My aunt suggested she might be bipolar once, though I could tell she had no idea what that meant. I mentioned to a friend once that I'm bipolar and could never go into the millitary even if I wanted to, but he said everyone gets depressed. People in general don't understand a lot of things, mental illness especially. I can't say it has ever really bothered me. I'm kind of apathetic about people and tend to just keep it to myself.

I've only been to two different inpatient hospitals, but the voluntary one was FAR better. I had my own room, a nice bathroom/shower, and you could actually walk around the place without having to be escorted. They'd even let us go outside if we asked. The involuntary one, the first thing they did was throw me into the isolation room and and had me strip searched (flashlight and everything, short of cavity search). There's a lot of little things I could nit pick about, but the worst was a nurse chasing me down the hall because he thought I pocketed my meds, then it taking several days just to get a 5 minute appointment with the MD for excruciating neck pain (pinched nerve), and she did nothing about it. Forceful medications and injections are illegal where I live, so I'm lucky in that regard.

At times I really did want to get out of my house and into a new environment, but I can't really say it was helpful at all being in there. At the very least I have the experience, though now it seems much easier to be put back into the hospital if you've been put in there before. Of my 3 hospitalizations, I was only a danger to myself during the involuntary one, and the other two were just my therapist being a ****.