Yeah but I'm not going there alone
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Mental Health |OT| Depression & Co.
- Thread starter Bagels
- Start date
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What people are missing is that this is EXACTLY what it's like to play a game with voice chat with humbugs. It's this shit for HOURS.
He does have a great voice, though.
Lemme also advertise our depression-GAF E3 coverage. When GAF inevitably gets overloaded, you can join us in chat, where we will be covering all of the major pressers LIVE, providing the kind of witty, incisive commentary that you would expect from the mentally ill.* I can't confirm when we'll have humbugs in there, as he lives on the wrong side of the world, but I'm sure we'll drag him in at some point for his thoughts on the state of gaming in 2013. His thoughts on MMO Neverwinter have already immeasurably enriched my life.
*I joke, but it's going to be great. Everyone was just ON for the Xbone reveal. I almost died laughing.
Bel Marduk
Banned
I don't know... E3 seems to be a major source of depression these days..
That's the joke?
We had a good time being let down by microsoft already. People in chat are super funny. It's cheer you right up!
I like this one. It actually made my imagination work.
So, first time posting in here after about a month of lurking and PMing people with advice or asking questions. After much convincing, I have decided to post in here. I had never wanted to because I loathe admitting I have these issues, but... I do and there's no escaping it. I'm not sure how to go about this, so I guess I'll just start.
Bipolar - This is the one I hate to admit to the most, but it's extremely annoying. Sometimes I can overreact to certain things and I guess you're not thinking rationally when you're extremely emotional. I have both my extreme highs and extreme lows. I've made stupid decisions when I've been in my extreme lows, but I live with them.
Severe Panic Disorder - This one is the worst of them all. This is the life ruining and life changing disorder. Those of you who have it will completely understand what I mean by those words. I have completely random panic attacks that I fight daily. Each day is a struggle and I'm always fearing the next one. There are still things that can trigger it, though. Pain is the number one trigger which happens more often than you would think. See, I'm not physically healthy either. I was diagnosed with cancer and have severe stomach issues that the GI can't seem to figure out. So I'm constantly scared of both when the pain will strike and when I'll have a panic attack. It is, honest to god, a life ruining issue.
I have received help, after a year of dealing with the second disorder I went to see a psych. I went from not being able to go to a grocery store to going back to school regularly. That's not to say the medicine was a magical fix. It's not, but it certainly did help a lot more than I expected. So if you have the same issues I do, you might want to give a psychiatrist a shot. These are still issues, but it's a lot less significant than it used to be.
I'm sure my friends, both GAF and non-GAF, will probably be reading this at some point. I'm sorry I never told some of you, but hopefully you can understand why I don't like talking about it or admitting to it. In some cases I felt pressured into admitting to it and other times were entirely voluntary. So... I guess this is my story and now I've publicly admitted to it. Yup.
Bipolar - This is the one I hate to admit to the most, but it's extremely annoying. Sometimes I can overreact to certain things and I guess you're not thinking rationally when you're extremely emotional. I have both my extreme highs and extreme lows. I've made stupid decisions when I've been in my extreme lows, but I live with them.
Severe Panic Disorder - This one is the worst of them all. This is the life ruining and life changing disorder. Those of you who have it will completely understand what I mean by those words. I have completely random panic attacks that I fight daily. Each day is a struggle and I'm always fearing the next one. There are still things that can trigger it, though. Pain is the number one trigger which happens more often than you would think. See, I'm not physically healthy either. I was diagnosed with cancer and have severe stomach issues that the GI can't seem to figure out. So I'm constantly scared of both when the pain will strike and when I'll have a panic attack. It is, honest to god, a life ruining issue.
I have received help, after a year of dealing with the second disorder I went to see a psych. I went from not being able to go to a grocery store to going back to school regularly. That's not to say the medicine was a magical fix. It's not, but it certainly did help a lot more than I expected. So if you have the same issues I do, you might want to give a psychiatrist a shot. These are still issues, but it's a lot less significant than it used to be.
I'm sure my friends, both GAF and non-GAF, will probably be reading this at some point. I'm sorry I never told some of you, but hopefully you can understand why I don't like talking about it or admitting to it. In some cases I felt pressured into admitting to it and other times were entirely voluntary. So... I guess this is my story and now I've publicly admitted to it. Yup.
People are here for you my friend.
You already know how to contact me.
Support is very important *hugs Uraizen
Collete
Member
Ok, I promised everyone here that I would write what really happened with me for a week I wasn't here. As Bagels said, I was at a mental hospital trying to treat my depression and suicidal. Well...
Start off Thursday afternoon, I knew for a fact I would tell my doctor I tried to OD on Tylenol by taking 8 pills. I told him what happened and also told him I tried to hang myself in the process of this all. He patted me on the shoulder and told me he was proud of me for telling this to him. My mother was also there but in the waiting room, so the doctor called her in and explained in essence what I told the doctor. The only thing that frustrated me he was discussing depression as if it was a temporary mood like for instance, "Oh I was depressed in high school once. I got through it, and so can you." It kind of made me feel he didn't get what I was saying to him...But in any case, he called an ER for me, he wanted me to make sure my liver wasn't failing. My mother paid the family doctor and we both left to the ER. The whole trip, my mom did not say one word to me. I felt she was disappointed in me and made me feel even worse about myself.
We got to the ER, it was a small town so the ER wasn't big but you can see the people in the waiting room...Some looked psychotic and ill and I felt it was a foreshadowing to my stay at the mental hospital. I filled out some paperwork to get into the ER and told them that my doctor called in for me to come here. They immediately took me in and took all my clothes including my phone, a police officer confiscated them. The nurse was almost robotic to me telling what will happen to me next...That I will get my liver tested and I would be staying at a different hospital once this is all done.
I hope to mercy, that all ERs are NOT what I experienced at mine. I went to an ER in downtown Houston before, and while they did take 3 hours to treat my burning 2nd degree foot, they were still humane and checked up on me periodically. It was nothing like that at the ER I was at. I had the head nurse come talk to me first, and told me not to do anything stupid again. She guilt me that a 13 year old girl hanged herself. While I did feel bad for that girl, guilting people from what I experience, doesn't help a patient, at all. Asked me if I wanted water, but she never got it for me. Thirty minutes passed, and I got separated from my mother somehow. I had to call upon the staff to give me the water I needed to give them a urine sample to test if my liver is damaged/failing. Eventually I did get a urine sample for them and gave it to a nurse. They hooked me up to an IV thinking I was dehydrated (I wasn't.) and it scared me the hell out. Not only am I faint at heart with needles, the fact an object was sticking out of my arm made everything worse. So I was hooked up and mother decided to get me some food to eat so I stayed in watching a dated TV. I saw the remote in my hand and saw the buttons were all runned down and it made me uneasy at first. How many people died using this remote in this ER? It sent a shiver down my spine...My mother eventually came back with my father with food...He was all teary eyed but we all ate and he left because there wasn't much he could do but mom wanted to keep me company. Hours passed and people started hooking me up to machines and didn't even bother to check up on me periodically or even hourly. I kept crying that people forgot about me and I was going to die in the hospital. Eventually the psychology response team came to see me and asked me why I tried to commit suicide and suggested me hospitals assuring me that they were covered by my insurance. (Lies.) She was the first human to treat me the same...to treat me like a human. I felt a faint glimmer I was going to be ok. She told me it would take me 6 hours to get me to the mental hospital and told me I had no liver damage, i rated 2/10 severity scale. 2 is apparently nothing.
So it was 8 pm on Thursday and I waited HOURS till 5 am and I could only sleep one hour till they woke me up to change rooms because apparently mine is an actual "ER" room with most machines. One of their patients were failing.
I was finally picked up by 2 male EMS workers. They kind of scared me as they were two middle aged men. I feared they were going to assault me (don't ask me why i got scared of that, i just did for whatever reason.) Mother was still at my side. They asked me basic questions to make sure I was still lucid and sane. I passed 3/3. They started me down a highway and I was cramped into the back of the EMS truck with hospital workers in the distance wishing me well...At this point I had a bad feeling in the dark blue dawn sky. I always wondered what it was like in the back of an EMS truck...Well now I know and it's not anything special, just packed with a bunch of med supplies. The worker who was in the back with me didn't talk. Just asked me to sign papers when I got off.
So finally...I got to the "mental hospital" which looked nothing like a hospital. It looked like a really run down building...I felt "I made a huge mistake...." Which I did in all honesty...They got me in the lobby of the building and there was a random plastic Kroger bag in the middle of the floor. Cleanliness was obviously not an issue /sarcasm. But I'm probably picky. I got picked up by some hospital worker and mother was still near my side trying to tell me this is for my own good. The EMS workers left. My father appeared on the spot and we all did some paper work, they gave me some cold breakfast. My mother at this point was discouraging the use of my phone to text people but I didn't want to worry anyone so I sent a message to my friend to notify people of where I am. While I turned on my phone I saw two messages from another friend of mine (I was slightly mad at him but nothing worthy of fretting to this day) and he finally told me some info I was trying to ask him. It made me feel sad...I couldn't text him at so early in the morning, God knows how long I would be locked up...But one of my friends would notify him anyways...I turned off my phone and forked over my belongings to my mother before they whisked me away to my unit in the hospital.
So I was locked up for 7-8 days in a cramped unit (great for a person such as me suffering from claustrophobia...) filled with all women. I looked over the schedule they forked over to me and looking for anything useful that this hospital has to offer and what 2000$ dollars a night would be worth.....My shock, nothing was useful (except seeing a psychiatrist and doing daily yoga). It made me panic because I realized, I would not get any help. I went to my room and had a short panic attack and cried and hyperventilated knowing I'm stuck in hell. I caught myself and went to the event for the hour, which was yoga. It was helpful I admit, but it was extremely repetitive and regulated. The yoga instructor treated us like normal people which was good and bad. She would talk about the outside world and it made me feel "we're not dealing with that now...how can we relate now?..some of us are locked here for 30 days+..." The staff there was nice but the area we were confined in was so small...Imagine a living room in a house and stretch it horizontally. This was the largest room in the entire unit. My room was actually bigger than my own room at home but I shared it with an 18 year old girl whom I'll call Celes (not going to use anyone's real names in this). But you were penalized if you stay in your room too long even though you need rest or to get away from other people. They would make you stay in that hospital longer...So I had to force myself to be in the largest room in the unit, the rec room. This is where I spent 18 hours of my day really. You were penalized by not eating your food, by not interacting with people, by not being in your bed a certain way, staying up was taboo, arguing about your medication was also unheard of. It felt so controlling...The nurses would come and check on you every 2 hours in the middle of the night to check up on you. I got so used to them doing this that I got used to having uneven sleep and constantly waking up. Each nurse was different at 5:30 am. It depends who was on the night shift. They would either come to your room and check vital signs and not turn the lights. Or they would turn lights on and make you get up and line up in the hall to take your vital signs. More often than naught it was the latter...and people wonder how anyone gets steady sleep in there....The food there was absolutely rank to my stomach. I'm Indian so I'm accustomed to eating rice and healthy food for dinner/lunch. I can tolerate an American meal once or twice during a day. But not all 3 meals. It was filled with fat, no flavor, and the texture of the food was one of the following: mush, rubber, something resembling of food. This is what 2000 dollars does apparently...You can imagine how sick I was being there eating that food. I did ask my doctor to give me cereal at breakfast so I can have something remotely normal to what I have on the outside world. But it still didn't help because the people who serve our food in weird trayed boxes always messed up my order. I'm vegetarian and opted for vegetarian food but 1/2 the time they gave me meat and just told me to "deal with it" somehow or another. The ladies I ate with were nice and helped me out on this and gave me their salad or extra food they didn't want so I would have something. We had plenty of down time during the day, so we had to watch TV, or read in a noisy environment (again if you go to your room, you're penalized, so reading was near impossible). My parents would come on periodic visits and gave me some Sudoku and word search puzzles to do. So that's how I killed most of my times
There was two older women who helped me retain my state of mind while I was there. Sarah and Azuma (it's a guy's name but bear with me ~~). On the first day, I came in there crying and scared being there. Sarah was a 55 year old women and patted me on the back also teary eyed. She was also suffering from depression and "suicide" issues. She was forced in here with me because she was being forced to wait for a psychiatrist for a month because of some drug testing (when she never did a single drug in her life). Sarah told the doctor she can't wait a month for a psychiatrist, she was worried she would be suicidal. Apparently just saying "suicidal" lands people in the hospital which is a shock. I told my previous therapists I was suicidal and not once did they try to lock me up. Anyways. Sarah talked to me that I just need to know the drill here to survive. The "queen bee" of our unit that took care of us, even though she was also a patient, was named Lisa. She had a funny positive attitude and she really understood you. She made sure you were listened to and your story would not go unheard. She was the life of us and made us all hopeful we will get out. The reason why is because she was totaling up to 30 days on Tuesday. Apparently you can opt to stay in this hospital for 30 days as part of a drug program...These people are strong, I could barely survive a week...
About Azuma...I'm not sure why she was in the hospital, it had something to do with telling a doctor she was feeling down and somehow ended up to where I was at. She wasn't suicidal though, she just got into an argument with her cursing son. She was telling me how long she was kept in here and all they really want is your insurance money and nothing more.
Which was true, while the staff was nice, they didn't really try to care about you. Whenever they hear keywords like "i feel sad" they would keep you a day longer or more. They didn't give you many coping skills to help, just stuff we all know. Deep breathing, exercise, and relaxing. So "therapy" was nothing more than a random ignorant person telling you to "deal with it" in some way or another. It's like that one friend telling you "it's going to be ok" when they have no idea what that really means or realize how much you're suffering and what you want to hear isn't something you heard 10 times already.
Upon knowing this I realized, "I gotta get out of here, I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!" so I went to see my psychiatrist in a calm collected manner and asked to be discharged from the hospital since I voluntarily put myself in this situation and was technically still sane of mind. I told them why with good reasons and realizing my life is worth something. They refused and told me I have to go to court if I want to get out earlier. It scared the living day lights out of me knowing they just put me as involuntary status and would not let me out even though I was sane of my mind and asking for release. It hurts your state of mind completely knowing you're being pressed against your will to stay in a place...like this...Speaking of psychiatrists, you didn't get much time with them daily, at most 5 minutes. They would see you and ask how you're doing and leave. There wasn't much therapy going on there really. They just prescribe meds and that's it. No one there had their own private psychologist to help them through it. It was all done via "group therapy" which didn't help shit since a lot of us had social phobias and speaking in groups makes it worse. But whatever reason, one therapist said she had statics that therapy is better if done in groups...I disagree but whatever...
The medicine they gave me was 5mg of Abilify each night. Now I didn't realize the side effects until day 4 when I was jittery during group "therapy" and was unable to concentrate on anything. I also realized my nervous system was out of whack and I would twitch my fingers and legs a lot, so much that it actually physically hurt me. While it did help my depression, it was at the cost of my sanity being stuck there and with side effects being 10 fold on me didn't make anything better.
I was thinking of describing each women's case that I heard, but in the end, I don't think it's morally right. The one's I described now were accidental and had no reason to be there (Lisa didn't give a flying fuck about who knew though that she was in there for alcohol addiction).
Long story short, my family is a lot nicer to me after we had a family group therapy meeting. (sorry I'm way too tired to explain something simple)
So...what a day looked like for me...5:30 am, get up for vitals, shower in a horrible bathroom that would trickle water down, not spray it; wait around till they would open the rec room and would read game of thrones in this time; rec room watch the news and see what's happening in outside world, breakfast, yoga, down time, "group" therapy, got outside in a shitty "backyard, down time, lunch, down time, "group" therapy, down time, dinner, visitation, meds, sleep. Knowing the therapy is shit, the only thing of use they help you with is yoga and giving you a decent sleep and eating schedule.
The whole time I was there, they were planning to keep me there for two weeks, but my parents had to talk to numerous people for hours to let me out a week early. The nurses threatened me to get a job, but I think it was a guideline but for them to threaten me is what bothers me, not the fact getting a job...I don't think they can legally threaten you with stuff like that, can they?...(As far as getting a job, going to try and self employ myself by selling my art but we'll see how that goes...gotta worry about summer school for now).
In any case, I was supposed to get out on Friday of last week but they released me on Saturday due to legal reasons. My insurance ran out on Friday, and they wouldn't let you in this hospital without insurance. So basically, if I were to come to sue them in the future, I can't sue them based on insurance reasons because they released me on Saturday when I no longer had insurance.
So I got out on Saturday and my twitching sensations just wouldn't stop. But first stop was to eat myself silly so I got take out at some Chinese buffet and had a ton of food with a ton of flavor...That's the best feeling...When I got home, the twitching just didn't stop so I decided to work out but it still wouldn't stop. And I no longer had insurance anyways till July (long story but it just won't be available till July) to get the meds I need and the psychiatrist refused to give the prescription to my parents BEFORE my insurance ran out. (BS.) So I decided to taper myself out of the medication (Special thanks to nithidia for helping me contact a pharmacist to taper off the drug) to reduce side effects and try to pick up therapy once i get my insurance back...
So now what? Well the other night I had a night terror and I'm constantly fatigued due to little activity in the hospital and the effects of the drug. I can't say the hospital did 100% good on me but things that did help is my parents being 10x more kinder to me and the fact I have a sleep schedule now (even though I still get up randomly because I'm scared a nurse will open my door to check up on me). But the overall fact I'm depressed (assuming I still took the drug, I would be messed up and I'm not strong enough to withstand the side effects...there, i said it.), psychologically traumatized by my hospital stay, and the fact I'm constantly weak and even shedding a few tears now makes me exhausted all day when it usually doesn't...Say what you will but I felt I wasn't helped in the end by this hospital. Good was done, but at what cost...
Edit: Also I'm not suicidal either.
TL;DR-I went to a hospital, service was crap, I don't feel any better, and I had Chinese food.
Start off Thursday afternoon, I knew for a fact I would tell my doctor I tried to OD on Tylenol by taking 8 pills. I told him what happened and also told him I tried to hang myself in the process of this all. He patted me on the shoulder and told me he was proud of me for telling this to him. My mother was also there but in the waiting room, so the doctor called her in and explained in essence what I told the doctor. The only thing that frustrated me he was discussing depression as if it was a temporary mood like for instance, "Oh I was depressed in high school once. I got through it, and so can you." It kind of made me feel he didn't get what I was saying to him...But in any case, he called an ER for me, he wanted me to make sure my liver wasn't failing. My mother paid the family doctor and we both left to the ER. The whole trip, my mom did not say one word to me. I felt she was disappointed in me and made me feel even worse about myself.
We got to the ER, it was a small town so the ER wasn't big but you can see the people in the waiting room...Some looked psychotic and ill and I felt it was a foreshadowing to my stay at the mental hospital. I filled out some paperwork to get into the ER and told them that my doctor called in for me to come here. They immediately took me in and took all my clothes including my phone, a police officer confiscated them. The nurse was almost robotic to me telling what will happen to me next...That I will get my liver tested and I would be staying at a different hospital once this is all done.
I hope to mercy, that all ERs are NOT what I experienced at mine. I went to an ER in downtown Houston before, and while they did take 3 hours to treat my burning 2nd degree foot, they were still humane and checked up on me periodically. It was nothing like that at the ER I was at. I had the head nurse come talk to me first, and told me not to do anything stupid again. She guilt me that a 13 year old girl hanged herself. While I did feel bad for that girl, guilting people from what I experience, doesn't help a patient, at all. Asked me if I wanted water, but she never got it for me. Thirty minutes passed, and I got separated from my mother somehow. I had to call upon the staff to give me the water I needed to give them a urine sample to test if my liver is damaged/failing. Eventually I did get a urine sample for them and gave it to a nurse. They hooked me up to an IV thinking I was dehydrated (I wasn't.) and it scared me the hell out. Not only am I faint at heart with needles, the fact an object was sticking out of my arm made everything worse. So I was hooked up and mother decided to get me some food to eat so I stayed in watching a dated TV. I saw the remote in my hand and saw the buttons were all runned down and it made me uneasy at first. How many people died using this remote in this ER? It sent a shiver down my spine...My mother eventually came back with my father with food...He was all teary eyed but we all ate and he left because there wasn't much he could do but mom wanted to keep me company. Hours passed and people started hooking me up to machines and didn't even bother to check up on me periodically or even hourly. I kept crying that people forgot about me and I was going to die in the hospital. Eventually the psychology response team came to see me and asked me why I tried to commit suicide and suggested me hospitals assuring me that they were covered by my insurance. (Lies.) She was the first human to treat me the same...to treat me like a human. I felt a faint glimmer I was going to be ok. She told me it would take me 6 hours to get me to the mental hospital and told me I had no liver damage, i rated 2/10 severity scale. 2 is apparently nothing.
So it was 8 pm on Thursday and I waited HOURS till 5 am and I could only sleep one hour till they woke me up to change rooms because apparently mine is an actual "ER" room with most machines. One of their patients were failing.
I was finally picked up by 2 male EMS workers. They kind of scared me as they were two middle aged men. I feared they were going to assault me (don't ask me why i got scared of that, i just did for whatever reason.) Mother was still at my side. They asked me basic questions to make sure I was still lucid and sane. I passed 3/3. They started me down a highway and I was cramped into the back of the EMS truck with hospital workers in the distance wishing me well...At this point I had a bad feeling in the dark blue dawn sky. I always wondered what it was like in the back of an EMS truck...Well now I know and it's not anything special, just packed with a bunch of med supplies. The worker who was in the back with me didn't talk. Just asked me to sign papers when I got off.
So finally...I got to the "mental hospital" which looked nothing like a hospital. It looked like a really run down building...I felt "I made a huge mistake...." Which I did in all honesty...They got me in the lobby of the building and there was a random plastic Kroger bag in the middle of the floor. Cleanliness was obviously not an issue /sarcasm. But I'm probably picky. I got picked up by some hospital worker and mother was still near my side trying to tell me this is for my own good. The EMS workers left. My father appeared on the spot and we all did some paper work, they gave me some cold breakfast. My mother at this point was discouraging the use of my phone to text people but I didn't want to worry anyone so I sent a message to my friend to notify people of where I am. While I turned on my phone I saw two messages from another friend of mine (I was slightly mad at him but nothing worthy of fretting to this day) and he finally told me some info I was trying to ask him. It made me feel sad...I couldn't text him at so early in the morning, God knows how long I would be locked up...But one of my friends would notify him anyways...I turned off my phone and forked over my belongings to my mother before they whisked me away to my unit in the hospital.
So I was locked up for 7-8 days in a cramped unit (great for a person such as me suffering from claustrophobia...) filled with all women. I looked over the schedule they forked over to me and looking for anything useful that this hospital has to offer and what 2000$ dollars a night would be worth.....My shock, nothing was useful (except seeing a psychiatrist and doing daily yoga). It made me panic because I realized, I would not get any help. I went to my room and had a short panic attack and cried and hyperventilated knowing I'm stuck in hell. I caught myself and went to the event for the hour, which was yoga. It was helpful I admit, but it was extremely repetitive and regulated. The yoga instructor treated us like normal people which was good and bad. She would talk about the outside world and it made me feel "we're not dealing with that now...how can we relate now?..some of us are locked here for 30 days+..." The staff there was nice but the area we were confined in was so small...Imagine a living room in a house and stretch it horizontally. This was the largest room in the entire unit. My room was actually bigger than my own room at home but I shared it with an 18 year old girl whom I'll call Celes (not going to use anyone's real names in this). But you were penalized if you stay in your room too long even though you need rest or to get away from other people. They would make you stay in that hospital longer...So I had to force myself to be in the largest room in the unit, the rec room. This is where I spent 18 hours of my day really. You were penalized by not eating your food, by not interacting with people, by not being in your bed a certain way, staying up was taboo, arguing about your medication was also unheard of. It felt so controlling...The nurses would come and check on you every 2 hours in the middle of the night to check up on you. I got so used to them doing this that I got used to having uneven sleep and constantly waking up. Each nurse was different at 5:30 am. It depends who was on the night shift. They would either come to your room and check vital signs and not turn the lights. Or they would turn lights on and make you get up and line up in the hall to take your vital signs. More often than naught it was the latter...and people wonder how anyone gets steady sleep in there....The food there was absolutely rank to my stomach. I'm Indian so I'm accustomed to eating rice and healthy food for dinner/lunch. I can tolerate an American meal once or twice during a day. But not all 3 meals. It was filled with fat, no flavor, and the texture of the food was one of the following: mush, rubber, something resembling of food. This is what 2000 dollars does apparently...You can imagine how sick I was being there eating that food. I did ask my doctor to give me cereal at breakfast so I can have something remotely normal to what I have on the outside world. But it still didn't help because the people who serve our food in weird trayed boxes always messed up my order. I'm vegetarian and opted for vegetarian food but 1/2 the time they gave me meat and just told me to "deal with it" somehow or another. The ladies I ate with were nice and helped me out on this and gave me their salad or extra food they didn't want so I would have something. We had plenty of down time during the day, so we had to watch TV, or read in a noisy environment (again if you go to your room, you're penalized, so reading was near impossible). My parents would come on periodic visits and gave me some Sudoku and word search puzzles to do. So that's how I killed most of my times
I suck at Sudoku...
About Azuma...I'm not sure why she was in the hospital, it had something to do with telling a doctor she was feeling down and somehow ended up to where I was at. She wasn't suicidal though, she just got into an argument with her cursing son. She was telling me how long she was kept in here and all they really want is your insurance money and nothing more.
Which was true, while the staff was nice, they didn't really try to care about you. Whenever they hear keywords like "i feel sad" they would keep you a day longer or more. They didn't give you many coping skills to help, just stuff we all know. Deep breathing, exercise, and relaxing. So "therapy" was nothing more than a random ignorant person telling you to "deal with it" in some way or another. It's like that one friend telling you "it's going to be ok" when they have no idea what that really means or realize how much you're suffering and what you want to hear isn't something you heard 10 times already.
Upon knowing this I realized, "I gotta get out of here, I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!" so I went to see my psychiatrist in a calm collected manner and asked to be discharged from the hospital since I voluntarily put myself in this situation and was technically still sane of mind. I told them why with good reasons and realizing my life is worth something. They refused and told me I have to go to court if I want to get out earlier. It scared the living day lights out of me knowing they just put me as involuntary status and would not let me out even though I was sane of my mind and asking for release. It hurts your state of mind completely knowing you're being pressed against your will to stay in a place...like this...Speaking of psychiatrists, you didn't get much time with them daily, at most 5 minutes. They would see you and ask how you're doing and leave. There wasn't much therapy going on there really. They just prescribe meds and that's it. No one there had their own private psychologist to help them through it. It was all done via "group therapy" which didn't help shit since a lot of us had social phobias and speaking in groups makes it worse. But whatever reason, one therapist said she had statics that therapy is better if done in groups...I disagree but whatever...
The medicine they gave me was 5mg of Abilify each night. Now I didn't realize the side effects until day 4 when I was jittery during group "therapy" and was unable to concentrate on anything. I also realized my nervous system was out of whack and I would twitch my fingers and legs a lot, so much that it actually physically hurt me. While it did help my depression, it was at the cost of my sanity being stuck there and with side effects being 10 fold on me didn't make anything better.
I was thinking of describing each women's case that I heard, but in the end, I don't think it's morally right. The one's I described now were accidental and had no reason to be there (Lisa didn't give a flying fuck about who knew though that she was in there for alcohol addiction).
Long story short, my family is a lot nicer to me after we had a family group therapy meeting. (sorry I'm way too tired to explain something simple)
So...what a day looked like for me...5:30 am, get up for vitals, shower in a horrible bathroom that would trickle water down, not spray it; wait around till they would open the rec room and would read game of thrones in this time; rec room watch the news and see what's happening in outside world, breakfast, yoga, down time, "group" therapy, got outside in a shitty "backyard, down time, lunch, down time, "group" therapy, down time, dinner, visitation, meds, sleep. Knowing the therapy is shit, the only thing of use they help you with is yoga and giving you a decent sleep and eating schedule.
The whole time I was there, they were planning to keep me there for two weeks, but my parents had to talk to numerous people for hours to let me out a week early. The nurses threatened me to get a job, but I think it was a guideline but for them to threaten me is what bothers me, not the fact getting a job...I don't think they can legally threaten you with stuff like that, can they?...(As far as getting a job, going to try and self employ myself by selling my art but we'll see how that goes...gotta worry about summer school for now).
In any case, I was supposed to get out on Friday of last week but they released me on Saturday due to legal reasons. My insurance ran out on Friday, and they wouldn't let you in this hospital without insurance. So basically, if I were to come to sue them in the future, I can't sue them based on insurance reasons because they released me on Saturday when I no longer had insurance.
So I got out on Saturday and my twitching sensations just wouldn't stop. But first stop was to eat myself silly so I got take out at some Chinese buffet and had a ton of food with a ton of flavor...That's the best feeling...When I got home, the twitching just didn't stop so I decided to work out but it still wouldn't stop. And I no longer had insurance anyways till July (long story but it just won't be available till July) to get the meds I need and the psychiatrist refused to give the prescription to my parents BEFORE my insurance ran out. (BS.) So I decided to taper myself out of the medication (Special thanks to nithidia for helping me contact a pharmacist to taper off the drug) to reduce side effects and try to pick up therapy once i get my insurance back...
So now what? Well the other night I had a night terror and I'm constantly fatigued due to little activity in the hospital and the effects of the drug. I can't say the hospital did 100% good on me but things that did help is my parents being 10x more kinder to me and the fact I have a sleep schedule now (even though I still get up randomly because I'm scared a nurse will open my door to check up on me). But the overall fact I'm depressed (assuming I still took the drug, I would be messed up and I'm not strong enough to withstand the side effects...there, i said it.), psychologically traumatized by my hospital stay, and the fact I'm constantly weak and even shedding a few tears now makes me exhausted all day when it usually doesn't...Say what you will but I felt I wasn't helped in the end by this hospital. Good was done, but at what cost...
Edit: Also I'm not suicidal either.
TL;DR-I went to a hospital, service was crap, I don't feel any better, and I had Chinese food.
Probably time I died. I am such a loser. No friends or nothing.
I already know what will happen if I go to the parade on Saturday. First I will feel awkward for being fat and lonely for being alone. It's going to be a hot day so I will be sweating like I always do. I will look pathetic and stupid. I will see gay couples and friends holding hands and kissing so ill become jealous and upset and hate myself even more. The only good side I see is maybe this will push me to jump in front of a train and end it all.
Why even exist in the first place. I have no purpose here I know I will never meet anyone or do anything. My 20s and 30s are wasted at a job I hate with no life to look forward to. My therapist is a liar therapy is a lie. Medication does nothing. There is no god there is no goodness not for me. I don't belong here or anywhere.
I already know what will happen if I go to the parade on Saturday. First I will feel awkward for being fat and lonely for being alone. It's going to be a hot day so I will be sweating like I always do. I will look pathetic and stupid. I will see gay couples and friends holding hands and kissing so ill become jealous and upset and hate myself even more. The only good side I see is maybe this will push me to jump in front of a train and end it all.
Why even exist in the first place. I have no purpose here I know I will never meet anyone or do anything. My 20s and 30s are wasted at a job I hate with no life to look forward to. My therapist is a liar therapy is a lie. Medication does nothing. There is no god there is no goodness not for me. I don't belong here or anywhere.
Collete
Member
I wish I could, but whenever I try to make something I'll get too self-critical and abandon it.
Collete
Member
I wish I could, but whenever I try to make something I'll get too self-critical and abandon it.
That's the best thing about minimalist and abstract art.
It never turns out how you expect and you get an amazing result.
And shapes and sizes can be interpreted accordingly.
Sun's was supposed to be an abstract hanging garden in reality lol.
Thanks to Uraizen and Oomi for sharing. I generally think that's one of the more important things that goes on in here.
So I read Oomi's story, and I figured I'd type up my experience in the psych ward, a few years back. I'm not trying to present this as some kind of counterpoint - as I said to oomi, I think most people's experiences will fall somewhere between ours. You can receive basically the legal minimum amount of psychiatric care, which sounds more like her experience, or you can get 5-star solid gold celebrity rehab, which is a little closer to what I got. It's especially on my mind as I'm kind of thinking I might be making a return visit soon. I'm not exactly in tip-top shape these days and my family is all up on my buns about not just curling up and waiting for death's sweet kiss, so what can you do? I'm ambivalent - I'm not a danger to myself, but I'm also kind of catatonic much of the day. I definitely need help, and my hospital stay DID help me, but I hated every second of it and I don't wanna go back.
Lemme just say how much my depression-GAF buddies are keeping me going. I perk up a lot when I have people to joke around with. Special shoutout to our ridiculous Neverwinter group. You are all beautiful daffodils and I wanna give you all hugs.
So here's my account of my stay on the psych ward.
Disclaimer that your mileage is gonna vary. The first part of my story is the really unusual bit, but it's still pretty unusual overall. Also, because I had visited the floor I ended up on as a student, I can't help but include a bunch of stuff from the staff perspective. This will be long and rambling, of course, but hopefully it's of some interest.
I wound up on the mood disorders unit for two reasons. First, I have a mood disorder HUR HUR. No, but really, I have a nasty case of depression that I have been trying to treat since most of you were in pampers. SECOND, I had been taking Pamelor, a tricyclic antidepressant, for quite some time and had been doing good but not great. I was reluctant to change it for years and years because it was the best drug I had tried, and I was pretty okay some of the time. So finally I realized that it wasn't magically going to get better in the fourth year of taking it (or whatever it was), so we started something new. Somehow the transition from Pamelor to Effexor just completely screwed me up. It's very hard to come off of a medication that you've been taking for an extended period of time. If you also figure that I wanted to switch meds because I was experiencing one of my down times, you can see that things lined up to make me really sick. I was not sleeping, I was having panic attacks, I felt super sick, and I could barely take care of myself. I missed several days of work, finally went in, broke down crying, and called my doctor.
So here's the weird part of my story. My psychiatrist practices almost exclusively on the inpatient side. He sees me as an outpatient because I was a student at the time. We have a weird relationship where we were doctor and patient, but also colleagues (I'd see him on some of my rotations, or at seminars). I really like him because he does a much better job with this than I'd ever expect. So he'll ask for my thoughts about what I should do next, but he's EXTREMELY knowledgeable, and he always has new ideas about what to do next. And he'll send me out the door with a prescription AND a journal article, so I dig it.
Anyway, if you need to go into the hospital, it usually works like oomi explained. You almost always enter through the ER, where a larger medical center will probably have a special area for psych patients. Instead of putting you in a room with all of the gizmos and usual nursing staff (where you will also usually have to hear all of the other sick people around you barfing and stuff, which sucks), they'll have some kind of dark, nondescript room for you to cry in. The psych resident on call will come down and give you an initial evaluation. Or the ER staff might see you and check out some basic stuff. Either way, you'll wait forever and, if you're enough of a mess, and there is a bed for you, and there is some way to pay for it, etc., you'll eventually get admitted.
So none of that for Bagels. I paged my doc, he called me right back, I said, "I need to go into the hospital," and he said OK, and called me back in 5 minutes. They had a bed for me whenever I was ready. So...that was some celebrity healthcare shit, right there.
Here, psychiatry has its own building, next to the main hospital. It's a huge center, so there are multiple units for kids, old folks, mood disorders, the truly crazy, etc. So the mood disorders unit is like the nicest, most benign one. It's all very clean, the staff is great, the nursing is first-rate (it is very difficult to get a job there, actually). So I just went up to the unit, said, "I'm Bagels," and they had everything ready for me. You have to turn in all your stuff (no belts, shoelaces, phones, and you have to wear awesome grippy hospital socks) and do a partial strip search kinda thing. The rooms are all private, and nice enough, considering where you are. It's a locked unit, and they do safety checks on all of the rooms every how ever much time (more frequently if it's a concern). There's a daily schedule, specific to the group you're in. The floor has a central desk with meeting rooms for the team behind it (it's fucking weird being on a unit you've worked on several times, being on the other side). That looks out on the common area, where we ate, did puzzles, watched TV, read, used the internet, etc. There were three long hallways with patient rooms, with maybe 10 rooms each? and you'd sort of generally be with the folks from your hallway. There were probably 7-10 people who were in my therapy groups and stuff (people were always rotating in and out, so it fluctuated), and I'd see others at meals.
The staff consisted of 4 or 5 nurses, one of whom was your nurse for the day/night. I had maybe four different nurses, total, during my stay, which is unusual. You'd expect more turnover in a place this large, but they really try to keep the same people with you, and they'd transition from days to nights and stay with you. From working on the floor, this kind of continuity of care is an important part of how they do things. On big daily rounds, you'd see a bunch of the staff, but your team would take the lead and make an effort to really get to know you.
So "rounds" in a hospital are really a two (or more) part thing. Usually, the intern/resident on call will do "pre-rounds." The junior staff will have some handful of the patients to watch, and they are expected to visit all of them before rounds actually start to get the skinny on how they're doing, what kinds of tests and things are lined up for the day, and what their disposition is.
So "disposition" is the BIG thing with any hospital stay. On the general medical floors, there are special "dispo rounds" each morning. The foremost thing on EVERYONE'S mind when someone is in the hospital is "when are they going home?" And, on a general medical floor, where many of the patients are elderly, you also ask "where will they be going?" Do people go home home? Into a SNF (pronounced "sniff" - a skilled nursing facility. They're not called nursing homes)? Into a hospital closer to home? Can we arrange home nursing? Etc, etc.
When you end up on a hospital floor, your discharge paperwork is one of the first things created. It's good in the sense that they never plan to just hold you for funsies - they want you to go home basically as much as you want to go home. On the other hand, healthcare sort of operates on the "get them stable enough to go out the door" principle. If you imagine a psych ward as the place to go to get "fixed," you're sadly mistaken. The purpose of the psych ward is to stabilize you so you are well enough for outpatient care. Barring that, longer term care is found in residential facilities (sometimes advertised when you visit this thread!) or, to some degree, via institutionalization. There WAS another unit, for inpatients doing ECT, mainly, or people would get parked on other services (I saw a lot of this on my first medicine rotation) to get combined psych/whatever else care. There just are not a lot of beds for long term care these days.
I'm WAY off track here. Back to rounds. So you'll often be woken up for pre-rounds at some ungodly hour by some junior staffer to answer the same questions you're always answering (lots of rating things 1-10). Then rounds proper begin, where your team sits down in a room and runs their patient list. We had a system that would pull some crap from your chart (meds, diagnosis, allergies), and then had a little extra updating from the residents, giving staff a handy spreadsheet outlining the basic stuff about everyone.
Psych care, at least here, is unusual in that rounds were multidisciplinary. On a medical floor, it was just the docs who did the rounds, joined, if possible, by the patient's nurse when they do the actual walking around part of rounds. In psych, again not at every hospital, morning rounds included the entire team (each floor had a red and blue team, which were teaching services, and I believe a green team, which was not a teaching service). The floor had two social workers, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, the charge nurse, individual nurses as their patients were discussed, the dispo nurse, and the chaplain. One reason why the care is so good here is that everyone who is taking care of you actually meets every day to discuss your case.
So after sit-down rounds, the docs will do what most people think of as rounds, where they'll come talk to you in your room. I got a special deal because I was a student, and there was a good chance I'd know people on the team socially. So instead of medical students and interns and residents, I basically saw my doc, my nurse, and one of the therapists, which was nice. I actually did not see my doc right away, because he was so familiar with my case and he knew I was actually in okay shape, all things considered. I did get some extra attention from the social workers/therapists, I gather as a favor to my doc, who is well liked. I had a few really nice talks with some of the social workers, not so much because I had social work issues, just because they are wise, kindly people, and we got along well. I basically appreciated these talks, again because they knew I was a student and wouldn't talk down to me. At the same time, they saw through a lot of my shit, which was also great. I can talk a good talk, and I like being with people, which I kind of gather makes it easier for me to snow people. It's nice when some dude who haws been in the field for 30 years won't but it.
So a day went like this: you'd try to sleep all night, which was made extra impossible by the nurse checking on you all night (also the terrible beds. I had some powerful sleepy meds on order - chloral hydrate - but that scared me, so I made do with klonopin as needed). They'd come for rounds at 6:30 or 7:00, so thanks for that. Then it's breakfast (which is actually decent here, and you can order each day from a menu) with the other folks (who were a swell lot) before your first group of the day. There was a general group, just kind of going over how people are, CBT group, Occupational Therapy, and then one of yoga/recreation/some other group I can't recall. That last group was usually videos about some specific issue. You were kind of assigned to these, but there was some ability to opt out. There'd be the girl who was always wrapped in a blanket, crying, and it was a big deal when she finally came to one of her scheduled groups.
During free time, you were supposed to interact. I'm SUPER shy (but I also love being around people [once I'm comfortable], so I'm super interesting and unique, obviously), which no one on here seems to buy, and my sense of humor is kind of odd, so it took me some time. I read all of the magazines on the floor and the ONE book I brought (The Bourne Supremacy, for reasons that escape me), by day two, so that sucked. I'm a compulsive reader, so with limited internet access and only a daily paper, I went a tad stir crazy. I eventually got hardcore into working the communal puzzles we had. For some reason, working puzzles seems like the kind of quintessential psych ward activity you'd see in a movie about crazy folks.
You could also do laundry in the evening, and there was workout equipment. I rode the exercise bike as sort of one of those things you do to appease the staff so you can go home.
I honestly really dug yoga - that was my favorite. It makes me think I should get more exercise, as I was always happiest when I was most active. Hmmm...
This is all where this comes out being a little snazzier than most people get. It's a well-funded department at a famous hospital, the staff is generally happy, less overworked than at most places, the facilities are nice, we're not in a big city where you's see more people in REALLY bad shape. There were all kinds of specialized people taking care of you - the yoga instructor did JUST that - she was a legit yoga instructor - they could afford crap like that.
So the groups are fine, I guess. I had done CBT, I know a fair bit about therapy and what depression is, blah blah, so it's wasn't exactly riveting. But I tried to be involved and engaged, so the time passed. For me, some of the interest/disconnect came from me frankly being in better shape than most people on the unit. I have a happy family, I had school, I had my friends watching out for me, I hadn't tried to hurt myself. I frankly probably would not have gotten into the hospital if I had tried just going through the ER, if I'm perfectly honest.
RT was an odd experience. We got to go outside most days and we'd play basketball, or some kind of beanbag toss or some crap. It was nice, because I felt the most like myself and sort of made the most "friends," if you can call them that. I gained a reputation for being "the funny guy" on the unit, which is sort of my deal. That was nice, but I felt dumb tossing beanbags around as some kind of therapy. Like, I tend to be more cerebral about stuff, especially my own mental health. It felt the most...degrading? to be out there tossing beanbags BECAUSE I'M A NUTTER AND PLAYGROUND GAMES ARE MY THERAPY! That was really just my own hangup, though.
You could have visitors every evening, which was great. My wife gave me some space, at my request, up front, because it takes some time to wrap your head around being hospitalized for your issues. She eventually came solo, and then brought my son towards the end. He was a big hit with everybody, especially me, obviously, but I tear up thinking about it. He was too little to understand, but still - going to visit your dad in the mental hospital? He's old enough now that he realizes that "daddy is sad," and "daddy is sleepy all the time," and stuff, and it kills me. Makes me feel like a shit father.
Anyway, my best friend, R, came to visit me, too, which was great. She's been on that same unit twice now, and I visited her every chance I got. She's my depression buddy and we really look out for each other. Having that support, especially from someone who had been EXACTLY where I was, was so powerful. About half of my friends knew where I was (some are just not as good with psych issues, the others all HAVE psych issues
). My wife was great about kind of keeping my visitors down, because I really did not want to see a lot of people at the time. But it was still nice to know that they all wanted to know if they could come and supported my wife while I was getting better. They'd watch our kid, or make her dinner, or buy me dinner (this is the greatest gift when you're in the hospital - receiving real food) for her to bring me. I honestly think the whole thing was harder on my wife than it was on me, so I owe my friends everything for watching out for her.
I spent 7 days on the unit, got my meds stable, worked through some crap in the therapy groups, and just generally got quite a bit better. It hasn't exactly lasted for me, unfortunately. I never, ever want to go back (it wasn't THAT bad, if I think about it, but being super depressed and having people force you to go to groups and crap is certainly painful), but I know it'll come up when I see my doctor the next time. Writing this was partly a way for me to kind of be a little more open to it, if that's what I need. I'm not any danger to myself, but this is decidedly the lowest point in my life, and maybe I need something more than a new prescription. My wife is coming with me to see my doc and, while I can easily soft pedal my problems and put on a brave face, she tends to worry a bit more than I think is necessary. The truth of the matter is somewhere between those extremes, so I'm not sure what my next step is.
That was a tad more rambly than I thought it would be. I'm happy to answer any questions about either working on the unit or being a patient there.
So I read Oomi's story, and I figured I'd type up my experience in the psych ward, a few years back. I'm not trying to present this as some kind of counterpoint - as I said to oomi, I think most people's experiences will fall somewhere between ours. You can receive basically the legal minimum amount of psychiatric care, which sounds more like her experience, or you can get 5-star solid gold celebrity rehab, which is a little closer to what I got. It's especially on my mind as I'm kind of thinking I might be making a return visit soon. I'm not exactly in tip-top shape these days and my family is all up on my buns about not just curling up and waiting for death's sweet kiss, so what can you do? I'm ambivalent - I'm not a danger to myself, but I'm also kind of catatonic much of the day. I definitely need help, and my hospital stay DID help me, but I hated every second of it and I don't wanna go back.
Lemme just say how much my depression-GAF buddies are keeping me going. I perk up a lot when I have people to joke around with. Special shoutout to our ridiculous Neverwinter group. You are all beautiful daffodils and I wanna give you all hugs.
So here's my account of my stay on the psych ward.
Disclaimer that your mileage is gonna vary. The first part of my story is the really unusual bit, but it's still pretty unusual overall. Also, because I had visited the floor I ended up on as a student, I can't help but include a bunch of stuff from the staff perspective. This will be long and rambling, of course, but hopefully it's of some interest.
I wound up on the mood disorders unit for two reasons. First, I have a mood disorder HUR HUR. No, but really, I have a nasty case of depression that I have been trying to treat since most of you were in pampers. SECOND, I had been taking Pamelor, a tricyclic antidepressant, for quite some time and had been doing good but not great. I was reluctant to change it for years and years because it was the best drug I had tried, and I was pretty okay some of the time. So finally I realized that it wasn't magically going to get better in the fourth year of taking it (or whatever it was), so we started something new. Somehow the transition from Pamelor to Effexor just completely screwed me up. It's very hard to come off of a medication that you've been taking for an extended period of time. If you also figure that I wanted to switch meds because I was experiencing one of my down times, you can see that things lined up to make me really sick. I was not sleeping, I was having panic attacks, I felt super sick, and I could barely take care of myself. I missed several days of work, finally went in, broke down crying, and called my doctor.
So here's the weird part of my story. My psychiatrist practices almost exclusively on the inpatient side. He sees me as an outpatient because I was a student at the time. We have a weird relationship where we were doctor and patient, but also colleagues (I'd see him on some of my rotations, or at seminars). I really like him because he does a much better job with this than I'd ever expect. So he'll ask for my thoughts about what I should do next, but he's EXTREMELY knowledgeable, and he always has new ideas about what to do next. And he'll send me out the door with a prescription AND a journal article, so I dig it.
Anyway, if you need to go into the hospital, it usually works like oomi explained. You almost always enter through the ER, where a larger medical center will probably have a special area for psych patients. Instead of putting you in a room with all of the gizmos and usual nursing staff (where you will also usually have to hear all of the other sick people around you barfing and stuff, which sucks), they'll have some kind of dark, nondescript room for you to cry in. The psych resident on call will come down and give you an initial evaluation. Or the ER staff might see you and check out some basic stuff. Either way, you'll wait forever and, if you're enough of a mess, and there is a bed for you, and there is some way to pay for it, etc., you'll eventually get admitted.
So none of that for Bagels. I paged my doc, he called me right back, I said, "I need to go into the hospital," and he said OK, and called me back in 5 minutes. They had a bed for me whenever I was ready. So...that was some celebrity healthcare shit, right there.
Here, psychiatry has its own building, next to the main hospital. It's a huge center, so there are multiple units for kids, old folks, mood disorders, the truly crazy, etc. So the mood disorders unit is like the nicest, most benign one. It's all very clean, the staff is great, the nursing is first-rate (it is very difficult to get a job there, actually). So I just went up to the unit, said, "I'm Bagels," and they had everything ready for me. You have to turn in all your stuff (no belts, shoelaces, phones, and you have to wear awesome grippy hospital socks) and do a partial strip search kinda thing. The rooms are all private, and nice enough, considering where you are. It's a locked unit, and they do safety checks on all of the rooms every how ever much time (more frequently if it's a concern). There's a daily schedule, specific to the group you're in. The floor has a central desk with meeting rooms for the team behind it (it's fucking weird being on a unit you've worked on several times, being on the other side). That looks out on the common area, where we ate, did puzzles, watched TV, read, used the internet, etc. There were three long hallways with patient rooms, with maybe 10 rooms each? and you'd sort of generally be with the folks from your hallway. There were probably 7-10 people who were in my therapy groups and stuff (people were always rotating in and out, so it fluctuated), and I'd see others at meals.
The staff consisted of 4 or 5 nurses, one of whom was your nurse for the day/night. I had maybe four different nurses, total, during my stay, which is unusual. You'd expect more turnover in a place this large, but they really try to keep the same people with you, and they'd transition from days to nights and stay with you. From working on the floor, this kind of continuity of care is an important part of how they do things. On big daily rounds, you'd see a bunch of the staff, but your team would take the lead and make an effort to really get to know you.
So "rounds" in a hospital are really a two (or more) part thing. Usually, the intern/resident on call will do "pre-rounds." The junior staff will have some handful of the patients to watch, and they are expected to visit all of them before rounds actually start to get the skinny on how they're doing, what kinds of tests and things are lined up for the day, and what their disposition is.
So "disposition" is the BIG thing with any hospital stay. On the general medical floors, there are special "dispo rounds" each morning. The foremost thing on EVERYONE'S mind when someone is in the hospital is "when are they going home?" And, on a general medical floor, where many of the patients are elderly, you also ask "where will they be going?" Do people go home home? Into a SNF (pronounced "sniff" - a skilled nursing facility. They're not called nursing homes)? Into a hospital closer to home? Can we arrange home nursing? Etc, etc.
When you end up on a hospital floor, your discharge paperwork is one of the first things created. It's good in the sense that they never plan to just hold you for funsies - they want you to go home basically as much as you want to go home. On the other hand, healthcare sort of operates on the "get them stable enough to go out the door" principle. If you imagine a psych ward as the place to go to get "fixed," you're sadly mistaken. The purpose of the psych ward is to stabilize you so you are well enough for outpatient care. Barring that, longer term care is found in residential facilities (sometimes advertised when you visit this thread!) or, to some degree, via institutionalization. There WAS another unit, for inpatients doing ECT, mainly, or people would get parked on other services (I saw a lot of this on my first medicine rotation) to get combined psych/whatever else care. There just are not a lot of beds for long term care these days.
I'm WAY off track here. Back to rounds. So you'll often be woken up for pre-rounds at some ungodly hour by some junior staffer to answer the same questions you're always answering (lots of rating things 1-10). Then rounds proper begin, where your team sits down in a room and runs their patient list. We had a system that would pull some crap from your chart (meds, diagnosis, allergies), and then had a little extra updating from the residents, giving staff a handy spreadsheet outlining the basic stuff about everyone.
Psych care, at least here, is unusual in that rounds were multidisciplinary. On a medical floor, it was just the docs who did the rounds, joined, if possible, by the patient's nurse when they do the actual walking around part of rounds. In psych, again not at every hospital, morning rounds included the entire team (each floor had a red and blue team, which were teaching services, and I believe a green team, which was not a teaching service). The floor had two social workers, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, the charge nurse, individual nurses as their patients were discussed, the dispo nurse, and the chaplain. One reason why the care is so good here is that everyone who is taking care of you actually meets every day to discuss your case.
So after sit-down rounds, the docs will do what most people think of as rounds, where they'll come talk to you in your room. I got a special deal because I was a student, and there was a good chance I'd know people on the team socially. So instead of medical students and interns and residents, I basically saw my doc, my nurse, and one of the therapists, which was nice. I actually did not see my doc right away, because he was so familiar with my case and he knew I was actually in okay shape, all things considered. I did get some extra attention from the social workers/therapists, I gather as a favor to my doc, who is well liked. I had a few really nice talks with some of the social workers, not so much because I had social work issues, just because they are wise, kindly people, and we got along well. I basically appreciated these talks, again because they knew I was a student and wouldn't talk down to me. At the same time, they saw through a lot of my shit, which was also great. I can talk a good talk, and I like being with people, which I kind of gather makes it easier for me to snow people. It's nice when some dude who haws been in the field for 30 years won't but it.
So a day went like this: you'd try to sleep all night, which was made extra impossible by the nurse checking on you all night (also the terrible beds. I had some powerful sleepy meds on order - chloral hydrate - but that scared me, so I made do with klonopin as needed). They'd come for rounds at 6:30 or 7:00, so thanks for that. Then it's breakfast (which is actually decent here, and you can order each day from a menu) with the other folks (who were a swell lot) before your first group of the day. There was a general group, just kind of going over how people are, CBT group, Occupational Therapy, and then one of yoga/recreation/some other group I can't recall. That last group was usually videos about some specific issue. You were kind of assigned to these, but there was some ability to opt out. There'd be the girl who was always wrapped in a blanket, crying, and it was a big deal when she finally came to one of her scheduled groups.
During free time, you were supposed to interact. I'm SUPER shy (but I also love being around people [once I'm comfortable], so I'm super interesting and unique, obviously), which no one on here seems to buy, and my sense of humor is kind of odd, so it took me some time. I read all of the magazines on the floor and the ONE book I brought (The Bourne Supremacy, for reasons that escape me), by day two, so that sucked. I'm a compulsive reader, so with limited internet access and only a daily paper, I went a tad stir crazy. I eventually got hardcore into working the communal puzzles we had. For some reason, working puzzles seems like the kind of quintessential psych ward activity you'd see in a movie about crazy folks.
You could also do laundry in the evening, and there was workout equipment. I rode the exercise bike as sort of one of those things you do to appease the staff so you can go home.
I honestly really dug yoga - that was my favorite. It makes me think I should get more exercise, as I was always happiest when I was most active. Hmmm...
This is all where this comes out being a little snazzier than most people get. It's a well-funded department at a famous hospital, the staff is generally happy, less overworked than at most places, the facilities are nice, we're not in a big city where you's see more people in REALLY bad shape. There were all kinds of specialized people taking care of you - the yoga instructor did JUST that - she was a legit yoga instructor - they could afford crap like that.
So the groups are fine, I guess. I had done CBT, I know a fair bit about therapy and what depression is, blah blah, so it's wasn't exactly riveting. But I tried to be involved and engaged, so the time passed. For me, some of the interest/disconnect came from me frankly being in better shape than most people on the unit. I have a happy family, I had school, I had my friends watching out for me, I hadn't tried to hurt myself. I frankly probably would not have gotten into the hospital if I had tried just going through the ER, if I'm perfectly honest.
RT was an odd experience. We got to go outside most days and we'd play basketball, or some kind of beanbag toss or some crap. It was nice, because I felt the most like myself and sort of made the most "friends," if you can call them that. I gained a reputation for being "the funny guy" on the unit, which is sort of my deal. That was nice, but I felt dumb tossing beanbags around as some kind of therapy. Like, I tend to be more cerebral about stuff, especially my own mental health. It felt the most...degrading? to be out there tossing beanbags BECAUSE I'M A NUTTER AND PLAYGROUND GAMES ARE MY THERAPY! That was really just my own hangup, though.
You could have visitors every evening, which was great. My wife gave me some space, at my request, up front, because it takes some time to wrap your head around being hospitalized for your issues. She eventually came solo, and then brought my son towards the end. He was a big hit with everybody, especially me, obviously, but I tear up thinking about it. He was too little to understand, but still - going to visit your dad in the mental hospital? He's old enough now that he realizes that "daddy is sad," and "daddy is sleepy all the time," and stuff, and it kills me. Makes me feel like a shit father.
Anyway, my best friend, R, came to visit me, too, which was great. She's been on that same unit twice now, and I visited her every chance I got. She's my depression buddy and we really look out for each other. Having that support, especially from someone who had been EXACTLY where I was, was so powerful. About half of my friends knew where I was (some are just not as good with psych issues, the others all HAVE psych issues
). My wife was great about kind of keeping my visitors down, because I really did not want to see a lot of people at the time. But it was still nice to know that they all wanted to know if they could come and supported my wife while I was getting better. They'd watch our kid, or make her dinner, or buy me dinner (this is the greatest gift when you're in the hospital - receiving real food) for her to bring me. I honestly think the whole thing was harder on my wife than it was on me, so I owe my friends everything for watching out for her.I spent 7 days on the unit, got my meds stable, worked through some crap in the therapy groups, and just generally got quite a bit better. It hasn't exactly lasted for me, unfortunately. I never, ever want to go back (it wasn't THAT bad, if I think about it, but being super depressed and having people force you to go to groups and crap is certainly painful), but I know it'll come up when I see my doctor the next time. Writing this was partly a way for me to kind of be a little more open to it, if that's what I need. I'm not any danger to myself, but this is decidedly the lowest point in my life, and maybe I need something more than a new prescription. My wife is coming with me to see my doc and, while I can easily soft pedal my problems and put on a brave face, she tends to worry a bit more than I think is necessary. The truth of the matter is somewhere between those extremes, so I'm not sure what my next step is.
That was a tad more rambly than I thought it would be. I'm happy to answer any questions about either working on the unit or being a patient there.
SpartanForce
Member
I have being reading this since 2012, I think.
I'm fat, I don't have friends too. But I workout and use my lone time to do something.
I don't even know what to say to you. You mostly ignore good posts and just bitch about your life since forever. Hate your job? Seek another. Go to college. There's a man of 51 years old in my classroom.
Meds and therapy aren't doing nothing? Do transcranial magnetic stimulation surgery.
Why am I even typing this. He is gonna ignore and just come with the "YOU ALL HATE ME MY LIFE SUCKS" without even thinking on nothing I said.
Can't really measure emotions objectively but i feel that i'm slipping a bit, back towards depression. I did say that i didn't think this change i've had would be permanent.
Again, no idea what causes the change. Could be just random variance though. Hopefully i had just a bad day or something like that.
If i'm going back to depression, i seem to have some sort cycle in this.
How much does season affect people's brain? Just wondering if sunny, warm summer can affect one's depression, make it less worse.
I've noticed that i tend to... analyze myself. Does anyone else here do this?
I think it is because i'm analytical/logical/rational person, i already know myself very well.
PS 16:9 display is too wide for reading long stretches of text. Long lines are hard to follow.
Referring to Bagels' and Oomi's write-ups.
Again, no idea what causes the change. Could be just random variance though. Hopefully i had just a bad day or something like that.
If i'm going back to depression, i seem to have some sort cycle in this.
How much does season affect people's brain? Just wondering if sunny, warm summer can affect one's depression, make it less worse.
I've noticed that i tend to... analyze myself. Does anyone else here do this?
I think it is because i'm analytical/logical/rational person, i already know myself very well.
PS 16:9 display is too wide for reading long stretches of text. Long lines are hard to follow.
Referring to Bagels' and Oomi's write-ups.
School is exactly what caused me to break down on Friday.
Thanks Oomi. I hope you're recovering too, after what you've been through. I know that there are many people hoping that you get better, me among them, so try to do every possible thing to make that happen!
That's a beautiful song, I haven't played Xenoblade so I'd never listened to it before.
Bottom of a cave/well. It may be dark around you, but if you try hard enough to climb you'll finally get out of the terrible situation you're in. I'm sure many people are waiting for you out there, and they are probably trying to give you a hand. So it's up to you to reach out, accept their help and try your best to make things better, to get out of your prison, to escape your depressive and oppressive mind. The blue sky and the lightened walls show that there's something better out there, just a tiny bit out of reach.
Will you get out? Nobody knows, and there's only one way to find out: trying to do it.
This... actually looks like two Metroids having sex.
Please don't ask how I know what that looks like.
Hey, I wasn't there for the Xbone reveal. I was at work, and will be too during E3, unfortunately. Don't I count? You just said that everyone... oh, I get it. Of course I don't
Why don't you buy me some cyanide and call it a day. You think I want to live and be like this? There is no point in living for me at all
Darkmakaimura
Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
I think the weather is definitely having an effect on me to at least a small degree. We're going through 110 degree heat - which is normal here this time of year - and I'm sure it's not helping me sleep, regardless of the fact I'm in an air conditioned place. For me, the sun and clear skies depress me whereas overcast and stormy/rainy weather put me in a much better mood.
Right now I'm going through an irritability phase. I've felt a little better the last couple of days because I was able to get out for a night and today, I was asked to help someone with their computer and as a result, was given a little cash which was helpful.
Nonetheless, my mood has generally been the same as it has been since 2009. Struggling with anxiety, depression, apparent IBS and insomnia - the latter two which are linked with the previous two - has been ongoing. For the record, I've always had a ton of anxiety since I was a child. I was called "nervous" and "shy". None of this has changed but the depression certainly got worse after the middle of 2009.
Sorry I'm talking about myself so much lately. I kind of go off on a tangent and feel a bit selfish sometime. I'm noticing I'm responding to people's posts and then just start talking about myself instead of giving some good advice. I want to but if I was able to give better advice, I'd probably follow it myself. lol.
I have a question that I was hoping someone here could help me out with. A little background first.
A few years ago, maybe because I depressed (more on that later), I started drinking recreationally as most people do. I was a student (still am), and I took it as basically a student doing what a student does. Eventually, and unfortunately, it became a problem for me, and it got pretty bad. I was what you might call a functioning alcoholic -- I could take Calc III tests drunk, for example, but I'd have difficulty if I was sober. I needed it. Two years ago, nearly, I had my last drink when I realized I hat hit rock bottom, and needed to change my life. With the support of friends and family, I am now 2 years sober.
Shortly after I quit drinking, I decided I needed to see a doctor to get to the root of my problem. I had never, ever thought of myself as a depressed person (for example, despite having thoughts of suicide and self-loathing, I would never take my life because I'm just too ... rooted in this world, I guess). Seeing the doc was great, and as you might guess, he eventually discovered I had MDD (Major depressive disorder). I told him initially that that just couldn't be, but after he described how many people react to depression differently, he prepared me mentally just enough to start taking an SSRI called Viibryd in the hopes that it would help. The Doctor made the assumption (and I think he was correct) that the reason I started drinking was to sort of self-medicate my own depression.
For many months, it really didn't, but eventually I noted a slight improvement in that I was actually having, from time to time, good days. Because of this I continued to use it for as long as prescription ran.
As many people tend to do, when I was at the end of the prescription, I decided to wean myself off the meds with the remaining pills I had from a starter pack (so, I went down in milligram dosage in a controlled way). I did this because I thought, for whatever reason, that maybe I was as good as I could get, and that I would stay that way.
This notion held for some weeks, maybe months. But eventually I woke up and just realized that the medication was helping, but was no longer helping me, and I should get back on it.
Flash forward to today, I'm planning on seeing a new doctor to get back on SSRIs (but probably a different one since I experienced some gastrointestinal issues on Viibryd). And I plan to set up the meeting shortly after my summer semester ends. But here's the question.
Recently, I've been becoming more in tune with the fact that, in general, I don't deal well with stress. Also, my ability to focus since I was younger has been notably decreased. In short, I believe I have a mild or moderate case of ADD/ADHD. This has been a survivable thing, but I'm kind of fed up, and I want to see if I can get started on something to see if it helps, and planned to ask the Doctor when I see him.
But, now you see the problem. As a past abuser of substance, I may not be eligible for ADD medication since, as I understand, its actually something that can be abused. Doctors probably don't want someone who has had an alcohol problem taking anything they can get addicted to. Now, I have never abused anything like pills or synthetic drugs in my life. I smoked pot a few times, but never cared for it, nor did I ever feel some kind of need for it. I'm someone who's just trying to figure out how to raise his own quality of life. I don't want to embarrass myself by going to the Doctor to ask for help with something that he won't or can't help with. I've always been truthful with doctors, but a part of me just doesn't want to bring up the alcohol thing, because it's something that I feel I have moved on from, learned from, and become an even wiser person from.
What should I do? On the one hand, I really want to try something to see if it helps, but I don't want to ask if the answer is going to be "Sorry, you're an addict and we don't help addicts because you'll just get addicted again." That's what friends are telling me who I've asked about ADD medication from who have ADD and have seen their quality of life skyrocket. Has anyone else ever been in this situation? Thanks in advance.
A few years ago, maybe because I depressed (more on that later), I started drinking recreationally as most people do. I was a student (still am), and I took it as basically a student doing what a student does. Eventually, and unfortunately, it became a problem for me, and it got pretty bad. I was what you might call a functioning alcoholic -- I could take Calc III tests drunk, for example, but I'd have difficulty if I was sober. I needed it. Two years ago, nearly, I had my last drink when I realized I hat hit rock bottom, and needed to change my life. With the support of friends and family, I am now 2 years sober.
Shortly after I quit drinking, I decided I needed to see a doctor to get to the root of my problem. I had never, ever thought of myself as a depressed person (for example, despite having thoughts of suicide and self-loathing, I would never take my life because I'm just too ... rooted in this world, I guess). Seeing the doc was great, and as you might guess, he eventually discovered I had MDD (Major depressive disorder). I told him initially that that just couldn't be, but after he described how many people react to depression differently, he prepared me mentally just enough to start taking an SSRI called Viibryd in the hopes that it would help. The Doctor made the assumption (and I think he was correct) that the reason I started drinking was to sort of self-medicate my own depression.
For many months, it really didn't, but eventually I noted a slight improvement in that I was actually having, from time to time, good days. Because of this I continued to use it for as long as prescription ran.
As many people tend to do, when I was at the end of the prescription, I decided to wean myself off the meds with the remaining pills I had from a starter pack (so, I went down in milligram dosage in a controlled way). I did this because I thought, for whatever reason, that maybe I was as good as I could get, and that I would stay that way.
This notion held for some weeks, maybe months. But eventually I woke up and just realized that the medication was helping, but was no longer helping me, and I should get back on it.
Flash forward to today, I'm planning on seeing a new doctor to get back on SSRIs (but probably a different one since I experienced some gastrointestinal issues on Viibryd). And I plan to set up the meeting shortly after my summer semester ends. But here's the question.
Recently, I've been becoming more in tune with the fact that, in general, I don't deal well with stress. Also, my ability to focus since I was younger has been notably decreased. In short, I believe I have a mild or moderate case of ADD/ADHD. This has been a survivable thing, but I'm kind of fed up, and I want to see if I can get started on something to see if it helps, and planned to ask the Doctor when I see him.
But, now you see the problem. As a past abuser of substance, I may not be eligible for ADD medication since, as I understand, its actually something that can be abused. Doctors probably don't want someone who has had an alcohol problem taking anything they can get addicted to. Now, I have never abused anything like pills or synthetic drugs in my life. I smoked pot a few times, but never cared for it, nor did I ever feel some kind of need for it. I'm someone who's just trying to figure out how to raise his own quality of life. I don't want to embarrass myself by going to the Doctor to ask for help with something that he won't or can't help with. I've always been truthful with doctors, but a part of me just doesn't want to bring up the alcohol thing, because it's something that I feel I have moved on from, learned from, and become an even wiser person from.
What should I do? On the one hand, I really want to try something to see if it helps, but I don't want to ask if the answer is going to be "Sorry, you're an addict and we don't help addicts because you'll just get addicted again." That's what friends are telling me who I've asked about ADD medication from who have ADD and have seen their quality of life skyrocket. Has anyone else ever been in this situation? Thanks in advance.
Sorry to hear that you didn't get the help you needed
. I would have gone literary mad without my personal space/time. But I'm glad to hear that your family is more supporting and understanding now.BTW, And I love your "Two suns" work. I consider myself a creative person, but I lack the dexterity to draw or build to express myself :/ .
Agent Cooper
Member
I'm graduating in a few days. I'm excited for that, but I'm moving to Texas on the 24th of July and that's stressing me out, and my mom will never stop stressing out about it and I'm probably just gonna go cry about it, I guess. I'm worried I will not make friends and I'll be this friendless blob of loser.
Collete
Member
I don't feel any better, I'm having a severe episode of depression and no one worth bothering to are on at this hour. Screw early morning depression.
The song is beautiful regardless if you play Xenoblade or not, it's still beautiful.
Don't really see any hands reaching out towards me. It's always me that has to reach out. But yeah all I can do is try...
And oh Lord, I did not even think it was two Metroids doing it lol
Now I have a new perspective on it lol
I know lack of sunlight really effects depression. I don't know the details well but SAD involves being depressed during winter and cloudy months.
And yeah I also analyze myself as well, constantly.
"Oh I didn't contact this person, that means I'm not caring."
"You didn't reach your goal today, this is what I mean that you're a failure."
"You're walking stupidly, everyone will notice!!!!"
I think best way to stop this analyzation is try to reason and catch yourself when you're analyzing yourself and challenge yourself.
For instance the latter, if I do think I'm walking stupid, I can challenge myself "No one cares they're all preoccupied in their lives"
And sorry about that, I'm just really not in the mood to go back to it, but I'll keep that in mind next time though.
Sorry to hear that you didn't get the help you needed
BTW, And I love your "Two suns" work. I consider myself a creative person, but I lack the dexterity to draw or build to express myself :/ .
I did went mad...
I cried periodically and felt I would never get out and I started to accept it.
I also went insane because I couldn't excercise much. I started to value walking around a lot more than I did when I was locked up.
It does a number on you when you realize you can't walk or exercise much doing things you don't enjoy.
I can't draw worth crap either, but abstract art is pretty simple you should try it as well!
If you're ever in the Houston area, hit me up, we can talk over some coffee or something.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
It always feels daunting, but I'm confident you'll be able to make new friends. Just make sure they know you're a Twin Peaks fan and they'll be coming out of the woodworks
ClassyPenguin
Banned
How can someone not like a Twin Peaks fan?
I'd love to see more of your art!
Not depressing enough, post them in another thread.
Just kidding! I like your art a lot!
Reading through this thread, I respect and sympathize with most of you. Depression is real, and ugly, and helpless...and yeah...I get it.
I used to suffer from depression/anxiety attacks so I can relate to many of you. I would smoke pot every day, was 100+ lbs overweight, stayed locked up in my room, would never be able to socialize or look people in the eye. I suffered from a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and thinking I was fucked in the head and would never be able to experience things like love, marriage, happiness, friends...
I guess my message to all of you is to never, never, never give up nor admit defeat.
I barely remember those times, but I still recall the thoughts I used to have. The struggle was real.
It's been a few years, but from my lowest point I have lost 100 pounds, have an amazing group of friends, a girlfriend that I love and still can't believe I got. My perception of myself has done a complete 180 and I now have boundless hopes for my future. Many of my fears have been conquered and I am now very sociable and friendly person. I am incredibly happy and continue to get happier every day, in-spite of the ups and downs.
It didn't happen overnight...took years...but little by little I got better. Hopefully without coming across as too preachy I give you this advice.
-BE GRATEFUL. There are a lot of good things about your life. Start appreciating them. I know it can be hard but every night challenge yourself to be grateful for your blessing. This is the most important piece of advice I can offer as it has served as the foundation for my recovery.
-STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. Recognize when you are and try with all your might to stop. Focus on something great about you, try try try and think positive. I know it's easier said than done, but at least make the effort daily. It won't happen overnight but every day will get better.
-STOP TAKING MEDS! In my opinion it doesn't cure anything. Sure, you might find a combination of meds that will make you feel better for that day but all it does is delay the inevitable. I truly, truly believe anybody can conquer this in their own...It's not easy, as you are surely aware, but I believe it to be the truth. Conquering depression is the most liberating thing you can do and will make you much wiser, stronger, and happier than many people who never had to deal with it; You have to reach the bottom to get to the top.
DON'T BE AFRAID TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. God, a spirit, Karma etc. I do believe in something higher than me and it comforts me to know I'm not alone. Try it out.
Best of luck and all the love in the world to you guys. PM me if anyone wants to talk further!
I used to suffer from depression/anxiety attacks so I can relate to many of you. I would smoke pot every day, was 100+ lbs overweight, stayed locked up in my room, would never be able to socialize or look people in the eye. I suffered from a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and thinking I was fucked in the head and would never be able to experience things like love, marriage, happiness, friends...
I guess my message to all of you is to never, never, never give up nor admit defeat.
I barely remember those times, but I still recall the thoughts I used to have. The struggle was real.
It's been a few years, but from my lowest point I have lost 100 pounds, have an amazing group of friends, a girlfriend that I love and still can't believe I got. My perception of myself has done a complete 180 and I now have boundless hopes for my future. Many of my fears have been conquered and I am now very sociable and friendly person. I am incredibly happy and continue to get happier every day, in-spite of the ups and downs.
It didn't happen overnight...took years...but little by little I got better. Hopefully without coming across as too preachy I give you this advice.
-BE GRATEFUL. There are a lot of good things about your life. Start appreciating them. I know it can be hard but every night challenge yourself to be grateful for your blessing. This is the most important piece of advice I can offer as it has served as the foundation for my recovery.
-STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. Recognize when you are and try with all your might to stop. Focus on something great about you, try try try and think positive. I know it's easier said than done, but at least make the effort daily. It won't happen overnight but every day will get better.
-STOP TAKING MEDS! In my opinion it doesn't cure anything. Sure, you might find a combination of meds that will make you feel better for that day but all it does is delay the inevitable. I truly, truly believe anybody can conquer this in their own...It's not easy, as you are surely aware, but I believe it to be the truth. Conquering depression is the most liberating thing you can do and will make you much wiser, stronger, and happier than many people who never had to deal with it; You have to reach the bottom to get to the top.
DON'T BE AFRAID TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. God, a spirit, Karma etc. I do believe in something higher than me and it comforts me to know I'm not alone. Try it out.
Best of luck and all the love in the world to you guys. PM me if anyone wants to talk further!
Humankind's superiority and glory is a good belief. Secular, and optimistic.
Other forms of belief don't suit me.
EDIT i don't have issue with people having other beliefs (as long as those beliefs don't harm others). But i'll note that faith won't magically cure depression, one shouldn't think that. Yeah, it can help, by giving one something to focus on, but it is not a cure in itself.
Perhaps I'm an exception to the rule. Perhaps I'm ignorant and misguided. But it has played a pivotal role for me. Faith, not as in blindly following a certain doctrine/religion, but as in Faith in myself, a higher power , is an incredibly important part of my life and I could never turn my back on the good feels it gives me.
Just my opinion of course.
While I respect and agree with many of your points, I can't here. There are countless people that antidepressants have helped, at least enough for them to get back on their feet. There are many more who need to be on them for the rest of their lives (especially if they have bipolar). You may be able to relate to your own personal brand of depression but you are not qualified to speak for other people's struggles. It is different for everyone and people have different needs.
(And I dislike the meds so don't think I'm trying to defend them. Like everything, they have upsides and downsides.)
I had no intention to offend anyone. You are correct, I am not qualified to speak on behalf of everybody...I was just bearing my personal beliefs. My depression could of gotten much worse and my opinion on Meds could have been much different. I just have a lot of faith in the human spirit and I'd hate to give anybody the disservice of calling them completely helpless. I truly believe any individual has the capacity to achieve anything. Perhaps I am being naive though, I'm just testifying on behalf of my own experiences and the experiences of people close to me.
But it probably doesn't help in any significant percentage of cases.
If it works, good, but one should not just start believing something thinking it is a magic cure.
Might as well do homeopathy or some other bullshit pseudo-science (again, the placebo effect might have effect, but i doubt it is a big even if there is some effect).
EDIT meds, if they're prescribed, and don't have any ill effects, probably should be used. Of course, if one doesn't want them in the first place... well, i reckon people can say that to a doctor/therapist/whatever it is called.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
You don't know what you are talking about. Efficacy, control trials, mechanism of actions, you know the actual science behind anti-depressants. It's not a "willpower" issue.
In other news, they switched my psychiatrist. I hate that. I had such a good rapport and developing a mad crush on her. ;_;
I mean nothing serious, more like a schoolboy crush on his/her teacher.
This new guy seems a pushover.
I've only ever had one psychiatrist, and the thought of having to switch scares me. Does the new person get all of the notes and stuff from the previous one or is it a fresh start?
I hope it all works out for you though penguin
Reading through this thread, I respect and sympathize with most of you. Depression is real, and ugly, and helpless...and yeah...I get it.
I used to suffer from depression/anxiety attacks so I can relate to many of you. I would smoke pot every day, was 100+ lbs overweight, stayed locked up in my room, would never be able to socialize or look people in the eye. I suffered from a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and thinking I was fucked in the head and would never be able to experience things like love, marriage, happiness, friends...
I guess my message to all of you is to never, never, never give up nor admit defeat.
I barely remember those times, but I still recall the thoughts I used to have. The struggle was real.
It's been a few years, but from my lowest point I have lost 100 pounds, have an amazing group of friends, a girlfriend that I love and still can't believe I got. My perception of myself has done a complete 180 and I now have boundless hopes for my future. Many of my fears have been conquered and I am now very sociable and friendly person. I am incredibly happy and continue to get happier every day, in-spite of the ups and downs.
It didn't happen overnight...took years...but little by little I got better. Hopefully without coming across as too preachy I give you this advice.
-BE GRATEFUL. There are a lot of good things about your life. Start appreciating them. I know it can be hard but every night challenge yourself to be grateful for your blessing. This is the most important piece of advice I can offer as it has served as the foundation for my recovery.
-STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. Recognize when you are and try with all your might to stop. Focus on something great about you, try try try and think positive. I know it's easier said than done, but at least make the effort daily. It won't happen overnight but every day will get better.
-STOP TAKING MEDS! In my opinion it doesn't cure anything. Sure, you might find a combination of meds that will make you feel better for that day but all it does is delay the inevitable. I truly, truly believe anybody can conquer this in their own...It's not easy, as you are surely aware, but I believe it to be the truth. Conquering depression is the most liberating thing you can do and will make you much wiser, stronger, and happier than many people who never had to deal with it; You have to reach the bottom to get to the top.
DON'T BE AFRAID TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. God, a spirit, Karma etc. I do believe in something higher than me and it comforts me to know I'm not alone. Try it out.
Best of luck and all the love in the world to you guys. PM me if anyone wants to talk further!
Thanks for stopping by with an inspirational message, but I take issue with you making a blanket statement about medications like that. "In my opinion it doesn't cure anything"? Your opinion? Seriously? If we're talking medicine, your opinion can mean the world to you, but it means jack shit to me, right? Should it mean anything to me? Honest question.
I know you mean well, but I really resent people making these kind of broad statements about how others should get help. Especially when it's not based on science so much (I'm assuming here, based on how this discussion has gone in the past) as it is on the bullshit premise that taking a medication represents some kind of moral failing.
My opinion is that I'm probably going to need medications for the rest of my life. I've been off them for a while now, and it has been an absolute disaster. That's great that you've done well without them. Fantastic. I wish I didn't have to take them, I really do. But I have an impressive family history of depression, on both sides, which is suggestive of something wrong in our genetic makeup. Many of us take medication for depression and while it's certainly not the entire answer, it allows us to live our lives. You'll find plenty of people in this thread who will tell you the same thing (along with people who had miserable experiences and people who refuse to consider medications). For some of us, it is part of the answer. As strongly as I believe that medications are something to consider, the OP does not say TAKE MEDS. It's a nuanced subject, depression is a complex illness that is likely completely different in you than it is in me, the science is complex and incomplete. It's irresponsible to make a blanket statement either way about how people should or should not get help.
I realize that all sounds super angry, but I guess it frankly DOES make me super angry. It is obviously a difficult decision to try medications, as people post in here over and over. I don't think you're helping anyone by injecting your "opinion" on the matter. The implicit or explicit suggestion that I'm somehow weak for needing a medication in order to even BEGIN to feel normal, generally told to me (and I get this all the damn time) by people who know exceedingly little about my mental health (or mental health in general), and based more on personal preference than anything approaching science, is the exact opposite of help.
Again, I appreciate the inspirational words, and hearing what worked for you. Having taken meds before, it's still taking some amount of what little mental energy I have to get myself to go in and discuss what to try next. I really, really don't appreciate being told not to do that.
ANGRY BAGELS
What are you, a Scientologist? You know there are people with severe forms of schizophrenia and bipolar who would not be able to take care of themselves or keep from completely breaking from reality without medication to even out the processes taking place in their brain? If someone told me that, in their opinion, I can conquer cancer by thinking that I can really hard, and I had cancer? Yeah, at best, I'd probably slap them. For all your words, the only message I got out of it was a fancy way of saying "Hey you guys, stop being sad! Look, depression cured!"
This not just a thread for people with depression, hence the "Mental Health: Depression and Co." title. Contributing and safe, helpful advice is always welcomed. So are opinions, but when your opinion consists of something along the lines of "You can overcome diabeetus by changing your thoughts and eating well! Stop taking your insulin!" it's not contructive at all, only an ill-informed opinion. An illness is an illness and it should be treated with the best means modern medicine has. It could even set someone off into quiting a med cold-turkey (which oftens leads to the worst breakdowns in mental health) who is already afraid of being stigmatized for taking medication that is helping them. Medication isn't the only answer but it's there for a reason. Please don't pass on information that is contrary to over a century of medical research and results because you are having a good time in your life. You don't know what everyone else's problems are here. Many people need this for a reason.
I was going to say something similar to this. I have OCD trying to overcome this with willpower alone just doesn't work. It took me quite a long time to actually get the medication I needed to help me, due to nervousness, stigmas, etc. I really don't think telling people to will away their mental health issues is productive at all, and is pretty dangerous. An opinion literally means nothing when it's about something science has done countless studies on showing the opposite. To make others feel inadequate and weak for getting the help they need is only helping further the stigma of mental illness and getting treatment.
I am in a much better place due to my medication and I hate that there are so many who need it and don't due to its stigma.
Collete
Member
Thanks guys
Means a lotI won't lie, I used to have the same out look as you about medication thinking it doesn't cure anything. Not every case of depression can be cured on it's own. Remember that crushed hand comic? It's ignoring the fact you don't need treatment for the hand that it supposedly can be recovered on it's own. It doesn't work like that at all.
You're telling me as a person with MDD that I don't need medication? It doesn't delay anything, everyone realizes you still have depression and it won't go away. Medicine it can help alleviate symptoms of depression so you can live a normal life. But it's not a magic cure-all, it just helps you think a bit more clearly and help your life progress...I don't recommend conquering depression on your own at all. It will make you suffer a lot longer than you really need to.
CornBurrito
Member
Your personal beliefs are harmful. Perhaps some people are prescribed meds when they do not need them. But to tell people to stop taking their meds can be disastrous. There's a right way to express an anti-meds opinion and a wrong way.
I am truly sorry if I came across as patronizing, naive, or insensitive. I was simply sharing my point of view and my story. I now know not to make such blanket statements when discussing something so personal. I haven't been in each and every one of your shoes and I apologize for making such bold claims. I understand what science and studies say on the matter but I also understand how much money and power big pharma has at its disposable and how much they like making more money; so I suppose I'm a little skeptical. At the very least I just hope somebody could take something from my experience and maybe make some steps that worked for me to better my life.
My apologies to all I have offended.
My apologies to all I have offended.
No worries guy. We're just a tight knit community here. If you come in with something that could be considered a sick or toxic attitude, we swarm like anibodies! Hopefully we didn't scare you off. :3
Reading through this thread, I respect and sympathize with most of you. Depression is real, and ugly, and helpless...and yeah...I get it.
I used to suffer from depression/anxiety attacks so I can relate to many of you. I would smoke pot every day, was 100+ lbs overweight, stayed locked up in my room, would never be able to socialize or look people in the eye. I suffered from a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and thinking I was fucked in the head and would never be able to experience things like love, marriage, happiness, friends...
I guess my message to all of you is to never, never, never give up nor admit defeat.
I barely remember those times, but I still recall the thoughts I used to have. The struggle was real.
It's been a few years, but from my lowest point I have lost 100 pounds, have an amazing group of friends, a girlfriend that I love and still can't believe I got. My perception of myself has done a complete 180 and I now have boundless hopes for my future. Many of my fears have been conquered and I am now very sociable and friendly person. I am incredibly happy and continue to get happier every day, in-spite of the ups and downs.
It didn't happen overnight...took years...but little by little I got better. Hopefully without coming across as too preachy I give you this advice.
-BE GRATEFUL. There are a lot of good things about your life. Start appreciating them. I know it can be hard but every night challenge yourself to be grateful for your blessing. This is the most important piece of advice I can offer as it has served as the foundation for my recovery.
-STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. Recognize when you are and try with all your might to stop. Focus on something great about you, try try try and think positive. I know it's easier said than done, but at least make the effort daily. It won't happen overnight but every day will get better.
-STOP TAKING MEDS! In my opinion it doesn't cure anything. Sure, you might find a combination of meds that will make you feel better for that day but all it does is delay the inevitable. I truly, truly believe anybody can conquer this in their own...It's not easy, as you are surely aware, but I believe it to be the truth. Conquering depression is the most liberating thing you can do and will make you much wiser, stronger, and happier than many people who never had to deal with it; You have to reach the bottom to get to the top.
DON'T BE AFRAID TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. God, a spirit, Karma etc. I do believe in something higher than me and it comforts me to know I'm not alone. Try it out.
Best of luck and all the love in the world to you guys. PM me if anyone wants to talk further!
And what about us non-believers, are we simply fucked? I can't even lie, there are no real advantages to being an atheist with Major Depression in my eyes. I would much rather believe in an after-life, but I think my beliefs are why I'm still alive. Oblivion frightens me deeply, but it is what it is. I won't belittle or trivialize your faith but no such thing exists from my perspective. So I don't know, your statement just bothers me I guess.
Anyways, had an EMDR session this morning, working on some "safe-room" mental imaging stuff before we move on to "processing" I gotta say EMDR is not horseshit, it's bizarre. This is not my first experience with EMDR, that bi-lateral stimulation does something. It's pretty fascinating.
No problem, man. I totally get what you're saying, and it sounds like it just came out wrong. I think so many of us jumped on you because we've met people who have told us, flat out, that we're bad people for using medications that we feel we NEED if we want to have anything approaching a normal life. Gets under my skin, you know?
Sincere welcome to our little community! We're usually way nicer...
B-but what about what I sent you? :C
It won't happen in a day, but I believe much of that stuff is effective in re-conditioning your thoughts to be less self-loathing. I have had self-loathing thoughts too, and they got like that stubbornly, because I kept re-affirming the self-loathing attitude by repeating it. Taking that approach to a self-respect and self-love could be a fantastic way to jump start a lot of the healthy, self-improvment you had already taken steps toward. :3
(I'll be like, hurt your teeth cheerful and sweet about this, I'm warning you!
)In lame news, I put two cucumber slices on my eyes in the morning at work today after I had some quiet stress crying/tearing to soothe the redness/puffiness when I was by myself for a few hours. I am now having either an allergic reaction to the cucumber in one eye or gave myself pink eye. Oh and yesterday I smashed my head on a cabinet door and have a lump and headache today. And I've been working every single day and getting seriously stressed to the point where my body feels run down and like I'm about to get sick, despite regular exercise and a healthy diet. And I feel like I can't call in sick to work because no one can cover my shift. fml :C
oh and my mom's been in the hospital for the last two weeks or so and I've been alone for most of this year so far because of the bf being away with work a lot and am right now. I feel like I am constantly being taken from. Starting to feel empty. I have no idea how to deal with all this stuff hanging over me anymore. Exercise isn't cutting it as an outlet anymore.[/LJpost]
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