this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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as somebody who went to the silly house twice in his teenage years, let me tell you, it is not a fun place to be. they have harsh fluorescent lights, cold floors, very limited privacy, and you are constantly surrounded by staff members, as well as other people who are struggling with their mental health. there is often little to do except talk with the other patients (in front of the staff) and sit around counting the days until your release. needless to say they don't let you have strings of any kind on your clothing and they monitor everything that goes in or out of the place.
what surprised me the most, though, is that you're not even guaranteed to talk to a therapist every day. i thought that was supposed to be the whole point of it all. but instead, it's just a whole lot of waiting with nothing to do.
of course, i would much rather that somebody experience all of that rather than take their own life, i just think the whole experience of the mental hospitals is rather harsh and cold for what they're trying to accomplish.
I ended up committed over a decade ago and when I left I said to anyone who would listen that next time I get like that just send me to the Caribbean for an all inclusive beach vacation. I’d get more out of it and it would cost a whole lot less.
(I’m from the US where healthcare is a luxury)
A system is what it does. They're trying to accomplish control and conformity, not genuinely help people in distress, otherwise these places wouldn't exist since they have very little therapeutic value and increase distress exponentially (this isn't to say that people who work in there don't genuinely want to help, but you can't from within an ableist capitalist white supremacist patriarchal cis heteronormative framework. Also there are unfortunately plenty of people who go in to these jobs on a power trip looking for access to vulnerable people to abuse, and that same framework lets them).
E: I'm in the UK where this is all also the case, as I suspect it is in most places.
What country was this? All of what you said is true, except that I had a private room that consisted of just a bed. I guess maybe it depends on what your normal life is or how for profit a place is, but I have some good memories.
It was the only time in my life that I was around people where we could understand eachother. People treated me well. Normally I was the outsider with the messed up life but everyone else there had problems too. I met some very interesting people there that I never would have seen otherwise. You could actually tell people about yourself. And they had lots of activities that I normally didn't have access to.
this was in the united states, but the experience probably differs quite a bit from state to state. where i was, there weren’t that many activities besides a deck of cards and occasionally some TV in the evening (usually nature channels or something similar). i did get quite good at shuffling cards due to all the free time and limitless access to playing cards.
i can relate to what you said about people treating me well and having interesting conversations there, and it is very nice to talk to other people who might be going through some similar problems. what you said about actually being able to talk about yourself is very true, and that part was also super nice. there’s a culture of “what happens in the mental institutions stays in the mental institutions” that seems to permeate them. i think it helps people open up a lot more and leads to some very interesting conversations that likely wouldn’t be possible elsewhere. in my case at least, not having much else to do probably also meant that people were more incentivized to try to find more interesting things to talk about.
i’m pretty sure the places i went to were for profit (awesome how that works by the way), so that probably corrupted things a good bit. it really felt like the primary goal was “containment” instead of being a therapeutic experience. it felt very sterile and cold, but some of the other patients made it a nicer experience than it otherwise would have been. it’s also worth mentioning that both of these places were a small section of a much larger hospital and that certainly didn’t help things very much.
although it sounds like you had a much nicer experience, which is good to hear. it sounds like what you went through is a lot closer to how i think these places “should” be run.
I was lucky that the place I was at provided activities and better food than I was used to. But there really wasn't much actual therapy and the meds didn't help.
It's been 20 years and I would definitely say it was only the other patients that provided me any long term benefit. Really let me see through my own problems and understand stuff that other people went through too.
For example the girl who somehow managed to get through life despite having full on hallucinations of a guy playing a solo guitar session 24 hours a day.
Or another girl who had her stomach pumped from a suicide attempt. She had a birth defect that unfortunately made her look like a goblin just without the green skin. Hope she turned out ok everyone felt for her.
Also met the first probably trans person before I knew that even existed. The facility kept apologizing for misplacing a girl with the boys for a week based on appearances alone. But they were like seemed fine to be there.
"I would much rather that somebody experience all of that rather than take their own life"
That is so far from being your decisions that the fact you feel entitled to imprison someone for it is FUCKING INSANE TO ME.
if I ever end up in that situation, there will be a fucking bloodbath before I allow them to STRIP ME OF ALL AUTONOMY AND RIGHTS.
The very idea ENRAGES ME INTO A BLOOD FRENZY.
nowhere did i say it was my decision. i was simply expressing my belief that a week (or less) of suffering is better than being dead forever.