It probably saved my life. It got me into treatment for a while. I eventually came off the meds, but it left the door open for treatment any time I needed it. It became easier for me to tell my parents when I wasn't well and got me back into treatment a few years later.

The eerie part of it all is that my daughter was in the same hospital a few years ago and they had converted the open units to family accommodation rooms for families who lived far away to stay in overnight. So I spent the night in a room similar to the one I had lived in for a month when I was a teenager. Her hospital stay was much, much shorter than mine of course (omg, can you imagine an insurance company paying for a 2-month stay in a private psych hospital today??) - but it was still a bit strange. My mother also suffered from mental illness and was hospitalized after I was born. Like mother like daughter, I suppose.