My Support Forums - View Single Post - Invasion of privacy by mental health workers

Wysteria · Jul 03, 2014, 08:18 PM

Going to inpatient for me can be very traumatizing, and when I do have to be admitted, I almost always take something before going in. I have been leered at, left half dressed, always "skin checked" (bare all), constantly watched by a disgusting male security guard with NO healthcare training, had procedures done in the halls of the ER where civilians, police and healthcare workers were present, I have flipped out (screaming/cussing ...which is NOT me at all) and walked through **** barefoot in dirty halls. This is NOT 30 yrs ago but over the past 8 years, 5 different units and maybe 18 visits.....

I have had male patients from other rooms standing over my bed at night and also been asked these types of beyond intrusive questions REPEATEDLY in the same visit just because one person is too lazy to read the file or get the information from a computer. I have had the lewdest comments made to me, the most debasing things done to me in psych units...
yeah, the really nice expensive metropolitan ones.

The lack of privacy and access to my psych/med files by insurance companies, and just about anyone else is just beyond comprehension. Patients constantly listen in to your conversations with nurses and med nurses and make sport of it. Nurses won't come out of their glass safe houses to talk to you nor ask others to wait back away from you when you are talking to them. They just want you lined up and close by so that they don't have to actually talk to you or find you. They don't come out to protect you when other patients nut up and get violent...they don't watch you while you are drugged and asleep.
We are NOT protected even in the so called "nice" wards.

I am routinely asked to sign forms without a form or agreement attached because workers are too lazy or busy to even show me the document I am supposedly electronically signing. I threw a fit about it one time and she did not even HAVE a copy of the legal document on her cart to show me what "she said" I was signing. They ASSUME you are completely STUPID.

You can say NO to any question or procedure you want...but there may be consequences... I have seen the elderly abused and the weakest victimized. I have to have some strength left to even be go in for "emergency stabilization." There are not enough staff per patients, and the staff attitudes/behaviours change when patient advocates and docs on the ward. 12 hr shifts are too long for the staff in there...and they aren't paid much at all. No one there really knows what the rules are and each employee interprets or remembers them however they feel in the moment. If you can't get something on one shift, either go to another employee or wait until the next shift.... It is LUDICROUS.

You can't be particularly nice...but always polite or you can be hurt. I learned the hard way that 'just shutting up and dealing with it' only makes things 10 times worse.
In the rest of the world, I am always considerate and polite, but in there...no. If you don't stick up for yourself and advocate for yourself, you will not get what you need.

We have to advocate for ourselves and others. One thing I learned, was always to contact my pdoc and T before going in to help get me in and out safely and have them contacting people in the hospital and putting them on notice that they are being watched and monitoring my progress. I have had to write letters and make calls to so called "patient advocates" who can't be bothered to even come on the ward to talk to you...

Yes, there are good mental health care workers that care and want to help....and yes there are 'control freak underpaid I don't give a sh*te about my job' workers.

Yes, it can be helpful and the right thing to do to go inpatient at times...and at times has been helpful, but the real risks are there and to ignore them or invalidate/negate what happens on the units is shameful.

Maybe one day with the mental parity laws included in Obama care, perhaps we will get the true treatment levels and quality of care that we deserve and not shuffled in and out with another label stamped on our bared butts.

Wysteria