Quote:It really depends on the hospitals, but I've come to the conclusion that the main reason psych. wards can make you feel better is that the conditions are so miserable inside that it makes you appreciate what you have on the outside. The walls are painted a depressing color and the environment is extremely sterile as not to rile up the patients. You have absolutely no control over your own actions. You are told where to go and what to do 24/7, and you are constantly being monitored as to how compliant you are to their commands, which is how you get out. The food is pretty much inedible.
Every once in a while, you'll be treated to a show when one of the other patients acts out and gets tossed in the foam room. If that doesn't work, they'll strap the patient to the floor of the foam room and shoot them up with tranquilizers. Most of the therapy you do is trivial, and you eventually get to the point where you'll do whatever it takes to get out. That first breath of fresh air after getting out is fantastic.
This sounds exactly like the ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.” - George Carlin
