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Mental Health Treatment Part IV: Hospitalization

Laura

Before I completely scare you to pieces, mental hospitalization no longer resembles a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Girl Interrupted. Now, I'm not going to say there aren't bad hospitals out there, but, for the most part, hospitals have advanced light years beyond the hospitals of yore.


Take my experience: I have been hospitalized at four different hospitals – two crisis hospitals, a university hospital, and a private mental hospital. None have been a picnic, but none were cesspools, either. I count myself lucky to have had – with a few notable exceptions – very caring mental health providers who have had my best interest at heart, and that includes the psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists I have encountered during my hospital stays.


There was one crisis hospital that I yo-yo'd in and out of more than 80 times – I was the epitome of a revolving door patient. I would hit a breaking point, and my therapist would admit me to the hospital. I would leave patched up in under two weeks (over two weeks risked being committed to the state hospital, something I narrowly missed any number of times).  It was like putting Humpty Dumpty together again – good intentions without great success.


Sometimes, it seemed I would no sooner be discharged than I would need to be readmitted. In the absence of a longer-term hospital, the local crisis hospital and I did a dance, which may have been a whole lot less than ideal – but it kept me alive. Sometimes, you have to grasp at straws – at anything – to keep you alive. (It's ok – grasp those straws unabashedly. They're there for a reason.)


While I have had my share of brief crisis hospitalizations, I have also had two long-term hospitalizations, one for two years and one for six months. Both saved my life. My two-year hospitalization was early on in my mental health "career"; I fought like hell not to be sent to The Menninger Clinic. (Spoiler alert: I lost.)


My mom was in a horrible position: the doctors at the local crisis unit told her I was too sick to be hospitalized there again (translation: they would not readmit me), and they told her she needed to find somewhere for me to go for long-term treatment. They offered her virtually no help – my poor mother had no idea how even to begin to research long-term mental health treatment programs. By some dumb stroke of luck, she chose the hospital with the best approach to treatment for me that she possibly could have, and the people there saved my life.


I know you're thinking, "How the hell can someone need to be hospitalized for two years?" An awful lot of it was damage control, getting me not to be my own worst enemy – and a lot of it was getting me to the point where I could manage to take care of myself. I loathed myself, and I kept trying to run away from myself (somehow, I always managed to catch up to myself – running did me little to no good). I had to learn to tolerate myself until I could learn to like myself. Hell, I'm still learning to love myself … it's not an easy process when you grow up detesting yourself. Life is hard enough; if you can get out of your own way, trust me: you'll be doing yourself a great service.


HOW you get out of your own way depends on the extent to which you are your own worst enemy. For me, I needed to be somewhere safe  – somewhere that would have eyes on me at all times. Sometimes, all I could do was to manage to exist between fifteen-minute checks. Initially, I hated the fact that I was being looked in on four times every hour, including at night, 24/7, which meant the door opening and closing, with light pouring in, all night long. After a time, however, I began to rely on those fifteen-minute rounds. I began to see them as another fifteen minutes that I had managed to continue to exist.


It's funny – I made a promise to myself that I would never be hospitalized long-term after my two-year hospitalization at The Menninger Clinic. I probably got in my own way as I probably should have been hospitalized again long-term long before I was, but my pride got in the way.


I wound up back at The Menninger Clinic and was hospitalized for six months. I had any number of epiphanies during that hospitalization, including recognizing that hospitalizations, long or short, are part of my treatment protocol. I am now hospitalized one to two times per year for active suicidality. I have learned that when it gets difficult to come up for air, and I start to constantly fantasize about my own demise, it's time to go back into the hospital.


Do I enjoy being hospitalized? No. But I take a long, deep breath when the doors close behind me, and I am able to give somebody else the burden of keeping myself alive for a while. Generally, I'm out of the hospital in a week to ten days – it's been a while since I needed to go into a long-term program. Essentially, my treaters and I can catch on a lot sooner that things have taken a turn for the worse than we used to, and we can head major episodes off at the pass.


It's funny that I'm writing this right now. I knew that there would be four installments to my musings on treatments for mental health problems, and I knew that the part on hospitalizations would be the fourth and final installment. What I didn't plan on was being very suicidal while writing this installment. I pushed on largely because I wanted my family to have a nice holiday season, and that clearly did not include visiting me on a psych ward. I'm writing this New Year's Day, and while I don't believe in resolutions (too many built-in opportunities for failure), I am renewing my never-ending pursuit of achieving and maintaining good mental health.


So, if you are concerned for your mental well-being, seek a therapist. If you need medication, seek a psychiatrist. If you are concerned for your safety, RUN, don't walk, and go to the nearest hospital. Fearing for your life is the best reason to go to the hospital, and it does not matter whether you're having acute appendicitis or thoughts of harming yourself. Both mean that a visit to the local emergency department is in order. Please stay safe in this New Year.

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