I know for a fact that the quality of mental institutions often depends on the state. For example, some of the California state hospitals have issues with convicts in them who aren’t actually ill etc. I personally know a time when a boy got so angry that he punched his hand to a bloody pulp and a girl tried to kill her mother.
This isn’t all of them and of course there are some bad places in every state, but I do think it varies. Ca has worked to reform much of this but it still does occur. I have heard of many occurrences of rape and am lucky to have not experienced any.
I’ve been hospitalized in Oklahoma many times, and once in Tennessee. I never encountered any threat of rape when I was in both places. Some of the mental hospitals I’ve been in were drab and boring, but they weren’t bad. What I fear about mental hospitals is that they’re authorized to make me take any anti-psychotic they want.
I just don’t like being well right-less. There was a period of time in the hospital when they were not telling my family and friends I was being help. I literally grabbed a phone and called my friend and told her my room number while her sister called the hospital. They claimed I wasn’t there. I never understood that.
Likewise, a cop came and searched my room without a warrant and claimed that it was legal cause I was a threat. I didn’t do anything but tell the truth about voices…idk. Everything is weird.
I know it can be a harrowing experience being hospitalized for mental illness. The feeling of losing control over your life is scary. People are making you do things you don’t want to do.
But that is nothing compared to the experience of most prisons. When a person comes in he is “new meat”. The other inmates are going to take advantage of him and use him every way they can.
What’s funny is that it doesn’t even matter. You don’t go up to someone who just got their arm broken and yell, “WELL SOME PEOPLE GET BOTH ARMS BROKEN, SO THERE.” I mean unless you’re a psycho of your own flavor, like the people who stalk and harass bloggers with mental illness.
I took issue with these guys saying that prison is better than the mental hospital for a couple of reasons. One is I don’t want anyone thinking prison will be an okay experience, so they shouldn’t have to worry about having to go there. The second one is that the truth matters to me. If you go around making false claims it can turn around and bite you in the ass.
I know. I’m not knocking your posts. It’s just that OP got baited into a dumb straw man argument without realizing it.
See they tried to rile OP up with some provocative crap, and it worked, which got OP riled up and fumbling in a pointless argument. And now people here are carrying on about the argument.
Just don’t think people should lose sight of the original situation. Yes prison is worse than mental health institutions in most cases. That doesn’t make mental illness fake, or make it somehow wrong to be concerned about mental illness. That’s the trap those trolls were baiting OP into.
Speaking as a UK outsider: If prisons are so good why do US groups/individuals/organisations advocating for the seriously mentally ill bemoan the fact that so many of them end up in prison where they get poor treatment?
It would be interesting to see what kind of patients got questioned in that survey. Patients who resent being treated by psychiatry, for example, would have a natural bias against it even though objectively hospital would be a more benign environment than prison.
I’ve been hospitalized over twenty times in Oklahoma, once in Tennesee, and once in Arkansas. While these places weren’t resorts, they were far better than any jail I have been in, and certainly way better than hard time in prison. A person can feel traumatized while being hospitalized, and that might lead him to think the mental hospital is as bad as prison, but that is definitely not the case.