Lately in the news I’ve been hearing a lot about those teenage girls that tried to kill another girl and that they’ve now been sentenced to 25+ years in a mental hospital. I agree that they definitely need extensive psychiatric treatment and I want them to receive it, but being sentenced to a specific period of time, when in reality recovery doesn’t have a time deadline, is in bad taste. It makes psychiatric treatment sound like a punishment.

And to me, hospitals are about healing and bettering yourself and I feel like all of the talk in the media lately has led people to be making a lot of comments about how dangerous mental hospital patients are and instills fear. The reality of most of us who have been to these hospitals are harmless and are just there to be safe and work on ourselves.

I get that there are different institutions for the “criminally insane” so-to-speak, but I feel like the public (or at least the social media comments I’ve seen) lump us all into one category.

Idk, I hate the stigma that gets placed on us for getting the treatment we need. These are just my thoughts. I’d be curious to hear others’ thougths.