This will probably sound really weird but I’m just wondering who’s been in a hospital or Psych Ward and could tell me there general experience and what it was like.
Well, most people who live there look sedated. Some talk to themselves in a loud voice. Most people ask for cigarettes. It’s really uncommon to see violence in such a place.
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Can get boring. You have a lot of time on your hands
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I’ve been in hospital several times. Generally speaking they’re safe places.
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So boring. Overwhelmingly so. But it really depends on the group you get put in with. I like to find one or two people that I get along with so I have someone to talk to to take some of the boredom away. But it’s not always possible. It also depends how long you’re there. I tend to have two to three week stays. Some hospitals are better than others. Some have cameras in the bedrooms, some make you share roms, some have only one shower that everyone has to share where some you get your own, some leave snacks or and some lock them away. The nurses can make or break how good the stay is. But as long as you’re there with the intent to get better all of that is secondary.
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The hospital was always pretty awful for me growing up, but the hospital where I live now is much better. The nurses are trained to actually treat you with dignity in a good hospital. That makes all the difference in the world. I’m a talker, and most other people don’t want to talk, so that was frustrating for me. Where I stayed, there was only a few magazines and a mostly full deck of cards. It was very boring.
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I went to a decent one…they over fed us daily…it was full of depressed people…there was constant activities programs that were optional…but it was better to go to them just to combat the boredom…and some of them were decent…group meditation…was nice I’ve never tried group led meditation before but it was easier to focus…anyway it seems like there is a def diff between hospitals…if you are thinking of going to one do research…
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I’ve been hospitalized in 6 different hospitals. My stays in each one ranged from two days to 8 months. Yes, what they all had in common was boredom. But the environments were very different. Some were a little dangerous occasionally and people acted as crazy as they wanted to, like screaming, or threatening, or acting like kids. A few were really nice and calm but I was so screwed up when I stayed in the nicer ones that I really couldn’t enjoy the physical comforts and I couldn’t enjoy most of the people so I hated it and just wanted to get released as soon as possible.
The food varies too. In one psyche ward that I was in for two weeks we had a bonified chef who cooked all of our meals. Breakfast could be waffles, crepes, omelets, toast with a few different jams or french toast, with orange juice or nice hash brown potatoes(no potato jokes needed to put here, thank you very much, lol) Lunch was some great home-cooked soup or great sandwiches or freshly made potato salad( c’mon! didn’t I just tell you no potato jokes?) Dinner was stew, or spaghetti, or steak, or some great chicken dish. I think this was the weirdest psyche ward I was ever in just because of the trouble they went to feed us like kings!
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Depends place to place
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Thanks to you all! I’m not completely sure why I asked this, maybe it was just simple curiosity. I don’t know how good the hospital near me is though. I’m going to be telling my parents about my hallucinations soon and I think that if they would send me to a hospital it would be that one. I guess if you want to look into it and tell me how good you think it is that would be greatly appreciated.
centacare.com
The centracare.com is the link for the hospitals website.
Child units are usually drastically different than adult units.
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True and I think I would either be considered a child or an adolescent.
Psychiatric hospitals are no longer the terrible places they were decades ago, so there’s no longer a reason to fear them.
They’re the best places for major medication adjustments, and they are also offer many resources (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, etc.). Sure, they will be boring if you stay in your room all day, but they usually offer “groups” (educational classes) on schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety and depression. Ask to see the social worker who can provide you with all sorts of information for when you’re discharged from the hospital. In other words, take advantage of everything they offer.
And the food’s not bad, either!
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@ChildOfFate you seem stable so I wouldn’t be afraid of going to the Psych ward. I hope you get help soon.
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@jukebox I don’t know if I really have a choice though since I am under the age of 18 and my parents might make me go too the hospital.
If they send you, the hospital will just determine whether you’re a danger to yourself or others, realize you’re not, and release you. When I was a kid, they would just stick me in the waiting room for a few hours, interview me, and send me home with new drugs.
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Seems like you could be treated as an out patient. You don’t want to go to the hospital unless you really can’t cope at home.
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Like @Cj56 said, it depends on the place. Some places are decent, some are actually good places, etc. I’ve only been in two different hospitals so I can’t really say much, but there’s definitely a chance of the environments being different depending on the location as well. The first hospital I went to was a psych ward in an actual medical hospital.
I remember that I had to stay in a room in my dad away from the other patients, and I had to change my clothes into a disposable patient gown as well as medical booties for my feet. When I was going to the room after getting changed, I could hear another patient (possibly a teenager) screaming and crying for some reason that I couldn’t piece together as I didn’t have my hearing aids in and wasn’t wearing them at the time. Stayed there for about three hours and had to talk to a nurse about how my emotions were like, as well as talking about if I had any suicidal or homicidal intentions. Once I was let go, a nurse actually gave me a stuffed owl that I still have to this day. 
Since I was going through severe anxiety at the time and couldn’t function at school, I had to be placed into an alternative school in an actual psychiatric hospital. For a few months, I was outpatient but had to be put into inpatient for a few days because I was making suicidal and homicidal threats towards a friend of mine who told my parents almost immediately after this happened.
There were actually pretty nice people there, but there were also violent patients (whom I was afraid of; despite those threats, I never hurt anyone) that had the tendency to act out. The staff were generally nice as well, but some of them were rude and unnecessarily cold. There was a cool psych technician (?) there that was nice and made us laugh but he basically called me an attention seeker for not acting on what I said I wanted to do to my friends and family in my file. 
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It’s nothing like you see on tv and in movies. I’ve been in several different hospitals and, as everyone here has said, the quality is highly variable. I have never been on a chronic unit, so I don’t know about those, but I can tell you the acute care units aren’t bad. Boring, sure, but pretty tame. I once saw two guys nearly come to blows, a nurse got between them, and I’ve once seen someone flip out and get put in time out. Hell, there was one time it was me flipping out and screaming at a nurse during my worst psychotic break and getting put in isolation, given drugs. That’s not that common in that type of unit, though. It’s always best to go to group, though sometimes I don’t if I’m super tired from meds. My stays have ranged from 3-8 days; as soon as I no longer need around-the-clock care they discharge me.
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