You basically have no rights. I was on a locked unit. I woke up at night, because a guy was kissing me on the lips. I told him to leave. He did. I could not fall back to sleep. Then a nurse came and stood in the doorway, making rounds. I told her what had happened and asked for a sleeping pill. She refused - it was past 3AM, which is the cut-off time for sleep medicine. She did not believe my report. She said there was nobody by that name. I called him Buzz which is how everybody called him. Then I recalled that his real name was John. Then she said that she would talk to him AND THAT WAS ALL.

For the morning meeting, I wrote up the story and handed it to the nurse who led the morning meeting to read out loud. She read it. John said that he must have been disoriented and apologized. I DID NOT NEED HIS APOLOGY, HELLO! I do not care for apologies from disoriented psych patients!!! I needed apologies form the nursing administration. For not believing my report, for not bending their rules to give me sleep medicine, for allowing a disoriented psych patient to wander around at NIGHT on a LOCKED unit.

I was then married and when my H came to visit, he asked for a police officer. The guy took a report. Asked me about what happened. Well, I know what was happening when I woke up, not before it, and I was on SEROQUEL, not benadryl, who knows what had been going on before I finally woke up. I did have the blanket on top of me, so hopefully, nothing seriously bad.

Then the police officer asked whether I wanted to press assault charges. That basically meant more trouble for the disoriented psych patient whose life clearly was not wonderful to begin with. Of course, I said "no". Why would I give more trouble to the poor guy? The fault was that of the nursing staff. THe police officer said that he could not do anything to help me complain about the misbehavior of the nursing staff. OK, so basically the half an hour I spent giving the details to the police officer was wasted.

As a result, my then H took me home AMA.

His friend, who is a clinical social worker, said that she, in my situation, would have had the whole nursing management woken up from their sleep and lined up in my room with apologies at 4AM. But I am not as assertive, which is clearly a problem.