Personal Rant Regarding Mental Ilnesses and Treatment
Apr 24, 2014 15:30:34 GMT
Melissa S likes this
Post by Amber Skye Forbes on Apr 24, 2014 15:30:34 GMT
I'm absolutely sick and tired of books treating psychiatric wards as some plot device used to draw just how crazy the character seems. For example, the most common one I found is that the MC hears and sees things that ARE real, but that no one else believes are real. This leads to immediate hospitalization, even though these hallucinations seem to present no danger. It's like these authors have no clue what leads up to hospitalizations, and they certainly have no clue over the length of a psychiatric stay. Let me put it this way:
Being diagnosed with a mental illness doesn't mean immediate hospitalization. Sometimes people with schizophrenia are immediately hospitalized, but this is only if the delusions are such that the patient is no longer cognizant of reality. However, if caught early, all that is needed for a patient with this illness is an antipsychotic, because the delusions are easily treatable. However, a lot of the protagonists in these books aren't in any danger because of their hallucinations. Some are convinced they aren't real, as most do. Some are convinced they are. But the author can never justify the need for hospitalization, which leads me to believe these authors want to use a mental institution as some cheap plot device to create a sympathetic background for the character. 'Oh, you've been in a psychiatric ward? That must have been a traumatizing experience for you!' Even mentioning that you have suicidal thoughts will not land you in a psychiatric facility, unless those thoughts are distressing or unless you're in danger of actually taking action. Some people can be suicidal for years and never even attempt it. I never had problems admitting I was struggling with suicidal thoughts to my therapist. She never once thought I needed hospitalization, because I never acted on those thoughts. Even when I hurt myself one day because of intense irritability she didn't see the need to hospitalize me.
I was diagnosed with hypomania just yesterday. Am I in a hospital? Obviously not. Hypomania is part of the bipolar spectrum. You can have two types of hypomania (my own classification): Happy Hypomania and I-Want-to-Destroy-Things Hypomania. I have the latter. I told my pdoc I have had several major what I call freak outs, where I just want to scream, cuss, and hurt myself to calm down. Not even my anti-anxiety med is enough to stave off the irritability, snappishness, and meltdowns. Now I was hospitalized once when I was manic. One reason is that I was constantly fluctuating between hypomania and mania. Another reason is that I was misdiagnosed and put on a med that brought me to that state. My psychiatric appointment was too far out, and the issue needed to be taken care of right away. So I also had to be hospitalized to get off the med and put on a new one. But I was only there for four days. And I was only there for four days because I had a urinary tract infection they wanted to take care of. Otherwise, I probably would have been there for just a day or two. One woman who even attempted suicide by swallowing a bunch of blood pressure pills was only there for five days.
Length of stay. Some authors have absolutely no idea what the length of stay in a psychiatric ward is. One author had a book where the protagonist was in a hospital for two years, just because she saw angels! Another had a protagonist stuck in one for a year. And another protagonist is constantly in and out of hospitals because of her delusions, even though they never presented a danger. For the third point, I want to add that if nothing was helping the protagonist get rid of her delusions, she probably wouldn't be in and out. She probably would have stayed. But, realistically, most hospitalizations don't last that long. It's actually rare for a patient to be hospitalized for even a month. One patient I met had some pretty bad brain trauma that completely wiped out reality for him. He had been there for a month. I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was getting a little bit better by the time I left. See? That's the type of stuff that hospitalizes patients, patients so out of it, patients that are a danger to themselves, that they have to be put somewhere safe for the time being.
Hospitals themselves. For authors who have never been hospitalized or have suffered through a mental illness, they seem to have no clue how a mental hospital actually works. It's usually people who have committed a crime under the influence of their mental illness that are put in a sort of prison-esque mental hospital. But for those of us who haven't, we're put in mental hospitals they may seem like a prison but actually aren't. I hated my first hospital stay. I felt like I was in kindergarten, just because everything was so structured to ridiculous extremes that we were forced to stay in what we called the 'fishbowl' for the majority of the day. We had counselors who stayed with us and lead us throughout the schedule: breakfast, lunch, dinner, group; activities like the game room, the gym, art, garden; brief pdoc visits; cigarette breaks for smokers; and down time at the end of the day, where we got snacks, were able to socialize with others, and watch tv. I hated that we were forced into a schedule, but all psychiatric hospitals are different. At my last stay, we could do whatever we wanted, including staying in our rooms all day. If we wanted to watch a movie, all we had to do was ask. If we wanted to do anything, all we had to do was ask. But we weren't confined to a schedules, and the nurses were really kind. Also, being put in a strait jacket is rare anymore. In fact, it's often considered cruel. If there is a patient acting out, usually that patient is given a shot of Ativan to stop the malicious behavior--through a little bit of force. But they're not shoved in restraints or put in strait jackets or locked in a padded room--and they're not treated like crap for their behavior. He had even created a shank to use on one of the nurses, but they took it away and gave him a shot of Ativan, which he actually liked because it calmed him. Sure, he was on line-of-sight, just because he had anger management problems, and so this meant he had to stay where nurses could see him all day, but he wasn't denied anything, other than the chance to freely walk around the ward.
Being diagnosed with a mental illness doesn't mean immediate hospitalization. Sometimes people with schizophrenia are immediately hospitalized, but this is only if the delusions are such that the patient is no longer cognizant of reality. However, if caught early, all that is needed for a patient with this illness is an antipsychotic, because the delusions are easily treatable. However, a lot of the protagonists in these books aren't in any danger because of their hallucinations. Some are convinced they aren't real, as most do. Some are convinced they are. But the author can never justify the need for hospitalization, which leads me to believe these authors want to use a mental institution as some cheap plot device to create a sympathetic background for the character. 'Oh, you've been in a psychiatric ward? That must have been a traumatizing experience for you!' Even mentioning that you have suicidal thoughts will not land you in a psychiatric facility, unless those thoughts are distressing or unless you're in danger of actually taking action. Some people can be suicidal for years and never even attempt it. I never had problems admitting I was struggling with suicidal thoughts to my therapist. She never once thought I needed hospitalization, because I never acted on those thoughts. Even when I hurt myself one day because of intense irritability she didn't see the need to hospitalize me.
I was diagnosed with hypomania just yesterday. Am I in a hospital? Obviously not. Hypomania is part of the bipolar spectrum. You can have two types of hypomania (my own classification): Happy Hypomania and I-Want-to-Destroy-Things Hypomania. I have the latter. I told my pdoc I have had several major what I call freak outs, where I just want to scream, cuss, and hurt myself to calm down. Not even my anti-anxiety med is enough to stave off the irritability, snappishness, and meltdowns. Now I was hospitalized once when I was manic. One reason is that I was constantly fluctuating between hypomania and mania. Another reason is that I was misdiagnosed and put on a med that brought me to that state. My psychiatric appointment was too far out, and the issue needed to be taken care of right away. So I also had to be hospitalized to get off the med and put on a new one. But I was only there for four days. And I was only there for four days because I had a urinary tract infection they wanted to take care of. Otherwise, I probably would have been there for just a day or two. One woman who even attempted suicide by swallowing a bunch of blood pressure pills was only there for five days.
Length of stay. Some authors have absolutely no idea what the length of stay in a psychiatric ward is. One author had a book where the protagonist was in a hospital for two years, just because she saw angels! Another had a protagonist stuck in one for a year. And another protagonist is constantly in and out of hospitals because of her delusions, even though they never presented a danger. For the third point, I want to add that if nothing was helping the protagonist get rid of her delusions, she probably wouldn't be in and out. She probably would have stayed. But, realistically, most hospitalizations don't last that long. It's actually rare for a patient to be hospitalized for even a month. One patient I met had some pretty bad brain trauma that completely wiped out reality for him. He had been there for a month. I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was getting a little bit better by the time I left. See? That's the type of stuff that hospitalizes patients, patients so out of it, patients that are a danger to themselves, that they have to be put somewhere safe for the time being.
Hospitals themselves. For authors who have never been hospitalized or have suffered through a mental illness, they seem to have no clue how a mental hospital actually works. It's usually people who have committed a crime under the influence of their mental illness that are put in a sort of prison-esque mental hospital. But for those of us who haven't, we're put in mental hospitals they may seem like a prison but actually aren't. I hated my first hospital stay. I felt like I was in kindergarten, just because everything was so structured to ridiculous extremes that we were forced to stay in what we called the 'fishbowl' for the majority of the day. We had counselors who stayed with us and lead us throughout the schedule: breakfast, lunch, dinner, group; activities like the game room, the gym, art, garden; brief pdoc visits; cigarette breaks for smokers; and down time at the end of the day, where we got snacks, were able to socialize with others, and watch tv. I hated that we were forced into a schedule, but all psychiatric hospitals are different. At my last stay, we could do whatever we wanted, including staying in our rooms all day. If we wanted to watch a movie, all we had to do was ask. If we wanted to do anything, all we had to do was ask. But we weren't confined to a schedules, and the nurses were really kind. Also, being put in a strait jacket is rare anymore. In fact, it's often considered cruel. If there is a patient acting out, usually that patient is given a shot of Ativan to stop the malicious behavior--through a little bit of force. But they're not shoved in restraints or put in strait jackets or locked in a padded room--and they're not treated like crap for their behavior. He had even created a shank to use on one of the nurses, but they took it away and gave him a shot of Ativan, which he actually liked because it calmed him. Sure, he was on line-of-sight, just because he had anger management problems, and so this meant he had to stay where nurses could see him all day, but he wasn't denied anything, other than the chance to freely walk around the ward.