From my own personal experience, at a very specific hospital, it is to be noted that I received the poorest of care for my schizophrenic symptoms. Otherwise, my stay was fantastic. I was finally prescribed a medicine that actually helped me sleep and I made quite a few friends, despite being the oldest there. But when it came to group and individual therapy, they did nothing regarding coping skills with schizophrenic symptoms. Each group focused on something like this: Anger management and Depression and Self Harm. While I did have a slight problem with self-harming, it was due to the voices telling me to and not because I was angry or sad. They never even glossed over anxiety, which was one of my biggest issues at the time (besides hallucinations and delusions). I guess I felt kind of jaded by the whole thing. Everyone around me had either run away from home, jumped out of cars cause they were angry at their parents, or skipped school. I didn’t really know why any of the people were there.
To put it simply, they never once addressed my problems until it came to substance abuse. I was the only one of the ten patients who had a drug history - and an extensive one at that. I was treated rudely by the nurses who questioned me on which drugs I had done and when I explained and listed each one, their mouths dropped and they made faces at each other probably thinking “What the f*** is wrong with this girl?”
My tech was nice, and the nurses had a cute accent, (I was in a Lafayette facility) but nothing actually happened during my stay other than over-medicating and having really bad gas - I mostly just drank milk while I was there because the food sucked so bad and didn’t realize I am slightly lactose intolerant hahaha. My doctor was also very helpful but my social worker, to be frank, completely ■■■■■■ up my life.
This is what happened. First, she found out about my drug abuse problem and after promising not to tell my father, she did anyway. (He’s the most oblivious guy on the planet, bless his heart, and my mom and I felt it best not to tell him) That might have been legal since I was technically underage, but still annoying. But that wasn’t what the issue was. She scheduled my psychiatrist consultation for when I was outpatient MONTHS after I was actually discharged, meaning I couldn’t return to school until I went to the doctor first. So four months along the road of missing school, I had to drop out. (Did have the best scores the GED school had ever seen though, bragging to the other teachers there, well I was an honor student) So I missed my senior year of highschool - minus two weeks before I had my break.
I was really bitter about that for a while. But that is unrelated I suppose.
My main point, or question, is did you ever feel disadvantaged in youth wards because of the severity of your mental illness and the nurses and counselors having no idea how to best handle your situation, whether it be through individual or group therapy?
Like I said, overall, the trip was not traumatizing. We managed to avoid having to pay a cent too by being really crafty. When I got discharged my mom was in the process of signing the paper when I showed up. When she saw me, she grabbed me and we walked out the building. The place still tried to charge us for the involuntary visit but gave up and now just sends bills for $17 total. LOL. But since there was no legal obligation, we ignore that.
Now I’m twenty years old, so if anything happens, I’m sure I’ll have better treatment than before in a ward since I’ll likely be surrounded by others with my condition. But really? None of my fellow patients in the youth ward had anything like what I had. It was just depression and anger, which I had neither of.