There's Nothing Wrong With Your Mind, Kid

Of my thirteen stays in various psychiatric hospitals between 2001 and 2008, six of them took place during my adolescent years. I was usually given the doctors that the other teens didn't see, due to the fact that my mental problems were more complex, at least for a teenager. Many of the other kids were either experiencing a more intense form of the already-daunting emotional storm that comes with being that age, or they were R.P. McMurphy types - accepting a stay in a mental hospital to avoid jail.

But, in this mix of genuinely troubled children, and juveniles savvy enough to exploit the system, there was always a third kind: kids locked in the mental hospital for the sole reason that their situation at home was no longer safe. They had been neglected, mistreated, or abused. Many of them were placed in the hospital to await placement in a foster home; others were there while their parents showed up daily for "family therapy" sessions; but more disturbing, others were there to begin a "residential treatment" program.

Even then, with my own troubles to deal with, I wondered, "What are they doing here?"

It's not as if I had some bitter notion that they were taking away from the hospitals' resources. It's not that I didn't understand that they needed somewhere to stay that wasn't ruled by an abusive relative. But there were deeper things that puzzled me, and still do, about these kids.

For one thing, why were they being given psychiatric medication? Don't misunderstand me - I understood it if the child had been driven into depression, anxiety, or some other post-traumatic or pre-existing symptom. But that was very seldom the case, at least in the experiences I'm describing. There were many others who were not mentally ill, but rightfully uncertain and afraid about the future. I felt back then, and I feel even more strongly now, "you've been abused! You've been wronged! You're not the sick one!"
What troubled me even more was that, as confused and as fearful as many of these children were, the sheer act of being given a pill for their minds was basically drilling into their souls a notion that there was something wrong with them mentally because they had been abused. Without a word, but with a pill, they were told: you have been mistreated; therefore you're sick.
I was never abused or mistreated by my parents, but if someone told me there was something wrong with my mind because I'd been abused, when it wasn't me who was the crazy one, I would develop the notion that the abuse I suffered had somehow been my fault.

And indeed, many of my fellow patients with whom I kept contact into adulthood (as well as others I met during my later stays in adult wards) harbor some guilt or self-loathing behavior due not only to what they experienced at home, but because someone told them there was a flaw in their minds when they were taken from that danger.

Growing up with so many stays in mental hospitals where these things were commonplace, I made many friends who wouldn't have been in those wards had it not been for a deliverance from an abusive home. But what were they delivered to? A hospital where someone tells them "you were neglected and abused by someone you trusted, someone who should have cared for you, so you're mentally unstable and need pills"? It made no sense to me.

And what's more, I watched many of them grow up from being abused children, to children convinced they were mentally ill because of that abuse, to adults who, because of what they were told, can't handle life and make a mess of it because they've been deceived into thinking "it's supposed to be this way - my mind is messed up, and I'm messed up." I've had many friends who don't have the strength to handle being an adult because no one told them they were strong as a child. No one told them, "hey kid, you've got more guts than me - I could never go through that and not lose my mind. But you held it together. You're a brave, strong person, and you've got a bright future ahead of you, if you believe it."

If anyone out there is reading this, and you've found yourself in a mental hospital as a result of having a bad home life, when you get out, keep in mind that you're not the crazy one. You're not the sick dirtbag who beat you, who preferred some poison or powder over your needs, who didn't care about the precious life they'd been entrusted to keep safe. If you developed some post-traumatic mental illness, address it by all means. There's nothing wrong with being ill. But don't let anyone tell you that you were the one who needed pills based on the fact that some maniac hurt you. Don't let someone tell you that you weren't strong.

Don't let some pill forced down your throat when you're a kid shape the kind of person you become when you're an adult. Let your bravery and strength shape you instead.

"What do you think you are, crazy? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average ***hole out walkin' around on the street!"
-Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Big Spring State Hospital, I Hate Every Inch of You: The Problem With America's Mental Hospitals

Although my first admission to a psychiatric facility came as an adolescent, I would eventually carry thirteen stays in such hospitals under my belt, from 2001 at age fourteen, through 2008 at age twenty-two. I identified many of the same problems with these places in both adolescent and adult wards, which further suggests the apathy given to the treatment of the truly mentally ill. We've come a long way since the days of shock treatment, lobotomies, insulin shock therapy, and ice baths, but the general malaise in which patients find themselves in these places is just as counterproductive and damaging.

The reason I've not entered another mental hospital in four and a half years is not because I don't need treatment, but because after over a dozen stays in these facilities, I was finally smart enough to realize nothing they offered was any help to my condition.

The biggest problem I noticed was that all patients are treated as if they have the same psychiatric problem; I'm sure in the ten minutes during which they see the resident doctor, they're given slightly more specific attention, but otherwise all patients are treated as if:
a.)  they are threats to themselves or others;
b.) they've done something wrong by coming to the hospital, that their mental or emotional issue is a character flaw that needs working on, rather than a chemical imbalance in the brain for instance;
c.) self-esteem is the cure for any of their ailments.

Not to take anything away from the knowledge and expertise of the lady who hands out the ping-pong equipment, but during my last visit to such a facility, the Pavilion in Amarillo, Texas, the group of patients in which I found myself was scolded by the lady who ran the rec room - not for playing White Rabbit on the stereo system, but because we were in the hospital. She spoke to us of "responsibility," and asked us what we need to "evaluate" in our "personal lives" to keep us from coming back.
I don't pride myself on being a great guy, because I'm not. I also have very little sympathy for myself. But, I am quite sure that the malformation on my brain and other chemical imbalances that cause my psychiatric dysfunction are not caused by tardiness to work or social functions, leaving the toilet seat up, or wearing the same shirt two or three days in a row.

All patients are treated the same - socially dangerous, personally irresponsible, and in need of a game of Nerf basketball to perk them up. If we were in a hospital for physical problems, the patient with the fractured ankle would be treated differently than the patient with bronchitis; the woman in childbirth is given different and more immediate attention than the man who accidentally put a Swingline staple in his finger.
This should be no different at psychiatric hospitals. Patients should be treated and segregated according to the severity and nature of their illness - someone suffering from an especially bad time with panic attacks should not be made to share a room with the patient who suffers from violent episodes and smashes hospital property. Likewise patients without suicidal urges or thoughts should not be treated or restricted for something from which they don't suffer. A doctor in an emergency room would not put a cast on the leg of a patient with appendicitis.

Some may say "How do we know? We don't want to take the risk of someone lying about suicidal thoughts." One reason doctors and staff can't tell who's suicidal and who is not, is because so many leeches on the system will dig at themselves with a spoon, make a superficial cut across their wrist, or make empty threats of suicide, all to spite a loved or hated one at home - they're then sent to these psychiatric facilities, consuming the time, energy, and resources of the available staff, not to mention the funding of the hospitals. One would think this is predominant in adolescent wards, but unfortunately I've seen it quite often as an adult. This also may be why so many patients with genuine illnesses are chided by recreational therapists for perceived character flaws.

One final suggestion, pertaining to one specific hospital - Big Spring State Hospital in Big Spring, Texas. That particular facility can be helped by the following measures: sending all of its patients elsewhere, preferably to places that have stepped out of the 1950s in terms of treating the mentally ill, the buildings themselves burned to the ground, paved over, and a Panda Express built in its place.
The staff meanwhile could benefit from evaluation, and possible treatments, for mental illnesses themselves.