My Inpatient Experience - Part Two
First of all, I know I have been absent from the blogging world for the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately I've had a bit of a stressful time recently and due to my BPD, me and stress don't tend to mix very well and so I suppose you could say I've had to take a bit of time out to look after myself. I'm pleased to report though that I am feeling a lot better about things now and I've got lots of ideas for blog posts that I'm keen to cracking on with.
I had intended to write this post a lot sooner but nonetheless it is finally here - my second stint as an inpatient. The first part of my inpatient experience story can be found here but just to recap a little, I was put into inpatient care earlier this year as a result of a near suicide attempt. For the first couple of weeks I was placed temporarily in The Priory North London until an NHS bed became available for me. I had a pretty positive experience at the first hospital and therefore was all the more distressed when I was told very suddenly that I had to leave and was going to be placed in the one hospital I had asked not to be placed in!
For various reasons, I am not going to name the hospital however only a few months prior to my admission, it had been under special measures and I had heard a number of horror stories about the place, hence why I didn't want to be placed there. I want to make clear that not all NHS inpatient services are like this one and I would not want to put anyone off seeking help from an inpatient service if they feel that is what they need. I know many people who have had very positive inpatient experiences. However, I have decided to write this post not only to bring a sense of closure to a very bad period of my life but also with a view to offer support or advice to someone who may also have suffered a bad inpatient experience.
While I have said that I never wanted to be placed in this particular hospital in the first place, when I was told that I had no choice but to go there, I decided that I would try to go in with an open mind and make the most of whatever help was offered to me. My first impression of the hospital wasn't so bad. The reception areas looked newly decorated with inspirational quotes on the walls so initially the place looked fairly inviting. I was walked onto the ward with one of the ambulance crew who brought me to the hospital. We were directed into a meeting room by one of the nurses and were told to wait as they were short staffed. It was about 10:30 at night when I arrived. Bearing in mind that I had just travelled for two hours in a distressed state and we were left in that meeting room for an additional hour, both myself and the paramedic were getting a bit stir crazy. The paramedic went off to try and find me some water to drink, which was a mission in itself.
Eventually a nurse came to admit me. By this time, most of the other patients had gone to bed so I was lead onto a very dark and eerie ward. I sat down with the nurse in the canteen area to complete my admission papers and it quickly became clear that she knew absolutely nothing about me despite the fact that I belonged to the same community mental health team that the hospital was connected to. She had no idea of what specific mental health problems I had been suffering from so frustratingly I had to quickly try to fill her in on my whole extensive history under the mental health services - a task that I had become accustomed to over the past couple of weeks previous to my admission.
I was then taken to my room and it was then that I realised my situation had become quite dire. I couldn't believe my eyes! The room had a heavy duty door which I struggled to open, complete with a shutter which the staff would open every 15 minutes to check on us. It was reminiscent of the kind of door you would see at the entrance to a prison cell. Bearing in mind, I have a huge complex about feeling trapped in a bedroom and of people watching me through a door due to past traumas, the door situation alone was hugely triggering. The first thing that hit me when I went inside the room was a distinct smell of mould. The whole room was visibly dirty, the sheets on the bed were the only thing I could see as being vaguely clean. The room had an en suite toilet and showeroom which had a hole kicked through the door. There was graffiti on the wall saying 'TRUST NO ONE' in huge red letters. I took one look at the room, turned to the nurse and said, "You must be joking! No one could ever get better staying in this room." She responded that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the room and proceeded by checking through my bag.
Don't get me wrong, I've stayed in worse rooms in my life and if other elements of the care I received on the ward were better, I probably could have tolerated the state of the room. When the nurse searched my bag, it became clear that the ward was far higher security than the previous one I had been on. I had all my chargers taken off me and the nurse even questioned whether I'd be safe to be left with the drawstrings on my hoodie. I even had my vitamin tablets taken off me! I explained to the nurse that I had no history of self harm and had been able to keep all the items that concerned her on my previous ward. Nonetheless they were taken off me as the nurse explained that while I might not harm myself using these items, other patients on the ward might do so and to be honest that was fair enough albeit inconvenient.
I was left to unpack but upon viewing the layer of filth on all the drawers and shelves, I decided my clothes would be kept cleaner if they stayed in my bag. The nurse then returned finding me pacing around the room in a distressed state as I was struggling to come to terms with how my life had ended up in such a place. The nurse said I'd have to sit in the communal area again under observation until the on call doctor came to assess me. I was given a pretty standard patient's questionnaire to fill in to pass the time. The on call doctor was finally available to see me at 2 am! Once again, he knew absolutely nothing about my case and so yet again I had to divulge a good proportion of my life's story. I did explain that this whole process was becoming very frustrating and tedious especially when carrying it out in the early hours of the morning and he was nice enough about the whole thing. He explained that he would read the 25 pages worth of notes sent from the Priory, write his report and pass it onto the staff at ward so I wouldn't have to go over old ground again. In reality, I found myself being asked to go over old ground several times after the assessment and those notes from the Priory were lost and never to be found again.
After seeing the doctor I was then taken back to my dreaded room by the nurse again to sleep not that there was much sleep to be had. The ward was made up of long corridors down which sound echoed during both the day and night. It certainly wasn't any quieter at night, the ward was complete with sounds of the heavy doors being slammed and kicked, patients shouting and alarm sirens ringing. The hospital quickly started feeling more like prison and when I awoke to see a 30 ft fence with barbed wire along the top, just outside my windows and blocking all the daylight, it felt like I had been thrown in just that - a prison!
One of the staff knocked on my door to tell me it was breakfast time. The communal area of the ward was all open plan, including the kitchen and the canteen area. This meant that the smell of the food travelled down every corridor of the ward which for someone with extreme food phobias was a nightmare. Meal times became an ordeal to say the least.
My first day on the ward marked my first day meeting the other patients which I'm sad to say was a very distressing experience. The ward I was placed on was a general acute adult psychiatric ward and rather than the wards of the hospital being divided up by the patient's needs, they were divided by the areas in which the patients live. I suddenly became aware that I was considerably younger than all the other patients on the ward and for that reason I seemed to stick out bit. Whenever I entered the communal area, a number of patients would flock towards me and it became intimidating. I was to discover that quite a few of the other patients had lost their own children and some of them told me that they were adopting me as their child. While this may seem quite sweet and innocent, it was quite frightening and awkward at the time.
I felt incredibly different to the other patients and while I'm sure a number of them were very good people at heart, I found the experience of being around them very distressing. It was as though I had stepped through the looking glass. I felt as though I was surrounded by young children. The moment I left my room, I was inundated by bizarre conversations about us all being human guinea pigs and things that I just couldn't even begin to comprehend. It was clear that the other patients on the ward were heavily medicated which I know can be necessary but I just felt as though something could not be right with this approach when I saw a room full of adults meandering around in a dreamlike state. Moreover, they all appeared very run down physically. Personal hygiene was very much lacking, their hair and clothes appeared visibly unwashed. I could not understand how these people who were supposedly in a place of care could be so obviously lacking in the most basic attention. In short, their state saddened me greatly, I could see little being done on the ward to help prepare them to function in the outside world.
On the morning of my first day on the ward, the student nurse who had been assigned to me came to visit me. She was very sweet and friendly which was comforting. However, once again it seemed as though no one on the ward knew anything about my case, despite my assessment the day before. The advice the nurse gave me was to try to write down as much as I could about my history under the mental health services and deliver it to the ward office - an instruction I took quite literally and I later presented quite a sizeable document to the office. She also said that I should write down any questions I have about the ward and she would come back to see me later to answer them. I remember the first question I asked was whether I could have something to stick a piece of paper over the graffiti on my wall to which she laughed. I then asked her whether she'd like to wake up and for that message to be the first thing she sees in the morning to which she didn't respond. I then came to my main question - what trauma therapy is available on the ward? That was the clincher, the answer = none. Worse than that, the student nurse told me that the ward does not provide any form of talking therapy whatsoever. All they offered was what she referred to as 'occupational therapy' which basically just consisted of a sports group, a baking group and an art group. She explained that all they could do was refer me back to the trauma team under the CMHT after my discharge.
That was it! Whatever optimism or positivity I may have tried to approach my stay at the ward with suddenly came crumbling down. Doing sport, baking and art was not going to get to the root of all my problems. Before ending up in inpatient care, I had been doing all of those things while feeling suicidal. As far as I could see, there was nothing available at the ward that could help me in my recovery and that realisation was startling. So I cried, more tears than I had probably cried in the whole of my life.
Of the few times I left my room that day, every time I stepped out onto the ward I felt as though I was walking out into a war zone. Patients were swearing, shouting, throwing things and even being violent towards each other and staff. I saw patients having to be restrained by staff and forced to take their medication. The most worrying thing about the situation was that it felt as though there weren't enough staff to keep track of everyone. I felt extremely under threat especially as every time I left my room the other patients would flock towards me, try to touch me, hug me and 'adopt me as their child'. The whole environment felt reminiscent of the setting in which I experienced my traumas so it was triggering to say the least. By that point, my only plan from there on in was to get out of the ward.
I was later taken out my room in floods of tears to be assessed by an on call doctor. Once again I was faced with the saga of having to retell my whole story which I was incredibly done with by this point and this doctor was anything but friendly. I explained that I had found out that the ward could offer none of the care that I needed, I was finding the environment of the ward was making all my symptoms worse and that I wanted to leave. I remember repeatedly saying 'Get me out of here!' The response was that I could not be discharged because they had not had enough time to assess me. I couldn't be discharged until my assigned doctor had assessed me and she wouldn't be available until after the weekend. I repeatedly protested but it was like talking to a brick wall.
My mum and stepdad came to visit and I was grateful if anything to have an opportunity to have a rational form of conversation. Considering that they themselves felt very uncomfortable and threatened during their short visit to the ward, they were also of the view that I needed to do whatever I could to get out.
I'm not being over dramatic when I say that for me, every minute spent on that ward became completely unbearable. That evening, I went to the ward office several times and repeatedly asked to be given some sort of document stating my legal rights as a voluntary patient as I felt I needed to be absolutely clear on my rights to discharge myself. Every member of staff I spoke to seemed shocked that I would ask such a question. They said they didn't have such a document, told me that I was a voluntary patient and so could discharge myself when I wanted. When I said that I wanted to discharge myself at that very moment, I was met with the repeated response, "You can't discharge yourself until after the weekend."
After yet another sleepless night on the ward, I continued with my plan to get out as soon as the day staff arrived. (If you didn't have a sleep problem when you arrived on the ward, you certainly would have by the time you left.) I told every member of staff that I wanted to discharge myself and still I was met with the same response. Due to my persistence, one of the nurses eventually agreed to have a conversation with me about it in one of the meeting rooms. I explained the situation to her, requested to leave and while she was sympathetic, she still gave me the same response. I was getting nowhere, even when I expressed quite bluntly that I was a voluntary patient and was being held against my will on the ward, the health care system does not stop just because it's the weekend, while it might have been an inconvenient time to discharge me I still had the right to be discharged when I wanted. Once again she seemed shocked that my brain was so intact. She made clear to me that getting discharged during the weekend was not an option and the best advice she could give me was to read a book so the weekend would pass more quickly for me, to which I responded, "Could you read a book with the amount of noise on this ward?"
I was taken back to my room and yet another hellish day on the ward was under way. The television was blaring all day, patients seemed to be singing Lady Gaga songs at the top of their lungs and amidst all this was the usual shouting, screaming, door kicking and violent outbursts. It would have been nice to have been able to get some fresh air to escape from the chaos but the only outside space was an enclosed garden which the majority of the other patients used to chain smoke, so there was no fresh air to be had there. I called my mum in floods of tears and begged her and my stepdad to come in and do everything they could to talk to the staff and get me out as I couldn't stand a moment longer on the ward. They came as soon as visiting hours started in the afternoon and managed to corner one of the student nurses and get him to speak with them. I was called into the meeting and the student nurse said that I had been misinformed about my rights to be discharged. They could get the on call doctor in to assess me and if he was happy that I was not a risk to myself, I could be released on leave into the care of my parents over the weekend and then be formally discharged on Monday when my allocated doctor would be available. Finally it felt as though we were making progress. I was seen by the on call doctor, I explained to him that the main cause for my distressing behaviour on the ward was that I felt extremely under threat and intimidated by the other patients. In fact, all the time I was on the ward, I hadn't even thought about being ill at all as it felt as though all my energies were focused on survival. He agreed to grant me leave, so I packed my things up quicker than I ever had done before and left the ward feeling utterly liberated.
That was it! Whatever optimism or positivity I may have tried to approach my stay at the ward with suddenly came crumbling down. Doing sport, baking and art was not going to get to the root of all my problems. Before ending up in inpatient care, I had been doing all of those things while feeling suicidal. As far as I could see, there was nothing available at the ward that could help me in my recovery and that realisation was startling. So I cried, more tears than I had probably cried in the whole of my life.
Of the few times I left my room that day, every time I stepped out onto the ward I felt as though I was walking out into a war zone. Patients were swearing, shouting, throwing things and even being violent towards each other and staff. I saw patients having to be restrained by staff and forced to take their medication. The most worrying thing about the situation was that it felt as though there weren't enough staff to keep track of everyone. I felt extremely under threat especially as every time I left my room the other patients would flock towards me, try to touch me, hug me and 'adopt me as their child'. The whole environment felt reminiscent of the setting in which I experienced my traumas so it was triggering to say the least. By that point, my only plan from there on in was to get out of the ward.
I was later taken out my room in floods of tears to be assessed by an on call doctor. Once again I was faced with the saga of having to retell my whole story which I was incredibly done with by this point and this doctor was anything but friendly. I explained that I had found out that the ward could offer none of the care that I needed, I was finding the environment of the ward was making all my symptoms worse and that I wanted to leave. I remember repeatedly saying 'Get me out of here!' The response was that I could not be discharged because they had not had enough time to assess me. I couldn't be discharged until my assigned doctor had assessed me and she wouldn't be available until after the weekend. I repeatedly protested but it was like talking to a brick wall.
My mum and stepdad came to visit and I was grateful if anything to have an opportunity to have a rational form of conversation. Considering that they themselves felt very uncomfortable and threatened during their short visit to the ward, they were also of the view that I needed to do whatever I could to get out.
I'm not being over dramatic when I say that for me, every minute spent on that ward became completely unbearable. That evening, I went to the ward office several times and repeatedly asked to be given some sort of document stating my legal rights as a voluntary patient as I felt I needed to be absolutely clear on my rights to discharge myself. Every member of staff I spoke to seemed shocked that I would ask such a question. They said they didn't have such a document, told me that I was a voluntary patient and so could discharge myself when I wanted. When I said that I wanted to discharge myself at that very moment, I was met with the repeated response, "You can't discharge yourself until after the weekend."
After yet another sleepless night on the ward, I continued with my plan to get out as soon as the day staff arrived. (If you didn't have a sleep problem when you arrived on the ward, you certainly would have by the time you left.) I told every member of staff that I wanted to discharge myself and still I was met with the same response. Due to my persistence, one of the nurses eventually agreed to have a conversation with me about it in one of the meeting rooms. I explained the situation to her, requested to leave and while she was sympathetic, she still gave me the same response. I was getting nowhere, even when I expressed quite bluntly that I was a voluntary patient and was being held against my will on the ward, the health care system does not stop just because it's the weekend, while it might have been an inconvenient time to discharge me I still had the right to be discharged when I wanted. Once again she seemed shocked that my brain was so intact. She made clear to me that getting discharged during the weekend was not an option and the best advice she could give me was to read a book so the weekend would pass more quickly for me, to which I responded, "Could you read a book with the amount of noise on this ward?"
I was taken back to my room and yet another hellish day on the ward was under way. The television was blaring all day, patients seemed to be singing Lady Gaga songs at the top of their lungs and amidst all this was the usual shouting, screaming, door kicking and violent outbursts. It would have been nice to have been able to get some fresh air to escape from the chaos but the only outside space was an enclosed garden which the majority of the other patients used to chain smoke, so there was no fresh air to be had there. I called my mum in floods of tears and begged her and my stepdad to come in and do everything they could to talk to the staff and get me out as I couldn't stand a moment longer on the ward. They came as soon as visiting hours started in the afternoon and managed to corner one of the student nurses and get him to speak with them. I was called into the meeting and the student nurse said that I had been misinformed about my rights to be discharged. They could get the on call doctor in to assess me and if he was happy that I was not a risk to myself, I could be released on leave into the care of my parents over the weekend and then be formally discharged on Monday when my allocated doctor would be available. Finally it felt as though we were making progress. I was seen by the on call doctor, I explained to him that the main cause for my distressing behaviour on the ward was that I felt extremely under threat and intimidated by the other patients. In fact, all the time I was on the ward, I hadn't even thought about being ill at all as it felt as though all my energies were focused on survival. He agreed to grant me leave, so I packed my things up quicker than I ever had done before and left the ward feeling utterly liberated.
The time in which I spent my leave at home is a bit of a blur as I spent most of it in bed feeling quite unwell as my body had gone into shock. However my parents did take me out for a drive to see a beautiful view and I just remember feeling so relieved to be off that awful ward.
On the Monday I went back to the hospital to have my assessment with my assigned doctor. Once again I had to divulge a good proportion of my mental health history but as it was in the interest of being discharged and the doctor was fairly friendly, it didn't feel so bad. The doctor agreed to discharge me and refer me back to the community mental health team I was under previously as I had said that I was no longer feeling suicidal which was the truth at the time. I would love to be able to say that I was never suicidal again after leaving the ward and that it marked a turning point in my recovery. Unfortunately I did have many suicidal episodes in the weeks following my discharge and it was an extremely dark time. What I will say though is that the ward was a turning point for me in the sense that it was a huge wake up call. It made me reflect and realise that while I was very ill and needed help, I had a lot going for me in my life and I came to the conclusion that I would never want my life to get so bad that I would end up on a ward like that ever again. I think what I did was I made a very important commitment to living and that was crucial to my recovery.
I'm sorry if this has become a very long and pretty depressing post. I have since written a very extensive complaint about my experiences on the ward as I wouldn't wish that admission upon my worst enemy. As I have said before, not all inpatient services are like this one and also bear in mind that mental health problems affect people differently. This ward may have been suitable and effective for another patient but clearly it was a very unsuitable place for me. If you are facing an inpatient admission, I would advice you to know your rights, stick by them and don't allow your views regarding your care to be overlooked. At the end of the day, we are all the best experts on ourselves so trust your instincts if you feel as though something is not good for you.
I'm pleased to say that I am in a far better place now than I was during my time as an inpatient. A couple of weeks back, I bumped into a student nurse who hadn't seen me since I was on the ward and she said that she couldn't believe she was talking to the same person - that's got to be a good sign! For a long time, I was in a place of utter despair and had lost all hope of getting better. If I am to compare my life now to how it was back then, it is almost incomparable. So please know that if you are struggling with mental health problems, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I never thought there was but now I know there is.
Love and Strength,
The One Day Seeker
I'm sorry if this has become a very long and pretty depressing post. I have since written a very extensive complaint about my experiences on the ward as I wouldn't wish that admission upon my worst enemy. As I have said before, not all inpatient services are like this one and also bear in mind that mental health problems affect people differently. This ward may have been suitable and effective for another patient but clearly it was a very unsuitable place for me. If you are facing an inpatient admission, I would advice you to know your rights, stick by them and don't allow your views regarding your care to be overlooked. At the end of the day, we are all the best experts on ourselves so trust your instincts if you feel as though something is not good for you.
I'm pleased to say that I am in a far better place now than I was during my time as an inpatient. A couple of weeks back, I bumped into a student nurse who hadn't seen me since I was on the ward and she said that she couldn't believe she was talking to the same person - that's got to be a good sign! For a long time, I was in a place of utter despair and had lost all hope of getting better. If I am to compare my life now to how it was back then, it is almost incomparable. So please know that if you are struggling with mental health problems, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I never thought there was but now I know there is.
Love and Strength,
The One Day Seeker
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