If they want to call patients "professionals", then they should stop charging the patients' insurance and start paying the patients to be in the psych hospital. That would have helped my financial situation greatly over the years.

I've encountered some really nice pdocs and nurses at the psych hospital, and others not so nice.

Once I was in a diner eating lunch and a man and I witnessed the manager treating a customer (an elderly African American woman) very poorly when the customer rightly complained about the food. The customer was talking to me upset about it, and she deserved to be upset and should not have had to pay for the crap. She ended up leaving paying for the lousy meal because the manager was an A-hole, and then that guy behind me comes up to me and starts saying something like "What a loony she was! I worked in the psychiatric ward at X psychiatric hospital and had to deal with those types all of the time."

The horrible man that said that to me had no idea that I had been a psychiatric patient at that hospital he referenced. I was in too much shock to say a word in response, and honestly, it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference if I had - to him. The thing that was ridiculous was that the elderly African American woman didn't act mentally ill in any way at all. I believe the guy was guilty on two counts. One of maybe being a racist. Another for stigmatizing the mentally ill despite having worked around them.

It was a real learning experience for me. I live in a state that is not known for having many racists, and my town generally has pretty socially liberal minded people. Well, others still exist. Everywhere.