Hospitalization - share your experience?

It isn't as bad as that in this country and it just sounds like the standard of care you're getting there is dreadful. Who would voluntarily admit themselves to such a place even if they were suicidal?

All that I can really advise you is to try to take control of your own life while you still can. I hope that you get your financial problems sorted out but you've really got to ask yourself if you're going to be blackmailed like this. I would rather be made a homeless beggar than walk into a hospital that sounds worse than being in prison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eboPiMAO0po

I've got some news. For now they won't be hospitalizing me. Maybe they won't be doing it at all.

However, it's both good and bad... With hospitalization, I'm sure they'd give me a recommendation for the benefit money easily, because I know I'd go nuts from staying with strangers without Internet and phone and just watching TV for weeks and being injected with some by force despite my shots phobia.

But now they told me to go to a daycare hospital instead. And let me tell you it just sucks. I've already been there for months before. People who work there are so horribly incompetent. I can't imagine talking to the same psychiatrist again, she always made me feel like she belitted my problems, and I frequently felt worse after visiting her than before. Just imagine someone tell you "You need to start going out for a walk!" and when you try to explain how impossible that is, she tells you "But noone can help you except yourself, so do that, otherwise nothing can change". Can you imagine that? I remember when she said that it helped to trigger my depression, because I competely lost hope. And she'd always be so merry, all smiles, and talked so superficially like I was some idiot.

You know how she tried to "cure" my fear of people's judgment? She kept explaining to me, as if I was a moron, that when people look at something (she'd show me a small statue) they feel differently towards it, because everyone looks at it from her own angle. Well thank you, I'm not an idiot, I know that already. What kind of lame crap is that and why should it help me fear people less?

And now I have to go through that useless crap again.. And besides, they're so incompetent I don't believe they're capable of giving me a proper recommendation. They will just belittle all my issues.

Oh and I didn't mention how stupid they are when it comes to the pills. The psichiatrist in a daycare hospital had me on a lame low dosage pill for 3,5 (!) months. Which was NOT working at all. And I repeatedly told her about it. And it was low dosage, so in all these 3.5 months it didn't even occur to her to raise it and check that maybe, you know, it couldn't work because it was so extremely low?!

Horrible. And my regional psychiatrist is horrible, too. When I mentioned that I've planned my suicide after long research in case getting benefits fails, she looked me like I'm being childish. But that's what I actually plan to do if I learn for sure that I have to die of hunger on my own. Next time I just won't say anything to her. I guess I'm just used to being more open now, because I can say anything to my psychotherapist, but now I see that I should keep my guard around all others.

All people I know who're supposed to help, except my psychotherapist whom I see twice a week, are awful. I seriously think that if I didn't have her, I'd probably done something to myself by now. It's the only person who can understand me and knows what's going on. All the rest of these "professionals" are either incompetent or jerks.

I think it sounds angry, but I'm actually just in despair. I don't want to see again people who made me feel more miserable in the first place. Maybe it was a bad idea to ask them to avoid hospitalizing me.

\\venting mode off

So, from being in a daycare hospital, I already suffered something I had no idea even existed: a thing called akathisia. It was horror, pure horror. A chemical hell. It consisted of undescribably irritable sensations all over my body, especially in the limbs and the chest and great tension in the body every moment that couldn't be released. Moving it could make me feel a little bit better, but I was dead tired at the same time, so it was torture. I couldn't do anything at all for two days, not even watch TV, because of how strong those sensations were. Only sleep was salvation.

To be fair, that was a neuroleptic drug side-effect, but I have to even question why I was given it in the first place.

After that, I'm wary of actual hospitals forever. At least I could actually refuse from the drug that produced the whole thing (even though the doctor still didn't want me to refuse from it... yeah right!). If I couldn't, though, I think it would driven me to the point of suicide much faster than whatever life problems with money I've got now.

FragranceOfLilac wrote:So, from being in a daycare hospital, I already suffered something I had no idea even existed: a thing called akathisia. It was horror, pure horror. A chemical hell.

That was pretty common at the psych hospital I was in. Some people got it along with dystonia. And tardive dyskinesia was also common. I also saw some people gain 100 pounds in just months. And I knew people who were forced to stay on those drugs for years.

Parador wrote:

FragranceOfLilac wrote:So, from being in a daycare hospital, I already suffered something I had no idea even existed: a thing called akathisia. It was horror, pure horror. A chemical hell.

That was pretty common at the psych hospital I was in. Some people got it along with dystonia. And tardive dyskinesia was also common. I also saw some people gain 100 pounds in just months. And I knew people who were forced to stay on those drugs for years.

The neuroleptic drugs sound so experimental. I've been trying to find info online, and apparently noone even knows why certain drugs cause such drastic side-effects or why they cause them in some people and not the others. The way they're supposed to treat psychosis and similar issues is also quite foggy, as far as I understand. The medical science is in a pathetic state as far as mental issues are concerned.

That said, I'm still not entirely anti-medicine person. I know one paranoid shizophrenic individual who's been sick for 15 years. He keeps hallucinating and hearing voices at all times. Yeah, he gained weight, but no other side-effects, and drugs are the only thing that allows him to stop hallucinating. He still hears voices, though, even on drugs, so it's far from ideal. His friend, on another hand, got into a car accident while he was hallucinating cars and people on the street that weren't actually in the street, so I guess absence of medication can be actually dangerous.

Parador, I recently did a forum search and your post popped up. I can't find it now, but you were talking about your experience of having to argue your diagnosis. Could you tell me about it, how was it technically possible? By PM or here (maybe it comes in handy to others). I realize that these things may differ from country to country, but I'd like to know at least theoretically how you can argue the diagnosis and even offer your own versions. Is it actually allowed to say your own doctor is incorrect and they have to give you another one for re-evaluation? Thanks for the information beforehand.

Are you sure that you're not being over sensitive about the shrinks talking to you like you're an idiot? How is your therapist better? I'm curious how that works when you are so touchy about criticism. Does your therapist tend to tell you that you're right, rather than asking you to question how rational your beliefs are?

My therapist uses a peculiar way of communication devoid of judgment completely. It doesn't happen in real life and I have very little idea how she taught herself to do it. I believe it's some kind of therapeutic approach but I don't know a name for it. Basically I could call her "a mirror", she reflects me (as in, I'm being heard) but there is nothing at all that comes from that mirror my way. I only see myself. When she speaks it's to deepen my own words, and her understanding is always 100% correct (bar a few incidents), so it feels like being reflected, not judged.

I remember how in the beginning I thought that I'd prefer something positive come my way. But now I think this way is much better. I wouldn't believe anything positive anyway, I'd create a hundred of excuses to think I'm being lied to. This is probably ideal therapy for a person with AvPD, since she doesn't trigger my AvPD this way.

Well, I didn't write anything more here, but I've had many more "adventures" in the daycare hospital. Like, the doctor I was assigned to tried to force on me completely useless pills in large doses. I know they're useless coz I used them before for three months and the effect was zero, haha. When I told him about it he was very rude, saying that I need to listen to what doctors tell me to do. So I ended up not drinking those pills but telling him that I do.

Your therapist is just a good listener that's able to help you understand your own feelings probably because I think that you said something about not even being aware of them.

Does my asking you if you're sure that you're not overreacting about the shrinks talking to you like an idiot imply that I'm judging you? I can acknowledge how annoying that must be, given that you have problems with that. I know that it would piss me right off. At the same time though you may be expecting too much from these people who you see as incompitent at solving your problems for you. It's certainly true that it's their job to help but you're expecting magic potions to work if you trust a psychiatrist. You're saying that they don't even know how they work. You're experimenting and flushing them down the toilet if they didn't do anything for you when you tried them before. I can understand why. It's because you're desperate. Also because you are not an assertive sort of person and you feel that you are actually an idiot because of your low self esteem, so you're conflicted about that but still expecting these people to tell you what to do because you feel like a stupid person and doctors are meant to be smart and have the solutions.

NoM8s wrote:It's certainly true that it's their job to help but you're expecting magic potions to work if you trust a psychiatrist.

Then what should I believe in? I again have a period when I'm thinking of future now, and I can only think of planning suicide. Because as soon as my parents done, I'm done.

In a week or so we'll see how it goes with the disability, I think there's about a week left in the daycare hospital. But I don't really think that I'd ever get enough money to survive on my own, not even if the whole disability thing goes well. I guess it's just my bad luck to be born in this poor country with people struggling to get by. I know people from other countries and they can survive on the disability money. The thing is, if this was supposed to end like this, why was I even born? If the whole meaning of my life was to suffer and then kill myself to avoid death from hunger, then I'd prefer to have never been born at all. Then I wouldn't want to live and wouldn't fear death. My only hope is for depression to get bad enough once my parents are dead that I wouldn't fear killing myself. This is realistic, that happened before, but still, what if I still want to live when I need to kill myself?

Yeah I think my therapist is a good listener, and she has a way of repeating what I say or adding more details to it, and it always sound right. Which creates a feeling of total understanding. But ultimately she isn't helpful, after all, it's not like I fear people less or can hold a job. She makes me feel better for a while, but that's about it.