I've been admitted 4 times. This last time was my longest stay. I live in a big city and we have an urgent psychiatric care or as we call it UPC. This is were the police take those needing mental care. You can also go there on your own if your having troubles. And this where you go to get a loved one help. (Two family members needed to do an involuntary stay).

However a few of the larger hospitals have own behavioral health units. Have stayed in one of those for five days, and two stays at UPC. My last one tho was at a big behavioral health hospital. There are 7 or 8 units. Some only women some only men. Most everyone there is by a court order. I was on a co-ed unit. We had activities from sun up til sun down. No smoking. Laundry done by staff. All belongings inspected. Visits allowed during visiting hours. You can eat on your unit or go to the cafeteria. It depended on privileges. There are two public phones to receive calls or make them. The day room was nice with games, crafts, TV, movies. Of all the places I had been this one was the nicest.

Now the parts I didn't like. The biggest one was I was there by court order. I supposedly told one of the cops I was going to kill him. I was having psychosis breakdown/episode. So they consider me in danger of hurting myself and others. Eventually I was changed to a risk of hurting self only.

The other part that was the hardest were the patients that screamed and argued and needed the time out room. My roommate was one of them. She often woke me up in the middle of night naked. Those patients had 24 hr buddies that followed them everywhere.

All in all if I ever have to do it again I would prefer the last one, the activities were awesome. Yoga, rock and walk, and rec where you could p,any basketball or shoot pool. It also had video games and ping pong.