#ARENT THESE MEDS SUPPOSED TO HELP ME BE LESS SUICIDAL I FEEL AWFUL STILL

[soulvee-animationz]

Bitch what the fuck I shouldnt have been born <3

[gossamermoonglimmer]

Sorry if this is too personal of a question. You don't have to answer this if you don't want to. How was your overall experience in the mental hospital?

     hello! it is not too personal of a question :) I’m really open about my experiences with mental health and the hospitals I went to.

     the first time I went, I was having a terrible time with my friends and had just experienced a breakup that was really painful and messed up. This was before I knew that I had bipolar disorder and needed different medication to effectively treat my intense suicidal/depressive episodes. I had known I was doing really poorly for a while, and due to some circumstantial stuff i decided to voluntarily go to the hospital to see if i could get my (mostly passive) suicidal ideation to go away and get away from the pain that was causing me to spiral so hard. to be honest, I probably could have gotten through without going that time, but I didn’t want to wait and find out if I could or not. Better safe than sorry. I went to my local ER and basically just told them that I was having suicidal thoughts and felt I may be a danger to myself. They asked a lot of questions, mostly involving whether I had a “plan” and questions about my general mental state. I had to stay there for a good five hours before they were able to connect me to a youth psyche ward that had an opening relatively close to where I live; a nice escort drove me there from the ER. I didn’t like the van. It was uncomfortable and scary and had bars on the windows. It made me feel like a crazy person.

     The first psyche ward I went to sucked, to say the least. It felt like a childrens’ asylum. The food was disgusting, the cafeteria was disgusting, the beds and bedrooms and walls were disgusting. Everything just had a layer of grime on it. A lot of my ward-mates were grumpy or aggressive or mouthy. I had one friend named Katy. She was sassy and had a crush on every male nurse. She taught me how to make those cool rubber band bracelets. i did a lot of that. We could color, read, do puzzles, or play games, and that was pretty much it. i only stayed two days. My parents came for one of my therapy/evaluation sessions and the other was alone. They didn’t prescribe me any medications or change the meds i was on and didn’t change or add to my diagnoses. I left not feeling any better or worse than before.

     The second time I went was a few months later. Basically, I had my first true manic episode and did a lot of stupid things at my birthday party. my self hatred spiked and my will to live plummeted so off to the ER i went again. my brain was way worse this time. This time the placed I got sent to was incredible. all the kids were welcoming, the staff was wonderful and silly and kind, we got to watch movies on Saturdays and Sundays a pastor would come in to talk to any kids who were religious and wanted to. You could get a cookie from the nurse behind the desk in the common room twice a day and you could get a pair of hospital socks at any time, because it was a rule that we always had to have socks on so they gave them out free. there was a mini fridge with snacks and drinks. One time there was a whole bin of those gas-station chocolate chip cookies, but most of the time it was apples or crackers and cheese or carrots or something. The cafeteria food was INSANELY good. I made tons of friends. We got to go outside all the time and draw with chalk. I was allowed to play my ukulele in the front room with the nurses watching and everyone would sing with me and it was awesome. Honestly, i was struggling really badly but I had a good experience overall and I healed so much. Therapy really works for me in some ways. We also had group therapy sessions a few times a day but they weren’t required. We did music-art therapy where we painted how songs made us feel for group once, and it was lovely. Every morning, a big guy named stacy woke us up by playing “peanut butter jelly time” or “the banana song” on his phone. There were so many wonderful people there, several of which i still check up on today. 

     I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 by a really nice lady (I felt very seen and heard by her) and was taken off the meds I was on and put on new meds that ended up helping me for a long time. i was discharged and feeling much better and less suicidal and hopeless after about a week and a half. I was really sad to leave the friends I had made in there. We weren’t supposed to exchange information about ourselves, but they gave us composition books and didn’t check them so we wrote down our names and numbers and stuff. That experience was amazing and I know the psyche wards arent usually as good to adults but youth psyche wards can be amazing and really healing or, like my other experience, awful and trapping and yucky. It depends on where you go. Sorry this was so long, hope it helped!