A criminology professor once told a class I was taking that people who have power complexes and want to dominate and control other human beings tended to flock towards jobs in mental hospitals. There, they could exert their power over an unwilling person with the justification that "they're just not like us." What do I mean by "exerting power"? One of the times (this is only ONE of the many times) that I was sexually abused in the mental hospital, the staff saw ---watched---an older male patient enter my room (I was not used to door locks in psych wards because many do not allow for even a moment's privacy, this will be pertinent later). They were not even five feet away at the desk, with my door practically facing them. The man came in and he was already stripped down to his boxer shorts. He pulled out his genitals and began to masturbate. Nobody stopped him, everybody saw him. I had to get aggressive by yelling at him to "get the f out" while kicking the air around him. Even though I was yelling, nobody came, nobody helped, nobody even feigned concern. I chased him away and went back to sleep (I can sleep through anything because I have been abused in the hospitals enough where it is not anything to lose my sleep over anymore).
The next day my doctor came into my room (everyone, EVERYONE can go into your room. This is supposed to be just for staff to check we're not dead, but in reality this means other mental patients, ex-felons, whoever happens to be detained at the moment).
"Why didn't you go to group?" the doctor asked. Silly question. Once my psychosis stops, I realize that my major psychological issue is being cooped up in a psych ward with a bunch of predators (be they the rare, hostile mental patient or the more common sociopathic employees that do the checks). How exactly will group treat the fact that I hate the mental health care system and see it as an archaic throw-back to lobotomy days? I can just imagine being told to go back to my room because my ideas were "disturbing to the other patients' well being".
I muttered something to my doctor about hating group and then I blurted out that I was boycotting everything outside my bed to protest that old male who trespassed and was probably about to rape me.
"WHO?" Yelled the doctor. See, doctors really are not in charge. They think they are and they should be, but they are not on the ward nearly long enough to understand the dynamics that exists behind locked doors.
"That f^$ right there," I yelled, pointing my finger at the offender, who had been moved to a room directly visible from my own bed. The doctor fumed, but again, doctors don't have nearly as much power over my day-to-day life as the mental health technicians. He chased the offender, who went inside the bathroom. I went back to sleep, knowing KNOWING I would wake up and the offender would be on the same ward as myself, STILL. He did not get moved to another room, they just "had a talk with him." "We'll handle it," they said. One of these days someone is going to lift that rug off the floor and see the dirty horrors that you swept under the rug for decades.
Nobody came. Nobody saved me. That is what it is like inside the mental hospital. Here is a link to a video that is pretty close to what I have personally seen going on. Staff do tend to magnetically gravitate towards one patient in particular (someone who they see is easy to control). They can get verbally abusive. They are clever predators though: they are guilty of neglect and cover-ups but they keep their hands "clean" by not physically leaving marks on the patients. They have other ways to make a person suffer. At this hospital where a reporter went undercover as a mental health technician, it was revealed that there had been physical and psychological abuse of autistic, suicidal, and other marginalized groups.
In some country (name forgotten), the recovered mental health patients are hired to treat their own kind--so that a schizophrenic who is medicated and recovered, can work in the hospital alongside those like him who are still very, very sick. This model is beautiful because Normals have no idea what it is like to hear voices, or to feel hysterical fear for days on end. Other schizophrenics know what that is like, and we can feel a tremendous amount of empathy and compassion for those of our ilk who are still in their psychotic states. I would really much prefer to have a medicated schizophrenic looking after my well-being and protecting me than these Normals. They keep forgetting we are humans who feel pain when they hurt us.
BELOW: LINK to a 15 minute youtube video showing the inside of a locked ward (BBC took down the entire episode, but it might be floating out there in cyber-space). The title is "Undercover care: Abuse Exposed" by BBC panorama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqg_UjWhmOM
The next day my doctor came into my room (everyone, EVERYONE can go into your room. This is supposed to be just for staff to check we're not dead, but in reality this means other mental patients, ex-felons, whoever happens to be detained at the moment).
"Why didn't you go to group?" the doctor asked. Silly question. Once my psychosis stops, I realize that my major psychological issue is being cooped up in a psych ward with a bunch of predators (be they the rare, hostile mental patient or the more common sociopathic employees that do the checks). How exactly will group treat the fact that I hate the mental health care system and see it as an archaic throw-back to lobotomy days? I can just imagine being told to go back to my room because my ideas were "disturbing to the other patients' well being".
I muttered something to my doctor about hating group and then I blurted out that I was boycotting everything outside my bed to protest that old male who trespassed and was probably about to rape me.
"WHO?" Yelled the doctor. See, doctors really are not in charge. They think they are and they should be, but they are not on the ward nearly long enough to understand the dynamics that exists behind locked doors.
"That f^$ right there," I yelled, pointing my finger at the offender, who had been moved to a room directly visible from my own bed. The doctor fumed, but again, doctors don't have nearly as much power over my day-to-day life as the mental health technicians. He chased the offender, who went inside the bathroom. I went back to sleep, knowing KNOWING I would wake up and the offender would be on the same ward as myself, STILL. He did not get moved to another room, they just "had a talk with him." "We'll handle it," they said. One of these days someone is going to lift that rug off the floor and see the dirty horrors that you swept under the rug for decades.
Nobody came. Nobody saved me. That is what it is like inside the mental hospital. Here is a link to a video that is pretty close to what I have personally seen going on. Staff do tend to magnetically gravitate towards one patient in particular (someone who they see is easy to control). They can get verbally abusive. They are clever predators though: they are guilty of neglect and cover-ups but they keep their hands "clean" by not physically leaving marks on the patients. They have other ways to make a person suffer. At this hospital where a reporter went undercover as a mental health technician, it was revealed that there had been physical and psychological abuse of autistic, suicidal, and other marginalized groups.
In some country (name forgotten), the recovered mental health patients are hired to treat their own kind--so that a schizophrenic who is medicated and recovered, can work in the hospital alongside those like him who are still very, very sick. This model is beautiful because Normals have no idea what it is like to hear voices, or to feel hysterical fear for days on end. Other schizophrenics know what that is like, and we can feel a tremendous amount of empathy and compassion for those of our ilk who are still in their psychotic states. I would really much prefer to have a medicated schizophrenic looking after my well-being and protecting me than these Normals. They keep forgetting we are humans who feel pain when they hurt us.
BELOW: LINK to a 15 minute youtube video showing the inside of a locked ward (BBC took down the entire episode, but it might be floating out there in cyber-space). The title is "Undercover care: Abuse Exposed" by BBC panorama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqg_UjWhmOM
