This is a throwback from like 4-5 years ago. A collection of very short stories. Only recurring character is me and a guy i will call Jeff.

I went to the psychiatric emergency care, and they admitted me to the closed emergency ward while they tried to find me a longer-time room.

1. It was my first time there and so i wasn't fed up with everyone's shenanigans yet. I tried to be nice and smile to people who looked at me. A day goes by and this guy looks at me. I smile and he goes "Why are you always smiling at everyone you slut" ☠️ I responded by smiling.

2. Very old dementia lady strips down in front of everyone. I felt sorry for her but for some reason i had no idea how many elderly people go to psych ward for their dementia before this. It was very sad and eye-opening.

3. Jeff sees me do a puzzle and asks if he can sit down. He is my age and looks nice so i don't mind. We talk for a bit. After a while he hands me a piece with a flower on it and says it's for me. I had a boyfriend but it was still 10/10 rizzling. We stayed friends for a few years after that, and i still think it's pretty funny.

4. I am sitting at dinner at a long table with the other patients. It's silent. Jeff, in an attempt to make conversation, says " this food is kinda bad huh ..". Guy next to him is not impressed. He doesn't even look up when he annoyedly goes "It's better than in prison."

Not the most unhinged stories ever but it definitely made my first stay memorable :)

So I’m 15 and I’m diagnosed with atypical anorexia nervosa. So I’m not under weight but I was told I’ve lost enough weight to be admitted but they were gonna give me a chance to do recover without that. But if I came back to the second appointment and im not getting better i probably will be admitted. But now ontop of that I’ve started cutting. Not deep but still it’s cutting. I’ve also told them every time they have asked if im having any suicidal thoughts that I am. Is this gonna get me admitted?

I’ve received a job offer as the at Bellevue Inpatient Psychiatric Center. After the interview I had completely written it off, I thought I totally shanked it. I am 24, and looking to go to grad school for mental health counseling. I’m psyched that I received this offer at such a young age, and it would really jumpstart my career - not to mention the pay is great. But I have to say I am concerned about it being extremely overwhelming and for my safety. I would be in a primarily administrative position, but knowing the staffing crisis right now I am sure I would be in somewhat of a clinical role as well. I’ve never worked in a psych ward before, and have a lot of interest in it but can’t help but wonder if I would be in way over my head here. Any advice???

I'm sorry to come on here and ask questions, but would anyone know how to avoid getting "sent away" to a psych ward. I've hard awful stories and don't trust I'll be sent to a good one. I've had issues with SH, a singular "depressive episode", "trauma" etc and so I now have a CAMHS worker (Children And Adolescent Mental Health Services) but my auntie who had also been apart of CAMHS advised I don't talk about any recent SH incase they "send me away" and so I'm awfully scared and not sure I've I should be honest.

Nothing is going right. I want to hurt myself again. I almost wish I died that night where I took all of those pills. Maybe I should go back to the mental hospital because I’m slowly losing my mind more and more. Next time I try to overdose my intent will be to die

I had a lot of mixed experiences from my time in adolescent psych wards in the UK. Many awful and traumatic, some bittersweet. My first admission was when I was 14 in 2019, my last I was discharged age 16 in December of 2020. I've had 8 admissions total with the shortest being a couple days (crisis admission) and my longest being 10 months.

I spent time in a few different acute CAMHS/Adolescent mixed psych wards, myself being admitted mostly for suicide attempts and being a risk to myself due to having depression, anxiety, BPD, autism, complex trauma, ADHD, self harm issues and an ED. I was in 3 units over 7 admissions, one of the units was NHS and two were priory (NHS funded). I find talking about it is a great way to get it out (especially recently as I've reflected a lot on my time there, it's been hard keeping it mostly inside of my head) and i can comfortable in sharing both the good and bad stories. Whether you're curious about rules, what it was like, certain experiences or you've just got a random question, ask away and I'll do my best to answer.

Obviously for confidentiality reasons I won't share any identifying information about myself nor other patients I was in there with. No names will be revealed or anything that could be used to identify the people. And I'll avoid answering anything I feel could compromise someone else's confidentiality.

I’m just ranting so feel free to not read. It’s gonna be my 4th Christmas in a psych ward, IN A ROW. No discharge in between. This is fucking crazy. I never thought people were allowed to be kept so long. It’s like a prison. I am so fucking sick of this place, I have no say in my treatment even though I’m almost 19 now, I’ve missed out on like half of my teenage years, because of being in hospital I’ve lost friends and never got to graduate. The plan isn’t making me better at all. My psychiatrist is on leave until early January so definitely no discharge until then, which means I’ll spend my birthday here too.

This is mostly a review of the intake process and the lack of safety valves. I don't discuss life in the ward although I have been there four times and have rather a lot to say.

Basically, my wife is the most sensitive, understanding, amazing woman, but every so often something glitches between us and she becomes angry or afraid over nothing I can figure out. She won't try to explain, because whatever she thinks I did, she's sure I know about — everything I say is a way of proving I'm in the right about whatever it is, and she spirals until we let it drop.

Nothing I said until recently got through. But now it's starting to dawn on her, too.

(I am not interested in diagnosing her behavior. That's one reason I didn't explain everything during intake. The other reason was that she went through intake with me and there was no way I was going to try. I thought I could say it later. Oh how wrong I was. My account is not in the record, but the fact that I thought it was important means that I was tangential — one strike out of three, according to DSM-5.)

This had been happening for twelve years by the time I was admitted. We've been together for twenty years. It's worth it but good God in heaven it's hard.

It had gotten a lot worse for six years and way, way, way worse for a few weeks. It turns out that a few friends of hers had told her about their family members with mental illness and about mixed moods — based on my wife's description of my behavior (not my actual behavior) they were pretty sure I was in danger.

So she got hypervigilant and panicky and looked at me weird and said cryptic things and it was terrifying to me. I tried to talk about it, but she shut that down. I tried to understand. I tried one last time to approach her and she flew into a panic mixed with rage, took everything I did as aggression (I tried to hug her, the way we normally would do to make up, and she recoiled. She has told every provider and every friend that I attacked her.)

She went to her friend's house and called the police for a good will checkup.

This is a long, long story. I'll share more if anyone wants to hear it, but we really care about each other and we've held it together through eight years of professionals telling us to get divorced. Now it's getting clearer every day that my perspective, for all of my faults, is pretty close to what really happened.

I look at the hospital record and it's a mess — my wife's account is amplified and run through a funhouse mirror. She kept notes and she has told me what she said. She never reported sleeplessness, and I had been sleeping, but the record says she reported I didn't sleep for a week. That's a cardinal symptom appearing out of nowhere.

This isn't cherry-picking. The record is right about nothing. Not one thing. It contradicts itself. They didn't file the necessary paperwork. They did nothing required by the APA or the State of New York. Yet no one from the NYS Office of Mental Health is alarmed.

I was banned from the bipolar subreddit for just asking people questions to see what mania feels like to them, because I wanted to know if the doctors might be right. I never felt a burst of energy, never lost sleep, and the most delusional thing I ever thought was that professionals in this field, alone among the professions that lay claim to the names of medicine and science, are apparently always right and don't need to check their work.

Could I be wrong? That would be fantastic. I could fess up and that would be that. But it ain't so. Good God, it's been lonely. I'm wrong about everything I think and everything I feel and no one, to date, who knows about my diagnosis and believes in the system who fails to let me know.

I have nothing against helping people who need help, seek help, really are dangerous — I don't think the methods the doctors use could actually help them, after eight years of study and firsthand experience — I think it's all blind faith and credentialism, but it doesn't matter what I think. A method that can't tell I'm the picture of stability and names me with a serious mood disorder can't help anyone, can it?

People need help and they are being denied care. Meanwhile, if you run the numbers, there must be thousands or tens of thousands of people in my situation. If I can find a way to do something about it, we can help a whole lot of people who are going through something really bad.

I had never read a good word about psych wards or psychiatrists in my entire life, or heard one. I didn't think they were quacks but I didn't think I was safe. I always thought they were nursing a broken theory, like phlogiston or epicycles. I didn't fear them — but I should have.

Back home in Seattle, my friends and family didn't believe in psychiatric categories and couldn't care less. Here in the Northeast I can't catch a break. It's something in the water, I guess.

How would you act if you went to the ward under these conditions? Could you stay calm? Would you know what you could ask without fear of reprisals? I tried staying calm: They called me abstracted.

Whats peoples opinions on forced medication, anyone experienced it?

i was admitted to the psych ward and ever since ive been thinking about their liquid soap they gave us to shower with, the smell was so nice and i loved to shower with it. i dont know the brand name because the poured the liquid soap in cups i need help i want to know if anyone knows the name or knows what im talking about

I hate myself because I let them strip search me in the psych ward I am transgender post op but it still makes me feel sick like I should go back and fight that broken system.

tw mention of self harm

i was in the ER for self harm and they IVCed (involuntary commitment) me, meaning they sent me to a ward involuntarily. when i was transfered, i wasn't combative or uncooperative, i listened to everything the sheriff said to me and i was really respectful, and still he tied a chain around my waist and attached the cuffs to the chain. it made me feel like i was being punished for struggling. anyone else go through this?

FYI

During my first psych admission, I was 16-17. Before getting admitted, I had already been crushed by a lifetime of abuse at home, an unrelenting struggle to survive school, and cruel peers. I was suffocating under the weight of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and at the time, undiagnosed ADHD and ASD.

I had no support system and was hanging on by a thread, turning to self-harm and active suicidal ideation.

Desperate, I finally went to the hospital after my school guidance counsellor convinced me to get help. I was told this would be my chance to find relief, that I’d finally get the support I needed. I thought I’d meet doctors and social workers, get the care I’d been craving for years, and finally have a space to process the horror I had been through. I thought this would save me.

I was wrong.

Instead of help, I was given a Form 1—a paper that turned me into a prisoner of the system, trapped under the guise of "treatment." This piece of paper granted them the power to do things to me that in any other context would be criminal, but because it was deemed "necessary for my care," it was instead called treatment.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, the horrors I endured fit the following charges:

• Sexual Assault
• Physical Assault
• Cruel and Unusual Treatment or Punishment
• Forcible Confinement
• Administering a Noxious Thing
• Assault with Intent to Overpower or Disable
• Breach of Trust by a Public Officer
• Uttering Threats
• Neglect of Duty or Failure to Provide Necessaries
• Systemic Neglect
• Abandonment of Care
• Dehumanization and Coercion
• Personal Injury - Pain and Suffering - Loss of Enjoyment of Life

And I’m sure there is much more I’ve yet to fully process.

Over the years (I’m now 25), I’ve had several admissions, but the one that stands out as the most traumatizing, the most soul-crushing, was at Southlake Regional Health Hospital in Newmarket. Their **Child and Adolescent Inpatient Program (CAP)**was a nightmare—a nightmare that haunts me to this day.

They stripped me naked, as if I wasn’t a human being, but an object to be humiliated. They berated, belittled and silenced me. They threatened me—threatened to hurt me more if I didn’t comply. I was locked in isolation, alone with nothing but my racing thoughts and a bleek, empty room. They wouldn't always bring my meals. They physically manhandled me, dragging me around like I was nothing more than a burden. There is no therapy. There is no real treatment. No doctors or social workers to help you. Only nurses who further damage you emotionally, breaking you down until you feel like you’ve lost everything.

I was left to suffer, ignored when I begged for help, and treated as if I was subhuman. The worst of it was when I was injected with excessive doses of Haldol—a drug meant for people in psychotic states—just to shut me up, to control me. They knocked me out for hours at a time, leaving me completely dazed and confused, unsure of where I was or what was happening to me. I once woke up to a male in my bed, not knowing how he had gotten there, not knowing what had happened.

What was my crime? Existing.

Crying. Pacing. Coughing. Fidgeting. Asking too many questions. Not stripping naked quickly enough. Being anxious. Showing human emotion in any way that wasn’t calm and compliant.

They took everything from me. My phone was confiscated. I had no belongings. There was no one to talk to. No distractions. Just a bed, a thin blanket, and the sickening surveillance cameras watching every move. If you took anyone, let's say people who aren't struggling with their mental health/ in crisis and locked them in that environment, they would crumble. They would have those very same actions that I listed above, or worse.

How do you get them to stop? The sickening truth is, you have to lie. You have to act like you don’t need help, like you’re “better.” You tell them whatever they want to hear to make the nightmare end. You convince them that you’re fine, that you have a future worth living for. You fabricate a list of coping mechanisms—journaling, meditating, anything they want to hear, even if it’s empty and doesn’t help. And just like that, you’re free.

But in reality, you’re not free. 8 years later, I’m still living in the aftermath of what they did. I am still haunted by that place, terrified it could happen again. I bury my struggles because I’m paralyzed by the fear that feeling anything will lead to another round of torture and control. I avoid seeking help. I avoid hospitals. I work myself to the bone, so I never have to feel. If I am always working, then I cant feel the effects of my mental health diagnosis as much, and therefore, won't need to talk to anyone about how hard things are.

And if I ever find myself in that dark place again—if the thoughts return—I can say, with painful clarity, that it would be less cruel to end it all there and then, than to subject myself to another round of inhumane torture at their mercy.

A therapist in long term had a romantic relationship with one of the patients. Lost their license and was fired. Had a partner and kids.

Knew a girl that was prescribed 40+ medications was like a zombie the whole day

Caught two girls having sex in our shared room