Girl, Interrupted

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Yes, hospital does = safety. One feels protected from the outside world.
As for straps and handcuffs, they are more needed for adults, who are stronger than adolescents. Although I did (and still do) muscle exercises. I can do 100 press-ups on one leg and bench-press 35kg. Once I managed to knock a couple nurses off-balance and send them towards the wall.

Ha!

Yes it was quite a score. I was not to be trusted with any sharp object. Not because I was going to harm myself, but more because I could harm others. I was insane. I still am, inside. I've got so much pent-up anger inside. I don't want to let it out on myself.

I'm going to bed now.

Goodnight all.

Good day violent dreams.

I replied to your PM Steelmaiden.

You are quite strong too!! !

Straps must cause more problems than they solve. I'd get violent if i was tied down. The sheer fact your being restrained upsets me more.

You are not insane steel maiden!!

Lots of people have pent up anger. Lots bad has happened to you so your anger levels are high.

I have 19 years f anger to get rid of. They tried to make me do boxing to get rid of it but i got banned for lacking control when they made me mad!! !

My Mum is scared of me now. I told her about my pent-up anger and the only way for me to get rid of it is physical.

Anger needs to be got rid of. And I know that the higher it gets, the worse the result will be.

I am replying to your letter, but I have a LOT of physics coursework. I only stopped half an hour ago, but I still have some more left.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I were in those hospitals. Would I hate it or like it? I've had very real thoughts before that if my life keeps going the way it does that I would end up in the nuthouse, and it wouldn't really bother me. Now that I've heard what they're actually like, I'm probably glad for my sanity.

Still I wonder where the desire to be locked up in a nuthouse comes from. Some kind of maschocistic somaticism I guess.

I liked the psych hospital because it was the same routine almost everyday and I felt safe from the outside world in there. I knew where all my meals were coming from!

Sometimes I want to go back. But they will probably give me ECT again. So I will stay out if I can.

I'm talking about the NHS here (private hospitals, from what I've seen, are MUCH nicer i.e. bigger rooms and better food). In America most of the long-stay hospitals are private, am I right?

Well it really depends how ill you are. If you are moderately to quite severely ill, i.e. enough to go into hospital, be treated for a few months, and get out, then the hospital will probably be an open (that does not mean you can go out whenever you want, but one eventually gets those priviledges, depending on how well the person is) ward. There will also be day patients there. If it is an adolescent one, then there will be a classroom with a teacher (as education is compulsory up to 16, well at least in the UK it is) and most probably at least one computer, depending on the funding available. There are things to do all day, and there is group therapy too. There's quite a lot of art and music stuff, and a little bit of science and maths, but its rudimentary. You do strike up friendships with other patients. There is also usually P.E. once a week in the gym, and outside that there's football, tennis, badminton and drama. I don't know about open adult wards, but I do know about both adolescent and adult secure units as I've been to both.
Adult secure units (i.e. high security) as are boring as F*CK. You have NOTHING to do (well at least in Tolworth Hospital there wasn't anything to do), so you need to have your own music, books, games etc... to play. Be warned of people who will steal your things (happened to me) and be warned that there may be some sick (as in depraved) people there, I had to be nursed on 1:1 because of the paedophile that was there (I am under 18). There's also usually some sort of physically disabled person in the secure unit, as the more severe mental illnesses are usually a part of a whole-body illness. There's also the WONDERFUL doors, which are thick double ones, and the metal detector is always switched on when guests are coming inside. Oh yes, and strip searches for the patients. Ech. I blatantly refused, and believe me, that's not adviseable! You don't go out of the unit at all, unless you pester the nurses to take everyone out to the courtyard (small and had walls with barbed wire) and play some stupid football game (I ended up smashing balls against the wall with the sociopath guy, it was quite amusing, we seemed to like destroying things together, but we were bollocked by the head nurse). Adolescent secure units are much better, like open adolescent wards, but there are still the double-door things and well, I wasn't allowed out for the whole stay. I did get very white and somewhat anaemic.

Whoa. Long post.

Avoid secure units. The NHS ones are horrible, and I didn't have a proper bath or shower for two weeks because of the state of the bathroom, and besides, I had NO privacy at all.

Oh yes, and a man watched me for half the night while I was sleeping. I could have sworn he was grinning when I woke up, but yeah...

ECT? That's quite harsh.
Nobody I knew back in Sp. ever had ECT.
The food in Sp. was DISGUSTING and was part of the reason that I became anorexic. They disallowed my Mum from bringing me meals!?

Oh yes, and the adolescent secure unit was in MAIDEN-f*cking-HEAD, which is 40 miles away from home.

But I want to go back to Sp.

I'm not fussy in regards to food. I remember eating well in hospital, then later I was told that I hardly ate and that the doctors were concerned!
See, that's what ECT does, it wipes your memory. I consented to it because I hoped that it would be the end of me (I hoped they would use too much voltage or something else would go wrong) and I felt I had nothing to lose. The antidepressants I tried didn't work, I had lots of different sorts. So ECT was used as they couldn't think of anything else.
There are large chunks of memory gone and they don't come back, no matter what the doctors say. I still have huge issues with short term memory loss today and it has been a year since I had ECT.

Where I was staying, it was 80kms from my family. But I was happy for it to be that way. My sister came and gave me lectures. That part sucked.

Why did your sister give you lectures? ECT sounds like an extremely last-resort plan.

I lost weight when I was there. Didn't have much of an appetite.

I'm not surprised. Hospitals are off-putting.

Yeah.

Some quite frankly scary info on ECT;

http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Book ... se/ECT.htm

It does work as a last resort for some people, but the side effects can be nasty. Was offered to me once and I turned it down once i looked up some info.