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Years back, I went to a residential treatment center. That is a hospital program where you go for anywhere from a month to multiple months to work on mental health issues. This one was specifically for self-harm (cutting) but I was also promised help for my PTSD. It was made to sound so great and a very nice psychiatrist ran the program and promised to take good care of me. I actually went to the program the day I was told about it, they got me in that fast.
I immediately felt very trapped, but I thought that was just because I’d never been somewhere like that before. It was housed in a unit of a hospital which was old and freezing. It was the middle of winter and our bedrooms didn’t even have heat! The room where we spent all day in for group therapy didn’t have heat either…not even a heat vent. I lay under 5 blankets at night still freezing and we wore multiple pairs of fuzzy pajamas, hoods, and wrapped in blankets for groups. It was like living in hell frozen over!
I should have realized sooner that the treatment wasn’t going to help me, but people kept telling me to just stick with it and it would be so helpful. There was tons of charting and writing. We had 20 something assignments to complete while we were there – writing about our lives. I had to disclose all the abuse I’d been through and share it with staff. Soon, patients began to turn against each other in bids for attention. One girl would fake hallucinations to get attentions. When I began to have true stress induced hallucinations, the staff didn’t say it but they didn’t believe me.
Near the end of my month there, I was so stressed out I couldn’t stand it. Everyone was at each other’s throats, there was a meeting held about me without my knowing or being included in it, and I was just fed up. At that point – I was going home at night and coming in the daytime since I lived close by. I began to get such severe migraine headaches that I was going to the ER every other day. I said forget it! I left the program AMA and never looked back.
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So sorry you had such a negative experience! It makes you wonder if there was any kind of oversight at this facility, anyone licensing them or verifying the well being of their clients?
The experiences I've had with in-patient psychiatric care were very different, both in short-term and long-term care. I've visited friends in short-term care in a general hospital after a suicide attempt, and found the staff to be very attentive to the physical well being of patients, if not necessarily nurturing or sympathetic to their emotional needs.
I've also worked in chronic psychiatry, in a veterans hospital. Most of my patients were men who'd been diagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, and they were probably more heavily medicated than they needed to be. Many had been decades in hospital, and had seen much less humane treatment in the "cuckoo's nest" era. I sound it difficult sometimes, knowing there was more that probably could be done to improve their quality of life and help them stay more oriented.
But still, they had a warm place to live, clean rooms and bedding, and good food to eat. The men were free to come and go on the hospital grounds, which had a lot of great recreational facilities and beautiful gardens to enjoy. Many of the staff were very friendly, and enjoyed organizing BBQs, outings, bingo and other activities. So there was plenty to do. And no deeply probing group therapies, either! It wasn't perfect, but I think most felt they were at home.
In my opinion and from experiences when my son was in treatment centers, most of them are understaffed!! Also, my son was in one that was cold as well. Anyway, back to the lack of staff. One of the RTCs that my son was in the employees would even state that they were understaffed and over medicated the clients. In fact one of them my son had to go to the ER because he had fell and cut his chin open and had to have stitches. The staff said he did it to get attention. He had a staff member with him 24/7...what more attention could one get???
He was then transferred to another RTC. There he was diagnosed with seizures. I asked the doctor if they could be caused by all the medications he was on. The doctor didn't say that they were, nor did he tell me that they weren't. After he was taken off those meds, he has never had a seizure since then!!