What do you hate most about IP?

They took my cell phone away..no electronics..food is dog food..can't sleep cuz doors slam all night..sharing a room with a big time snorer. No music..TV w no volume..that we were expected to wake up and not go back to the room till 9. We all just sat around with nothing to do..and it was cold and we had shorts on..they would not let us have blankets outside rooms..it was so so uncomfortable..my roommate standing over my bed staring at me w lights on at 2 am..every night..creepy scary..!.an I got no testing done..groups repeat same sheet over an over like we can just say oh..well next time I feel depressed I can just get up wash some dishes an go outside for sunshine and it will make it all better..it did not help me except giving me another diagnosis.

That happened to me. I'd been there a couple days and realized nobody was aware of how suicidal I was so I wrote it down. Handing a psych nurse a suicide note gets a lot of rapid attention....So they said I had to be visible at all times except in the bathroom. I changed sides of the room with my roommate so she could sleep behind the curtain and I was in line of sight all night long. I begged the pdoc to remove line of sight the next day and he did but I was on checks every 5-10 minutes for a while. Everyone else moved to 60 minute checks and I was still on 15. They tried to be subtle but that's pretty difficult when they are always looking for one person.

When my roommate went home I never asked to go back to the curtain side of the room so I dealt with the light the rest of the 2 weeks I was there. Next time I will know.

Nope. They went to the bathroom with me too and stood outside the door while I took a shower. Red band sucks. Eveeeeeerything I did I had to be escorted for 5 days.

being restrained

boredom

no cigs

The groups thing reminds me of this group run by nurse Cynthia, noted in the first post in this topic. The first time I was in she ran an 8 pm group every night that she usually ran for 90 minutes despite it being scheduled for 60. She would give out thick handouts and then read aloud. Once it was a list of things to do when down and I wanted to scream "Let's DO one then!", things like throwing paper airplanes that could have been fun instead of horrendoubly boring. Once she compared not being able to smoke on her breaks because of a no smoking campus to what it was like for us to be locked up. Not so much alike I'm thinking......Her groups were horrible. Most of the others aren't that awful. I don't usually like nutrition group and there's one I've never figured out the point of but I've hit the same topic 2-3 times which doesn't help. I like art therapy.

Oh..and I couldn't smoke my cigs till I got out..they gave up nic gum..yuck!

Oh I forgot to say they took my phone charger .... weird .... they don't take phones the last place I went to about was it 3 weeks ago? Dunno. Point is you can keep your phone and whenever you want it charged you hand it in to the office for charging then simply ask for it back after it's charged.

I haven't been in maximum security, the only thing I absolutely hated about being IP was being without my child. That and the stupid bed time.


Otherwise it was fine, the food wasn't the best, but it was edible, I could smoke whenever and go to the shop on the premises, we had privacy in the bathroom, electronics were allowed, etc.


So major thing for me was being away from my child, but I would obviously have a longer list if someone locked me up and watched me all day too. Eeeeuw

I hate it when there is a scary inpatient who freaks me out. One time there was this guy who asked all kinds of private questions and made sexual comments while I was just minding my own business. I thought he was stalking me and in a small IP unit the only place to hide is in your room so I was trapped in there, scared to leave cause of this guy. I can handle people being really unwell and psychotic but this really disturbed me, most likely due to my abuse history. Every time I go IP now I am always worried about the other patients and if I will feel safe.

The absolute worst part about it for me is feeling trapped. It has to be one of the worst feelings in the world

While I was there they put me on medication, which I had never been on before. The antidepressant I was on made me manic and so one night after jumping up and down, laughing to the point of crying and running up and down the hall, the nurse finally told me that she and the other patients couldn't deal with it so she gave me a super strong anti-psychotic (with doctor's permission) and that thing knocked me out for 2 days. The psychiatrist thought I was better so he released me, but on the day I was being released the AP had already worn off and I was going crazy again, and he looked at my mom and said he had made an awful mistake, lol. I went home anyway and stayed manic for 2 months.

I hated beng the "worst" one there :/

At least this is how it felt. They didn't know it but we kept switching out and got lectured a time or two.

At least the crazies were set crazy, I kept bouncing off the walls every now and then..

Holy smokes...some terror stories here...I looved my IP stay. My lone complaint was the staff NP put me on Abilify then Resperidone, and it shot me into orbit, but he had to start somewhere and I finally discovered the right combo some months after discharge.

Chocolate cake -every day! But most importantly I finally got the correct diagnosis I had been searching for for 30yrs. Group was eye opening: three guys were picked up individually and admitted. During group they told their stories of addiction, family rejection and that they were pushing carts downtown. I realized at that point the only difference between them and me was, that for whatever reason, I was able to hang on just a teeny bit tighter than they were.

At 58 years old my clock was ticking. I was SO ready for this that I didn't notice some issues mentioned here. I needed to get better...I HAD to get better, and I didn't want to come back. If I didn't progress I might as well go downtown and pick out a nice cart because it was crunch time for me.

I was like Wiley Coyote standing at the very edge of the pointed cliff...you know how he looks at you with that one ear flopped over and that WTF face? My life's cracks were obvious now and widening fast. The whole shiteree was gonna break off and take me with it or, with the help of this staff, I could follow them off the edge, put some distance between me and the precipice and learn new positive behaviors.

My inability to remember much about IP

Wow...
Was mania the reason you went IP in the first place ?

Being over medicated and being assigned a snobby psychiatrist who wouldn't listen to me, just kept medicating me.
Falling asleep in group meetings because I was over medicated.
Not getting enough out of group meetings because they were too basic.
Weird men following me around.
Losing time because I was over medicated.
Having to write a synopsis about an article we read in the paper every morning or we couldn't take a smoke break... yes, I went to a facility where smoking was allowed!
A controlling charge nurse who acted like we were five year olds... some patients deserved it.
I have been admitted five times. Once Baker Acted. Once voluntarily and the other three times my counselors told me if I didn't go they would Baker Act me.

gagrl, sorry to hear you had such unpleasant experiences, healers who couldn't care less are such a shame for our society, solidarity, humanity.

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with the term "Baker Act", does that refer to involuntary hospitalization ?

How expensive it is, even with insurance.

The fact Im still paying a collection agency for my stay there two years ago

Found out this week that my insurance at the time only approved 3 days out of a 10-day stay. Apparently, according to them, I was completely stable after 3 days, not a danger to myself, and could just have skippy-do-dah'd right on back home........Whatever....ARGH.....so there will be a collection agency in my future too!

They call me every day even though i send money every month

I don't think all medical bills related to my january stay are in collections yet. But they will be shortly. Yea for collections. And we're still paying off the cost of when my daughter was born and my inpatient stay from then, which was four years ago this october (for that one got a loan through the bank, so just pay them 150 each month). Oh, and we had insurance then too. Yea for affordable health care in america!

I'm sorry that it is so expensive. I am paying off my spenddown amount from surgery last June and that payment combined with my monthly psych amount once that is paid for by Medicare (I pay 20%) but I have a cap of an amount that is still huge compared to my monthly income and when I have paid that Medicaid picks it up because I'm on SSDI. I think I'm nearing the end of my spenddown and I will be so glad when that happens because Medicare is slowly approving surgical fees and so every single month my bill is still over $500, seeming to reflect no payment ever. I will be so happy to actually see that amount go DOWN. But Medicaid isn't returning my calls so I have no idea when I've met that spenddown.

The Medicaid is a pain in the butt to deal with because they never bother to return calls and they have me all screwed up because they didn't bother to update my address when I notified them last year via phone, this year via phone or this year via letter. I So I have no idea what is happening with this. But at least I know that I have a limit that I have to pay for any stay, even though that limit is way above what I can afford. So it's a love-hate relationship (hate today because I called for the 2nd time in 2 weeks and didn't get a call back).

I really miss the days I had good insurance and just met a deductible that was totally reasonable and then things were just covered.