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.
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.