(May 28, 2015 at 12:47 pm)Faith No More Wrote: 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.
I think largely you get out of it what you put into it. The times I went voluntarily, those were largely positive experiences (though you're right in that I couldn't wait to get out), the times I was forced (by circumstances), not so much. Your descriptions ring true, though, at least with respect to the facilities I was in during the 1980's.
Back then - the guy in the "quiet room" (padded cell, for the rest of you), that was me. Though I'll note that the psyche ward isolation units are far gentler than those at the local police department - being restrained and tranked beats the fuck out of being hogtied with zip ties in a jail cell. Wow, the memories. I've come a long ways.
The food isn't universally bad. Most of my inpatient stints were in actual hospitals, and the food there was exactly as you'd expect - horrible hospital food. At the private facility I stayed at four years ago it was really quite decent, as far as institutional food goes.
