Here it depends where you end up. Some hospitals here do not accept IEAs (NH’s commitment term: involuntary emergency admission), some accept both, and the state hospital does almost explicitly 99% involuntary admissions. The cool thing about IEAs is they can only keep you 10 business days (which really means 14 days plus holidays since hospitals are always open). The cool thing about voluntary is you can technically leave when you say you want to go (+the time for the doctor to approve it and do the paperwork) as long as they don’t believe you’re going to hurt yourself as soon as you leave.

The state hospital everyone is on the same level no one is treated worse or better (the food is crap, I think recently an employee got killed, but other than that when I was there staff wasn’t evil, other patients were too drugged to do anything too crazy other than, I don’t know, try to flush the TV down the toilet). Same with strictly voluntary hospitals which are a little more focused on recovery through groups and less “hold until looks like they’d be okay a day in society and discharge” laser eyes.

The mixed places are interesting. I’ve only been to two in the state (I don’t remember any of my stays in Mass which suck but whatever), one voluntary the other on an IEA. I was treated like garbage at both. The voluntary one, we’ll call ‘P’ I was in for psychotic mania. The hospital just sucked, they had a system error so I was taken off my meds—two anticonvulsants at a decent dosage(!), an antipsychotic, and some stuff for my stomach—cold turkey because it wasn’t anywhere to be found even though they knew I was on them. They never fixed it or anything and I asked if I could leave they said yes and put on my paper I left ‘AMA.’

Second one, we’ll call ‘E’ I was struggling with my eating disorder, SH, and SI. E is mostly a medical hospital with a psych floor, with no psych specific nurses they just get rotated out around the building (a lot of them openly complaining about being on the psych floor). I was accused of faking seizures when I had a panic attack (I shake a lot). I never claimed it was a seizure or anything and they just… ugh. I kept asking the nurses if they were doing this dumb shyt to “reality check” and they’d just respond “you’re safe.” Like, I don’t care if I’m safe, I want to know if Eric’s back there talking shyt! That kinda points to a yes when you don’t say no…I could NOT have been happier when my 10 days weee up because if I was voluntary there that stay I would’ve gotten worse (I was not psychotic before going, but that place was so stressful I was by the end of it) and could only have left AMA.