what is the mental hospital wards like in your country? and which country are you from?
I’m reading a novel where the main character is in a psych hospital in UK and the authors describe the hospital.
they have single rooms for patients and in the book a male nurse makes sexual advances to the female character. I was shocked - single rooms and make nurses are a dangerous scenario. how can they let male nurses work in a female only ward where there’s single rooms??
also they get to keep their own clothes and phone and have group therapy
here in South Africa the hospitals are quite different - there’s dormitories not single rooms (much safer with male nurses around!) and we can’t keep our own clothes or phone. we get hospital clothes.
at the psych hospital one can walk around and go outside. the wards are separate buildings on a plot of land, not one big multistorey building. there’s no group therapy except occupational therapy activities. but at general hospital psych ward there’s only a dormitory with beds and no therapy.
It depends on the hospital I got punched in mine apparently.,.. I don’t remember most details of my stay cos I was so out of it… and we weren’t allowed our phones
I’m also in the USA and I’ve been in several different psych wards. In general no smoke breaks they give smokers nicotine gum. The ward is male and female combined, single rooms. It’s actually safer than it sounds never had any problems. Male and female nurses. You can have your own clothes, no phone or electronics and one f - Ed up phone for everyone to share. Nothing sharp including a pen or pencil. Groups that are stupid for the most part. Art therapy is ok. Other skills therapy is always awful imo… At the one in Charleston, SC you get to go to the cafeteria for lunch and dinner and the food is pretty awesome. Most psych wards do not allow caffeine either but this one has an a sofa dispenser for Pepsi products in the cafeteria and it’s all you can eat. They take you out side if you want to go and there’s basketball and other things. You see your psychiatrist every day and therapist on occasion. They also offer ECT I if you want it or your doctor suggests it.
But! Most you have to go through the ER to end up at the psych ward. That is a pain in the ass. All of them have their differences but some of it is the same everywhere.
A smoke break every 1-3 hours, depending on the department. Women’s and men’s departments are separate. You can make calls in the evening from your own phone—they’re provided—and, depending on the department, you can also surf the internet. As for electronics, you only have a phone. For entertainment, there’s just a TV—in any department. Therapy is ok; you have nothing to do all day. Wards are six-person—in any department. The food is terrible, the beds in many departments are terrible, the orderlies and nurses are rude and treat you like a low-class citizen. In many departments, you only get tap water if you don’t have your own. Visits are every day at a set time. I’m from Ukraine.
My psychward had all you can drink coffee and the fridge was always stocked with ice cream. They had fruits out and juices in the fridge. You also can order double portions of your food. No tv. Phones that look like pay phones 4 of them for patients. Coed. Art group. Group where you watch videos that have to do with mental health. Nintendo wii bowling. Just being schz I don’t like being around that many people.
It varies…there are only 3 psychiatric wards in the entire state of Alaska. The public hospital where involuntary forensic patients go is horrible, with bad staff and frequent violence occurring. The 2 wards located in the hospitals are pretty good…mostly private single rooms (altho some have cameras in them), no cell phones, no smoking, groups all day long, and you get to fill out your own meal menus. The hospital in Anchorage is a bit nicer, with walks outside in a healing garden. Also, the Anchorage hospital is the only place in the state that does ECT, so when i have treatments I have to fly there and stay in a hotel.
SA sounds like hell on Earth. I’m currently trapped on UK psych ward. Ensuite room. I have my clothes, and my phone/laptop.
I can’t imagine wearing psych ward clothing. That seems degrading. At the last hospital I had maximum day leave; 10 hours. I would hire ubers and visit my apartment during the day.
Somehow they still didn’t discharge me, even though I followed the step down process and used max s17 leave.
So much bureaucracy and unfairness here in the UK. Two of my friends who are women also got detained whilst I was in hospital. They got discharged before me too. So it feel like hospitals are sexist too. Men get locked up for longer. And so do BAME people. I’m not pulling the race card, but I found stats online to back this up.
No matter how much I protest they still won’t let me go.
Staff everywhere has been both male and female, and female staff have been overfamiliar in the past. Calling me handsome etc even. Flirting openly. It’s not good.
It does feel weird wearing hospital clothing but it’s not so bad really. At the psych hospital they have tracksuit pants and top and golf shirt. And at general hospital psych ward they give you hospital gowns to wear in bed. In the psych ward I was last in, in the general hospital, the nurses would keep on saying to patients “go to your bed”. We had only our beds, 9 in the ward. Men were separate. Same as in psych hospital. If men and women were together in our hospitals it would be a disaster, some of the men are quite dangerous for women to be around, especially in the admissions ward when they’re very ill. I’d not feel safe around them.
Oh, and showering was different - in general hospital it was two showers where two ladies would go at a time. One had a door where you could get privacy undressing but other you had to undress in the passage and the female security guard would look. I hated that shower!
In the admissions ward of psych hospital all the ladies would queue for a shower naked, we’d have no privacy, see each other naked, it was really weird and degrading but I got used to it.
In some of the better wards you could queue to use baths or the shower and undress behind a door (except the shower where you undressed in front of the others).
We were all ladies, female nurses and security guards only, so it wasn’t too unbearable.
But it seems that SA hospitals are very different from UK and US! Ensuite bathrooms seem like a luxury dream to me.
I can’t remember how the private hospitals were like as I only went twice - my first two hospital stays. The other 15 stays were at government hospitals. Hence the clothing and showering being so crazy! The food was good though. Sometimes very plain but mostly tasty.