A visit to the psychiatric hospital made me sick

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I can identify with much of what is said here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in ... de-me-sick

I remember being in the hospital as an adult and being forced to sit through hours worth of sessions on crap like co-dependence, which was not at all relevant to my life. I remember that I got to spend very little time in confidential, one-on-one therapy with a provider. I remember that one night when I suffered severe akathisia (a torturous internal sensation of restlessness) for several hours from the Risperdal I had been prescribed and the nurses refusing to help, saying it wasn't that important.

I remember trying to keep up with my Japanese by reading the various books I have in Japanese, cartoon stories basically, many of which are marketed to children. I had staff tell me that I needed to "focus on getting well" instead, which mostly consisted of going to endless group sessions most of which aren't relevant and having free time for several hours each evening and most of the day on weekends with the TV on and few to no books to read. They also say that these stories, which are generally marketed to children or are otherwise PG at worse, may be vulgar, and since they didn't know Japanese they couldn't really be sure if the stories were vulgar or not, even though none of that was evident in any of the drawings. Luckily, my doctors weren't total dunderheads and would write orders to let me have some of my books. Yes, they had to write orders for me to have my books.

Then, there's the issue of being transgender, where I am a trans woman, but they put me with the men and addressed me as a man. They say it's because I was still pre-op. Considering that a huge reason for my hospitalizations was distress relating to not having access to surgery, this was a slap in the face. When I protested, they used it as evidence of "mixed mania".

I had a doctor later who told me this was probably malpractice and said the evidence they used for my diagnosis was flimsy, and that it would be best to stay out of such places. Indeed, I did well taking charge of my life and moving here to California so that I can finally access surgery. Thanks to the expert treatment I've received here and social support, I've been doing as much better and bad events no longer make me plunge into the depths of depression. These people back where I came from had no idea what they were doing.

This crap needs to change.

Glad to hear you are doing better. But please don't focus on systemic problems in U.S. psychiatry, because you still need to focus on your own well-being. I think sometimes people with autism hyperfocus on something that is not their main problem, because they need the distraction.

I have also had bad experiences in psych wards so could relate to article but dwelling on it was trigger for me and focus is just trying to stay out. I have found that on some online communities people actually miss psych wards because they felt safe there. Think it depends on diagnosis and wards definitely don't have understanding of autism disorders.

There is whole movement called psychiatric survivors from people who have had bad experiences with psychiatry. Related books are Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America by Robert Whitaker. Used to be involved but sometimes feels like it's more extreme with many saying all psych meds are bad.