[HALLIEBETH87]

I randomly remembered today marks ten years since my first time IP at age 18. It was a horrible day of police and ambulance at school, evaluation from school therapist, interrogated by state police for having a razor and then my trip to ER. I was almost under warrantless arrest and sent with cops but my sister saved me.

Bad memories.

[gayleggg]

I'm sorry that it has to be a continued reminder of such a terrible day for you. I hope that life is better for you now.

Best wishes, Gayle
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Homeira]

So sorry to hear that!

[cashart10]

So sorry Hallie Beth!

[HALLIEBETH87]

It's all ok. Just all my times IP thus was so traumatizing

My first locked ward experience was too , also took close to 10 years to get over it. Think I am now, I've let go of a lot of anger towards those that put me there.

Hugs keep on the right track now, it no longer has to control your life

[Skywalking]

I'm sorry it's such a hard week.

[HALLIEBETH87]

Oh its ok. It just hit me earlier and made me think of all the crap Ive been through. So many years of pain and Im still working to get it under control. Back then I was diagnosed with major depression and such. I wonder if things could have been better is they caught the bipolar stuff earlier.

That day really was so traumatizing though. All because I self-harmed at school and my friend told a teacher. That's when they told a counselor who called my school therapist who called an ambulance. Because she broke protocol they called the school resource officer, because I had a razor they called the state police, and the school superintendant showed up because of it all too. it was horrible. I remember curling my knees up to my head and just hiding in a corner until my sister came to pick me up. I was to be evaluated and wasn't allowed back in school until I was cleared.

I wasn't too scared in the ER after all that. Then I was my first 72 hr hold. What a crappy homecoming that was!

[BeyondtheRainbow]

I'm sorry your memories are so bad. When I was newly diagnosed I went to a new psychiatrist who wanted me to go IP. I did not want to do this. I needed meds but I had a therapist, I wasn't actively suicidal, I just had akathesia and was very manic. She insisted, I refused, she insisted more and eventually pulled out the involuntary committment papers, all the while telling me if I didn't agree to go that the police would take me in a police car with handcuffs if I fought and that I would be going to the state hospital instead of a nicer local unit. I yelled and yelled at her but managed to pull the right words out of my psych degree and made her quite aware that if she tried to pink-slip me I was going to fight it in court. When she realized I knew the right words she stopped filling out the form and gave me one week to get things together and then I had to go in but she'd put me in the smaller unit at whatever hospital. I found out in the next few days that this was a gero-psych unit and that I was a)26 and b)worked with a lot of people who wound up on gero-psych so NO. I arranged time off from work, having to explain why in the process, got cat care, bought some pants without drawstrings, etc. and then when I called like I was supposed to she just asked if I was ok, I said yes and she said fine and dropped me like a hot potato. I've always been traumatized by that and it was almost a non-event once I started yelling the wrong words (it is the only time in my life I have been on the verge of breaking something belonging to someone besides my little sister when we were kids on purpose and it's a good thing I didn't because it was an antique something or other that was conveniently in my reach.) It took me another 7 years to agree to the hospital or to even consider it. I have a dr who doesn't hospitalize easily so that saved me from being forced IP in those years and by the time I did need it there was a mood disorders unit that was pretty much exactly the opposite of what horrible dr threatened me with (plus no handcuffs which is also a positive). It still took me a few days there to feel at all safe because I was so certain it would become what that woman had described when she tried to scare me into a voluntary admission. My current dr had to spend a lot of time telling about what it was like before I went in and even then I was terrified; she was only there once a month so I knew there would be a lot she didn't know.

I am so blessed to have that mood disorders unit but I don't think I'll ever be hospitalized without hearing the threats about the police and how bad the state place was.

I'm sorry that you lived part of my nightmare plus a lot more. It must have been terrifying at such a young age. When I was in high school and they found out I was suicidal I just got a long session with the guidance counselor (my mom was a teacher which probably influenced this).

[cashart10]

I was 16 my first stay inpatient. Remarkably, I remember almost nothing about it (probably because I was so drugged out). What I do remember, however, is the patronizing and condescending look I received when I advised the nurse

Possible trigger:

that the scabs on my stomach were self inflicted.

I will never forget it either. I also remember the shock of them taking my shoe laces. Neither my mom nor I had any idea they weren't allowed. My experience was not so traumatic but upsetting none the less. What is it about locked wards that is so intimidating?

[HALLIEBETH87]

Well Id been taken to an IOP in Derby City but the therapist released me the second day and said I needed counseling on my own. And I also ended up in crisis counseling at a kids crisis center when I was 17 after some stuff happened and i had to go there for 4 days after school for intensive counseling. They almost hospitalized me that time but didn't. They also called me every night before bed to check on me.

But yeah, my first IP was then at 18. It was really scary. They took everything there. All I had were my undergarments and had to wear a gown 24/7 with hospital socks. so scary at 18, I was the youngest one there.

My first experience was pretty traumatic. Im not sure I want to go in to much detail.

But it involved them dragging me screaming that I did not need to go to a locked ward for

Possible trigger:

minor SH scratches.

I thought I could convince the pdocs that it was nothing and they would let me go once we did get to the ED. Then they looked at my meds chart... it was christmas night, they couldnt get a hold of my normal pdoc (I was on the other side of the country) and told me I was lying about the meds I was on - I was not, every medication was taken to the label instructions, it just was a hell of a lot of meds to be on. So it went downhill from there, when I found out they were going to admit me I lost the plot. Kicking, screaming, forcibly drugged. They couldnt get in contact with my pdoc so they dropped the majority of my meds all at once (and we all know how well I go without meds a couple days...). I went through hell withdrawals, ended up on 24 hour watch for 2 days, on the 5th day kinda realised I had been there a bit too long for them to keep me locked up even on a holiday (which was why they kept saying I was not allowed to leave and was kept in a secure locked facility), they argued a bit, I had to go in front of a panel, and finally agreed to a transfer to a private clinic.

Whoa that stirred up a bit.. and thats just a very breif! Probably not such a good thing to relive before breakfast haha.

None of my dressing gowns have ties now, they took them all, I've resorted to using the horses ribbons for ties now cos I cant afford to buy new dressing gowns just cos the ties are cut off and the belts are missing. Wow that just made me realise one of these dressing gowns is over 10 years old, whoops, no wonder its getting a bit small.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Having worked on the other side of the plexiglass barriers with a handful of magic keys in my pocket and my hand guarding my secret, indivdiual they know how opened the door for the escaped patient, code for years I know one of the biggest differences is that there's almost always an "us-them" mentality. It's how you survive working with people who are so sick. I hated seeing it in myself but I did it too.

When I'm in the hospital it's always been in this little mood disorders unit with only 10 beds. It's the ideal if you've got to be locked up. And some nurses I've bonded with some with shared healthcare experiences. One in particular will take time to just sit and talk to me when she is free and we talk about home health and various things we've seen doing that (her in the big city and me in rural Appalachia plus a smaller city a long time ago). But I've also seen that nurse absolutely throw a tantrum over some miscommunication or something (I was too manic to care). Another nurse that I really like a lot I once heard make a snide comment while going through my bag because I had a clock in there. I had the clock in my bag because I traveled a lot for work right then and just grabbed the already packed bag when I was going to the hospital. I know she had no idea I was where I could hear her but I was. I also like having a clock b/c I can't see the wall clock without glasses. But whatever.

There is this one nurse that I really, really dislike and so do most patients because she talks down to people. The first time I was in she ran a group every night where she'd pass out handouts and read them to us for an hour to an hour and a half every night. No discussion, just reading boring, boring stupid stuff. She once compared our feelings about being locked up with what it is like to have to go all the way downstairs and outside to smoke (while smokers in the group were already suffering). She's completely fake; last time I was in I was really suicidal and the night after they learned this, after I'd had a long talk with nursing the night before and with my psychiatriast she pulled me into a conference room and grilled me. I guess the suicide note wasn't enough detail. She was my nurse every day that she was on in the nearly 2 weeks I was in there and the night before I went home she told "Lisa" to go wake another patient. I figured there was an aide behind me so I ignored her. Turns out she meant me. I was one of her max of 5 patients for 2 weeks, she gave me meds every day and did not know my name (also this was my 3rd time in, 2nd time in 2 months).My own psychiatrist admitted that a lot of people complain about her. The best was the day that I caught how fake she is. I had a roommate who was sexually inappropriate and so was sitting in the hall writing in my journal to avoid her visitor. My own psychiatrist was covering the weekend. That nurse and my roommate were in this little hall gossipping like old friends (the roommate is in and out a lot). So after a while I heard the nurse say with a huge sigh "oh, well, I should go, Dr. psychiatrist is here", sigh again, what a bother implied. I was positioned exactly in the right place to hear both that and then to hear her open the nursing station door and effusively proclaim "Dr Psychiatrist!!!!Oh, it's so good to see you!". And don't think I didn't tell my psychiatrist either . If the Lisa thing hadn't happened maybe not but really. Jen is only the most common name for women around 40 and it's not hard to remember and she'd had 2 weeks to practice. Good thing there wasn't a Lisa or who knows what meds I might have gotten. That nurse takes the us-they to an extreme and I think lots do.

I remember working and having a patient with horrible pain and it was magnified by his schizoprenia. The nurse refused to do anything to treat it because "he doesn't know what he feels anyway" and then because I was close to this man, something pretty much nobody had achieved in the 20 years he'd been in the institution she told me his entire history which included murder and some bad things but a lifetime ago and in specific circumstances; he told me about it a few days before he died because he thought I was the Virgin Mary. His history didn't matter, his pain did. But he wasn't "us" the normal people so it didn't matter. Once we had a woman who normally wouldn't have been placed with us but rehabs wouldn't take her. She was bipolar and had been med compliant for 30 years but something happened and she stopped her meds. While in the hospital she got up in the night while confused, fell and broke her leg in a way that needed a lot of rehab. She was still getting stabilized on meds when she came to us and there were a lot of people who refused to believe that she was capable of returning to society. Of course she was, once her meds were back in place she was fine except for the healing leg. But instead of seeing that they had her on the locked semi-acute, you have no privacy for any moment of your day unit for 2 weeks. I have so many other stories but they all come back to the you/them thing.


This was kind of the way you thought from the start and honestly they encouraged it. I wasn't actually told I was going to be working in psychiatric care so I thought I was at a normal nursing home until I'd been there an hour and walked down a hall and a man laying on the floor informed me "I'm dead" (he would grow to be a favorite, always trying to marry me off to random male staff members) and 30 seconds later a completely naked man sauntered down the hall and nobody seemed surprised. They were used to it. I was stunned. So when I went back to the office and said "WHAT?????" it was very much "oh yes, our patients either have severe mental illnesses, dementia with violent behaviors or traumatic brain injuries either getting rehab or with violent behaviors". Ok, then......And by the end of the day I'd been taught to use humor to cope with a really sad place to on the surface (when I got to know everyone it wasn't sad at all).

But that's how it works. And that's what makes it hard; they don't picture themselves in our shoes. On my first stay my AD left my system and the new one wasn't in my system yet and I just started crying and couldn't stop. I tried to get nurses a couple of times but they were busy with a discharge. The aide noticed when he did room checks but instead of getting me help and medication that I clearly needed he offered me a joke. I wanted so badly to throw a pencil at him. I'd been sobbing for over an hour; jokes were beyond helping. He should have gotten a nurse for me but left me to cry another half hour before another patient got me help. Again, us/them. Depressed woman is sobbing so let's make her not depressed with jokes.

They don't mean to do it exactly, it's just the way it's always been I think. It's just very hard to avoid, especially because it's so prevelant.

I'm shutting up now.....sorry. This is one of my big things that bother me because of being on both sides. For years I was afraid of the hospital because I knew what it was like for our locked up patients. When I got there it was the weirdest things that surprised me, like paper trash bags, the screen over the windows (I expected bars outside but not the heavy mesh inside for some reason). I was surprised that we could have shoes and even belts during the day although I've never used either. Lots of other things.

But at least the place isn't really traumatic. Not fun but not horrible.

[HALLIEBETH87]

Originally Posted by JustMeJen5294

Having worked on the other side of the plexiglass barriers with a handful of magic keys in my pocket and my hand guarding my secret, indivdiual they know how opened the door for the escaped patient, code for years I know one of the biggest differences is that there's almost always an "us-them" mentality. It's how you survive working with people who are so sick. I hated seeing it in myself but I did it too.

When I'm in the hospital it's always been in this little mood disorders unit with only 10 beds. It's the ideal if you've got to be locked up. And some nurses I've bonded with some with shared healthcare experiences. One in particular will take time to just sit and talk to me when she is free and we talk about home health and various things we've seen doing that (her in the big city and me in rural Appalachia plus a smaller city a long time ago). But I've also seen that nurse absolutely throw a tantrum over some miscommunication or something (I was too manic to care). Another nurse that I really like a lot I once heard make a snide comment while going through my bag because I had a clock in there. I had the clock in my bag because I traveled a lot for work right then and just grabbed the already packed bag when I was going to the hospital. I know she had no idea I was where I could hear her but I was. I also like having a clock b/c I can't see the wall clock without glasses. But whatever.

There is this one nurse that I really, really dislike and so do most patients because she talks down to people. The first time I was in she ran a group every night where she'd pass out handouts and read them to us for an hour to an hour and a half every night. No discussion, just reading boring, boring stupid stuff. She once compared our feelings about being locked up with what it is like to have to go all the way downstairs and outside to smoke (while smokers in the group were already suffering). She's completely fake; last time I was in I was really suicidal and the night after they learned this, after I'd had a long talk with nursing the night before and with my psychiatriast she pulled me into a conference room and grilled me. I guess the suicide note wasn't enough detail. She was my nurse every day that she was on in the nearly 2 weeks I was in there and the night before I went home she told "Lisa" to go wake another patient. I figured there was an aide behind me so I ignored her. Turns out she meant me. I was one of her max of 5 patients for 2 weeks, she gave me meds every day and did not know my name (also this was my 3rd time in, 2nd time in 2 months).My own psychiatrist admitted that a lot of people complain about her. The best was the day that I caught how fake she is. I had a roommate who was sexually inappropriate and so was sitting in the hall writing in my journal to avoid her visitor. My own psychiatrist was covering the weekend. That nurse and my roommate were in this little hall gossipping like old friends (the roommate is in and out a lot). So after a while I heard the nurse say with a huge sigh "oh, well, I should go, Dr. psychiatrist is here", sigh again, what a bother implied. I was positioned exactly in the right place to hear both that and then to hear her open the nursing station door and effusively proclaim "Dr Psychiatrist!!!!Oh, it's so good to see you!". And don't think I didn't tell my psychiatrist either . If the Lisa thing hadn't happened maybe not but really. Jen is only the most common name for women around 40 and it's not hard to remember and she'd had 2 weeks to practice. Good thing there wasn't a Lisa or who knows what meds I might have gotten. That nurse takes the us-they to an extreme and I think lots do.

I remember working and having a patient with horrible pain and it was magnified by his schizoprenia. The nurse refused to do anything to treat it because "he doesn't know what he feels anyway" and then because I was close to this man, something pretty much nobody had achieved in the 20 years he'd been in the institution she told me his entire history which included murder and some bad things but a lifetime ago and in specific circumstances; he told me about it a few days before he died because he thought I was the Virgin Mary. His history didn't matter, his pain did. But he wasn't "us" the normal people so it didn't matter. Once we had a woman who normally wouldn't have been placed with us but rehabs wouldn't take her. She was bipolar and had been med compliant for 30 years but something happened and she stopped her meds. While in the hospital she got up in the night while confused, fell and broke her leg in a way that needed a lot of rehab. She was still getting stabilized on meds when she came to us and there were a lot of people who refused to believe that she was capable of returning to society. Of course she was, once her meds were back in place she was fine except for the healing leg. But instead of seeing that they had her on the locked semi-acute, you have no privacy for any moment of your day unit for 2 weeks. I have so many other stories but they all come back to the you/them thing.


This was kind of the way you thought from the start and honestly they encouraged it. I wasn't actually told I was going to be working in psychiatric care so I thought I was at a normal nursing home until I'd been there an hour and walked down a hall and a man laying on the floor informed me "I'm dead" (he would grow to be a favorite, always trying to marry me off to random male staff members) and 30 seconds later a completely naked man sauntered down the hall and nobody seemed surprised. They were used to it. I was stunned. So when I went back to the office and said "WHAT?????" it was very much "oh yes, our patients either have severe mental illnesses, dementia with violent behaviors or traumatic brain injuries either getting rehab or with violent behaviors". Ok, then......And by the end of the day I'd been taught to use humor to cope with a really sad place to on the surface (when I got to know everyone it wasn't sad at all).

But that's how it works. And that's what makes it hard; they don't picture themselves in our shoes. On my first stay my AD left my system and the new one wasn't in my system yet and I just started crying and couldn't stop. I tried to get nurses a couple of times but they were busy with a discharge. The aide noticed when he did room checks but instead of getting me help and medication that I clearly needed he offered me a joke. I wanted so badly to throw a pencil at him. I'd been sobbing for over an hour; jokes were beyond helping. He should have gotten a nurse for me but left me to cry another half hour before another patient got me help. Again, us/them. Depressed woman is sobbing so let's make her not depressed with jokes.

They don't mean to do it exactly, it's just the way it's always been I think. It's just very hard to avoid, especially because it's so prevelant.

I'm shutting up now.....sorry. This is one of my big things that bother me because of being on both sides. For years I was afraid of the hospital because I knew what it was like for our locked up patients. When I got there it was the weirdest things that surprised me, like paper trash bags, the screen over the windows (I expected bars outside but not the heavy mesh inside for some reason). I was surprised that we could have shoes and even belts during the day although I've never used either. Lots of other things.

But at least the place isn't really traumatic. Not fun but not horrible.

I appreciate your reply Please, don't be offended but I cant concentrate right now to read such long posts.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Sorry. I'm too manic to do better. In fact I thought I edited that. My apologies.

[HALLIEBETH87]

No it's ok. Just didn't want you to be offended

[Homeira]

Jen, I agree with what you write about having been on the "other side" of the health care system. I never actually worked in a psych ward though. But I was a health care worker (I am an occupational therapist (as you know...))It is true that there is a "us-them" mentality. It is a survival mekanism, because as an health-care worker you have to deal with so many patients, and you try to do your best, most professinal work for every one, but there is never enough time! It leads to guilt and feelings of being unethical and unprofessional, but one has to work inside a framework that frankly is too narrow for both the professional and for the patients! So how do you cope with that? I think one of the ways is to find a way to make some distance between yourself and the patients. Survival for a healthcare worker in order to not suffer complete burn-out. But is is something that is dangerous at the same time, because that kind of distancing yourself, can come in the way of showing compassion and being an ethical professional.
Suddenly becoming the patient was VERY hard for me, beacuse I had to make a swich in the role of being the helper, to the one being helped.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Yes, you've described it well. It was definitely more pronounced in the psych setting than anywhere else I worked but as you said, it is protective and that is a hard environment day after day. You never have any idea what to expect when you come to work and while that keeps it interesting it is also really hard. Is this the day someone is going to grab me by the neck or is it the day I am going to chase someone through a cornfield, hoping that the visitor I yelled at get me help did so? And sometimes the things that happen simply are funny and if you can't laugh I don't think you can survive. The problem is people who become too protected and start to not consider the patients as people.

[anton11415]

Ya I have days like that when I think of all the in patient wards I have been on which is a ton. And cops getting involved a couple of times which is not fun and it seems there are always people around to see and make it embarrassing on top of all of it. The ones that are the hardest to remember were the 2 times I had to be restrained with leather strap on a metal bed sunk into the concrete floor. It seemed kinda unnecessary that they did it but if that was what they thought they needed to do to keep every one safe I do not hold it against them. And the impact of memories gets better with time at least for me it has I hope it does for you too

take care

[Homeira]

I think it would be a good learning-experience for people who work in psych wards to get a feel for what it is like to be the patient. I already wrote something about the ward seen from the perspective of a frustrated worker. It is really sad that I had to get a MI myself before I understood how traumatizing it is to go live with a MI, and to be treated so poorly.