Why I Hated Working at a Psychiatric Hospital: An Exposé by a Former Therapist
Andre, Linda (2009). Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment: https://amzn.to/2vIs2JM
Linda Andre on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Andre
ECT Resources Center (maintained by Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D.): http://www.ectresources.org
My film “Open Dialogue”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVhZHJagfQ&t=3s
My film “Healing Homes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV4NTEp8S2Q
My film “Take These Broken Wings”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfKc-TknWU
My Website: http://wildtruth.net
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48 Comments
The Police help drug companies. If you lock someone up dont poison them
thank you for this
Dear Nurse Joanna. I miss my only son. No one gave a fuck about him when he was in my stomach. But it is ok for you to give as many births as you desire. You are made of better chemical elements from Mendeleev periodic table. Some people are starving to death in the 21st century and you have diet pills that work and no one is forcing them on you and people like you. I was surprised. Usually thin cute little girls are super mean.
As a person who served time this year May20-june2 2023 in a mental hospital, why the hell do these institutions exist? There's NOTHING that helps anyone at a mental hospital/psych ward. Close them all down.
Much wisdom here. Psychiatry has a long and largely ugly history. The difference between the induced diabetic comas/lobotomies of the past and today’s psychiatric drugs/ECT is one of degree, at best, not kind.
Treating people as objects whose behavioral/emotional outputs can be directed by particular inputs-mostly drugs-is a kind of sickness.
Right very crazy. So creepy families want to hide people i think in way want them dead or something
a few of the most humiliating things about psych wards…first, they strip you naked when you get in to check you for weapons. second, you aren't allowed your normal clothes. third, you have a damned nurse barging in on you and not saying a damn word while you're trying to sleep to check if you've committed suicide. fourth, the staff don't give 2 shits about you as a person, you're seen as someone to be careful around, fifth, the rooms are the most uncomfortable places you'll ever stay. completely devoid of character, meticulously scanned for anything you could kill yourself with.
Its all about control. People love to control.
My experience at a VA mental health facility I walked into a room where my fellow patients were watching a movie called the pledge with Jack Nicholson and there was very disturbing part of the film where one of the
characters of the movie grabs a weapon and vividly shows the character shoot himself in the head. I remember being so shocked that a VA mental health facility would show a film that involves suicide was shown to patients who like myself have mental health problems.
I worked at a large outpatient nonprofit mental health clinic and it was the same, no hope given to the clients, all funds provided by government,, why would they be motivated to help their clients, need money to survive. I hated the daily morning staff meetings as they were also just as you described. I was forced out as I didn't fit in with their model, I stood up for the clients but most of the time kept my mouth shut.
"When you are born into this world you are given a ticket to the freak show, and when you're born in America you are given a front row seat. And we're all given notebooks." – George Carlin
👏
Gloomy places.
They should be given books to read and plants and much more.
Some psychiatric hospitals are better and things change since 20 years ago but probably even the slightly better ones were much more awful 20 years ago too
Thank you for being a decent person.
It's not about healing,,, it was about using up all the insurance available via my dad's work 1983 ,,,n kick him to the street ! American medicine 💊
This scares the $hit out of me because I've seen it.
People have no idea about this level of hell.
Yeah, my mother worked at a county mental health center and she said it was horrible the way they treated the patients. They were just a mess, period.
Yeah, even Freud found that most of the "neurotic" women he studied had been sexually abused and he even wrote it up for his superiors as a hypothesis but his superiors didn't like it so he went and wrote his famous Ego theory where a boy wants to kill his father and have sex with his mother and his superiors liked that one!
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest wasn't too far off the mark, was it!
Locked up ,,,😂 drugged, for a month , permanently disabled , drugs , disrespected, fed jello ,for lunch , traumatized!! Forced to take a shower , medicated,,,,,Oh and tell you and your family " bad news". and he is schizophrenic? 😢 Huh ,They got paid,,,Sick system,,,,they don't "heal" anything! Create a bunch of new problems ,side effects,,😊 Beware the fuzzy warm hospital experience they sell, Best thing I learned is never want to go there again, also learn about health,fasting , nutrition, exercise,sunshine and meditation for physical and mental health!
Had the exact same experience in an inpatient hospital as a social work intern. the mental Healthcare system is so disgusting.
I ended up in the worst insurance scam od a nut house. My narcissistic parents filed an exparte baker act and skipped all the less aggressive methods…like asking me. It was horrible the cops came in full swat gear and almost killed my donkey who was actively protecting me, but I steppedim between. For which they broke my thumb. I fear going back to that he'll hole more than death. They exrayex my hand and knew it had multiple breaks but I got no care inside the facility. I had never been in such pain. I run an equine rescue and it would be illegal to treat a dog the way I was left untreated. Never spent a night in any hospital. Didn't eat, sleep or drink for the 3 days. Wouldn't sign anything or take anything. Like I am going to get mental health treatment at gunpoint? The rents thought I was a drug addict and seemed let down. I didn't have any in my system or in my house. 72 hour hold based on an ex party statement that was not backed up by any evidence at all or behavior of mine. After the third day some staff started to open up to me in how dishonest and crooked life stream in Florida is. My human and civil rights were violated but the only ones wanting to take the case had their own agenda. In retrospect I should have let the scientologists take it. But they are scarry too. I am not totally crazy just autistic, and artistic.
Always does remind me to the movie: One flew over the Cuckoo´s Nest – with Jack Nickolson, right. Psychiatric Hospitals are evil, dark places – that´s all I can think about it.
I remember my father having to get ECT after a breakdown. My siblings and I were children at the time. Even at that age, I found the thought of electrocution terrifying, even traumatising. I've had a mistrust of the whole psychiatric profession ever since.
Thanks so much for sharing. Narrowly avoided being admitted here in Canada due to mental effects of an undiagnosed physical health deterioration.
Initially when I was told I could be admitted to hospital I had thought it could be helpful to be monitored in case my physical health became critical… I was so wrong.
My god I can't believe all of this is still happening, literal insane asylums out of horror films that I thought were a thing of the past.
I think if people knew how horrific this is most would make better choices to avoid being sent there.
I've certainly been "scared straight", whatever happens to me physically due to this disease it will be better than losing my mind in captivity.
Those without scientific or medical education shouldn’t act like they aren’t less knowledgeable than those who do. Of course it was hierarchical, you didn’t have the expertise they do.
Thanks for having the courage to expose this inhumane treatment that these people receive from head "doctors" I met a very young woman that was abused (sexually) by her father, taken out of her home and became a ward of the state. They drugged her on a cocktail of poison prescriptions for two supposed disorders. Now she is a zombie! She wants off the drugs but cannot get off because the state and psychiatry is not out for the best interest of ANYONE!
I was in and out of units from age 15 – 22 and every one of us were traumatized and abused and I never understood why, as kids, we were being treated as the problem instead of our abusers. They took depressed people and put them in a depressing place being subjected to more abuse. It was hell.
I'am a doctor doing actually anaesthesia Residency. I always wanted to do psychiatry but i didn't get the opportunity to start a Residency in Psychiatry. I really don't feel like anaesthesia is the right thing for me. But In the same time the more I learn about Psychiatry, the more I feel like it's also not the right thing for me. I don't believe that Medication is the right way to treat patients. I don't think that someone's problem can be treated in dissociating it in a bunch of symptoms and treating every symptom Separately. I don't believe in psychiatric hospitals as a healthy environment where people can feel good about themselves. I think I myself will be depressed if I work in a psychiatric hospital. I already hate the Critical care Unit where The Patient is not seen as a whole, instead as a container of different Liquids that you need to control the viscosity, the fluidity, the balance and you can notice how the most of the time doctors will get impatient when they need to talk to the patient. I really feel like I have a problem with the Healthcare system in general and not with a certain field, this is why I'am sort of not motivated to change my speciality, thinking it will always be the same. But yeah since I wrote this Comment here , it means maybe I didn't loose Hope and I am searching for Someone who will show me the bright Side of The Path..
Pathological narcissism is UBIQUITOUS in medicine, psychiatry, psychology, teaching/pedagogy, and all of the admiration-seeking professions. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you haven't already learned.
When I think of eating disorders, I think of someone with BPD, and if they had sexual trauma along with a narcissistic parent who pressured them to be perfect.
I definitely have friend who were used as sexual objects as children, but they have no eating disorder, they suffer from alcoholism (functional daily drinkers).
I know a woman who was getting ect treatments every monday because she was told she was a rapid cycler(sp?). I saw her last year when I was in the hospital and asked how she was. She replied that her husband had passed away and her family was worried about her. Her affect was flat and she didn't remember him! Once you become a label you no longer exist as a person! Unfortunately I don't see this changing! Thank you for the validation.
No one believes us!
OMG I was the only girl with five brothers in an incestuous family. When my father committed me to a psych hospital at 15 for telling a nun about my sexual abuse all the psychiatrist did upon hearing I was being sexually abused was put me on high doses of Antipsychotics and then discharged me into the arms of my pedophile family. It's so evil. I refer to high doses of Antipsychotics (1200 mg of Seroquel) as a date rape drug.
I was suicidal and checked myself in to the Jefferson Regional hospital in Pine Bluff, AR. They drove me home, got stuck in my driveway, the wrecker ran over my water meter and I was without water from January to the day before election day. They left me with the bill and nobody wanted to hear it. Turns out it was just the meter, but the water company lied and said it was on my side of the meter and my responsibility. I called an out of town plumber and all of a sudden it’s miraculously fixed, but nobody is accountable
Good words, good man.
I have been sectioned many times because I am autistic severe and silent, and when I was in an institution over Christmas and new years holiday I was raped by male staff
It was terrible
I'm from Britain, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at age 25 ,had an amazing psychiatrist for 18 years. Grateful for the meds, had one unilateral course of ect and one course of bilateral ect it saved my life and did not affect my long-term memory. I thinks it's your sick American system. America is a first world country with third world conditions. Even with a serious psychotic and affective disorder I have only spent 6 weeks total on a paych ward in 27 years because of excellent care and if you are unable to work at times you prescriptions are free. There is a severe lack of empathy in America and spreads that lack of empathy to the rest of the world. We love our NHS medical assistance at point of entry for free. Nobody in Britain puts off calling an ambulance because of insurance. We pay for the NHS therefore we mostly expect excellent care and I can attest to that. Lord knows what would happen to me with such a disorder in America.
I spent a little time in a hospital, I'm also highly educated in psychology and psychiatry. The psychiatrists were inhuman. I am particularly skilled at getting people to open up. The policies came down to dollars and cents, with zero interest in patient health. They were specifically ignoring patient inputs. It was literally medicate, subjugate, move on. It's amazing what disgruntled employees will share, even with a patient in a hospital.
Daniel, thank you for your deep and thoughtful expressions of compassion. You have a beautiful heart. 💙
I would too.
Ward rounds were so retraumatising….😢
Thank you for speaking about this. Being the only lucid one in a high security psych ward, the patient treatment and standard of living was so shocking. There were workers seeking relationships with women in there. I was a victim. He read my chart before deciding to approach me. Healed and 7 years older, I feel completely violated by that person.
Great video
I believe that in my nursing home is a only place that so many residents have mental health it was not useful for them especially when you do electric shock therapy they can say it whatever they want to say it is
How so humility😢😢😢😢
I am originally from syria and lost my father when i was younger, came to america when i was very young and my mother suffered health problems. I was put into foster care and adopted by a very abusive family. was in and out of mental hospitals. even though then i didnt have enough knowledge about phyoclogy and nueroscience, i could feel how the phyiatrists were giving diagnosis were very wrong . I am a phd student now in nueroscience for this reason , phycological illness and treatment is majorally flawed in america, and i hope part of my work is to help these people who are suffereing. as you stated many people are simply suffering from truama due to childhood and are just given meds and labeled as a diagnosis, when in reality the brain doesnt work this way. for anyone suffereing reading this i would truly recomend finding a good therapist, one who is skilled and one you feel you can be open with, as even i personally see a therapist to this day.
You'd better work there because only bad people remain and nothing will change.
So glad that you have seen trough their bullshit.