Person learns more from patients in a mental hospital than any doctor

[paulschwinn]

I found this on reddit and felt it belonged here.

I made a throwaway to answer this because I'm going to discuss some very personal things. During my sophomore year at college I started to become very depressed and paranoid. I had been somewhat depressed before then for some time, but it started to gain momentum. The basic reasons behind this stem from the fact that I've pretty much always been alone. Let me qualify that: I have friends, actually very close friends that I consider myself lucky to still have after all these years (we grew up together). However, these friends were not at school with me. I mean alone in a relationship sense. And it really, really started to bother me. What 19-20 year old has never had a relationship, or even sex? And one in college no less? (I'm sure there are plenty, but at the time it hurt, bad). On top of that pile of rejection, I found out that one of my friends at school had slept with a girl that I was friends with and had a serious crush on, despite the fact that he was acutely aware of my feelings for her. I could literally feel the betrayal. I mean it was actually a physical feeling when I found out, like a heavy weight had been dropped into my chest. I began having very paranoid, insecure thoughts. Daydreams of conspiracy theories and the like, only to me they were real. It seemed like every day these conspiracy theories would switch back and forth from benevolent to malicious, one day everyone (including strangers I had never met or seen before) is secretly trying to help me, the next day they're all trying to hurt me. I effectively stopped functioning as a student and went from class to class constantly looking for some sign or slip-up that would "give up the game", and reveal the conspirators. It was hell. Pure ******* hell. Eventually I broke down and simply couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't continue to internalize this insanity without doing serious harm to myself (something which I contemplated more than once during that time). My father admitted me to the psychiatric ward of a hospital, from which I soon transferred to a full on mental hospital (kinda funny actually, when I was admitted I had some poison ivy, and I asked one of the nurses if I could have some calamine lotion for it, 3 days later I still didn't have the lotion, and my dad seriously doubted their ability to heal my mind if they could not even provide calamine to a kid with poison ivy. Moral: not all hospitals are equal).

I learned more in my 2.5 weeks in that hospital than my entire four years in college. The thing is, there is truth on a mental ward. Unabashed, unadulterated, unfiltered truth. That pure ****. Only a lot of it is ugly. It's difficult to explain, but the people I met there were real people, without the mask of society or culture or whatever you want to call it. Once you're inside those walls, all that superficiality disappears. It no longer matters what people think of you, you are truly free to say what you feel and think. There, an angry outburst against the world at large is not met with incredulity, it is met with sympathy. Others around you know exactly what you mean and can empathize. Not so with so-called "sane" people.

And you know what I found? That my problems were nothing. Inconsequential compared to those that some other people have. For many of the them, it was not their first time there. And I think that has a lot to do with the truth I mentioned above. These people left, and did not find anyone they could share their absolute truths with, and eventually began craving that unfettered ability to say what you mean and what you feel again. And it truly saddened me that the only place these people could find the kind of peace they were looking for was inside the walls of a mental hospital.

I was never diagnosed with any particular disorder, but I was prescribed several meds (citalopram for depression, lorazepam for anxiety, and some anti-psychotic, the name of which escapes me right now) and referred to the outpatient program once I had been deemed stable enough (important note here: most of my feelings and thoughts had not changed much at all, but after 2.5 weeks in a mental ward, however comfortable it may be, it's time to get the **** out) and referred to the outpatient program for one week. It wasn't much different than the in-patient program, except you got to go outside for lunch (hooray). From there I was referred to a psychologist and a psychiatrist for continued treatment/therapy.

Something I want to mention about the medication: It did nothing for me except blunt everything. the depression was still there, only duller. But so was any feeling of happiness I might have. It had an overall slowing effect, I simply felt slightly dumber than before. That's not to say that medication does not work for anyone: I met people in the hospital that I would be seriously hesitant to interact with if they weren't on their meds. But it was not for me. I would rather deal with my problems with a clear head rather than try to blunt and suppress them.

The psychologist I met with only once, and it honestly seemed like she did not think I was worth her time. Very curt and dismissive, simply signed my prescriptions and off you go. The psychiatrist, on the other hand, seemed to not really care about what I was saying. Either that, or he was not listening. He had his therapy, and damned if it didn't work for me, I just wasn't trying hard enough (He kept on having me do these deep breathing exercises, apparently in an effort to make me less of an angry person, except I'm not really an angry person, unless people do dumb ****, in which case the onus is not on me to not be mad, but on the other person to stop being stupid. He probably thought I was an angry person because I was irritated that he kept having me try these ******* breathing exercises even when I told him repeatedly that they did nothing for me. Oh well).

All in all, I learned more from the patients than any of the doctors or experts during my time at the hospital. I remember at one point they had me on some medication for anxiety that ended up giving me akathisia, which is when you literally have waaaaay too much energy and can't stop moving, as in I would be sitting in a chair, then 2 seconds later crouching on the chair, then sitting on the back of the chair... basically it feels like you have to keep moving and can't stand still. One of the nurses saw my hand shaking while taking my bp one morning, and declared that I must be an alcoholic undergoing withdrawal. Now, I drink occasionally, but certainly not to the point where I would be having physical withdrawal symptoms. This is just one example of many where I found that the so-called experts would simply dismiss the patient's input if it did not match their personal view of what was wrong.

After a month or two, I stopped taking the meds and seeing the doctors, and you know what changed? Nothing, except that I was able to deal with my problems on my own terms, and I was able to think far more clearly. This is just my personal experience, and in no way does it mean that you would not be helped by seeking out a therapist or some other type of help. But I truly believe that had I simply gone to a therapist, rather than being admitted to that hospital, and had I not met the people I met in there, things would have truly turned out a lot worse for me. Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: was admitted to mental hospital, learned more from the "insane" people in there with me than from any of the doctors or experts