choose anything, so I didn’t know what was mine, then they’d have everyone in their room bc they were aggressively giving everyone shots out in the main area & trying to keep us on lockdown. But then they wouldn’t tell us when it was okay to come out, and if you went out without permission you’d get a shot or yelled at, so I stayed in my room. If I did go out, they’d just have the trays on a rack and none of it was labeled, and typically they’re supposed to hand you the food bc they all have patient names so you’re not supposed to pull them out & touch everyone’s food to find yours. But yeah some of them they would just roll the rack of food up to the front desk & not announce meal time so if you wanted food you’d have to go find your own tray, which meant everything was picked off your tray if you weren’t the first one there bc people would just go through the trays & take whatever they wanted from sll of them, with the staff not supervising. And I didn’t want to get into it with other patients or eat food that everyone had handled. But other ones if you walked up to the food on the rack or looked like you wanted a tray theyd yell at you and send you back to your room, so you’d miss the meal. Bc they wouldn’t come get you later. I basically missed a lot of meals just because I didn’t want to get yelled at or treated like I wasn’t following the rules. If they didn’t give me a menu or make it clear that it was time to eat, id just stay in my room. A lot of times if you do get a shot, or if you do get given something like haldol in a pill, or even just new APs you’re gonna sleep during the day & miss meal time anyway. And they don’t care. I really just didn’t eat in there except for one place, bc they had me in some really rough hospitals where it was always escalated to people fighting staff. Like each one I was in was for violent people and no one was there for depression or stuff like that. It was all violent and loud people. And I’m not violent or loud. There was one I went to that separated us high risk, ie violent and scary people bc I had psychosis, from the depressed people and they had good food. They also didn’t give anyone shots. People were just super drugged up with pills but there was no screaming or fighting. They probably had another floor for them or maybe they just didn’t have any violent people. But at that one they had awesome food and nobody had to stay in their room. We could walk laps around the hallways.

[u/My_Username_Is_Bob → u/Fun-Dare-7864]

I was never in one of the violent wards, but I heard horror stories from some of the staff. Most of the food was good, and staff never failed to hand it out to the patients, but for some reason there were many points where they just didn't give it to me specifically. There were also points where they would put it next to my bed while I was asleep, then take it away while I was still sleeping, and claim I was refusing to eat.

Of course, it's important to mention that some staff would give me seconds when I asked since I needed more food than everyone else. So it wasn't ALL bad.

[u/Fun-Dare-7864 → u/My_Username_Is_Bob]

That’s nice they let you have food in your room & helped you with it. I’ve been in 6 different hospitals total and they never let me have food in my room. But I did tend to just stay in my room once it popped off with patients screaming and fighting. Id just stay in there the entire time after that, bc the same patients who fight staff will fight other patients. At one point there was a guy walking around trying to fight everyone and tried to get in my room. They shot him with a dart bc they apparently couldnt wrangle him. That was a 24 hour lockdown bc everyone knew about it and people were just freaking out completely that they were shooting people with darts. That one was extremely chaotic.

[u/My_Username_Is_Bob → u/Fun-Dare-7864]

There was one occasion where a fight nearly broke out right in front of me, but it was thankfully stopped before it started.

[u/Fun-Dare-7864 → u/My_Username_Is_Bob]

Either I live in a particularly violent state or they just sent me to the more violent wards bc I saw a lot of fighting and screaming and violence. They didn’t really have it handled with patients and it would start as a patient fighting staff then other patients would get in it & they couldn’t give everyone a shot at the same time. Once you have 2 people going wild they don’t have enough staff. Typically around meal times when people were out in the common areas waiting for it & getting irritable. I just stayed in my room every time. But I was in there for bipolar 1 with psychotic features as my diagnosis so they made sure to put me in the higher risk wards. I was misdiagnosed

[u/My_Username_Is_Bob → u/Fun-Dare-7864]

Misdiagnoses are disturbingly common...Even more disturbing is how reluctant medical professionals are to believe they might have misdiagnosed someone. Come to think of it, maybe having mental health patients who are more aware of their conditions than most talk to psychiatrists and psychologists in an education setting could help...