Why I Hated Working at a Psychiatric Hospital: An Exposé by a Former Therapist

[francistein]

Worked as a psychologist at a psychiatric clinic where workers were discouraged from showing basic human affection towards patients as these people “didn’t know limits”. Dehumanization was commonplace and no one seemed to realize that this issue was heavily linked to poor outcomes in treatment. Quit after a year and would never go back to a place like that.

[jdoedoenet]

Daniel, please know that this (now former) Registered Mental Health Nurse just spent the last 20 minutes and 25 seconds nodding his head, and wiping away tears.
Thank you for all that you do.

[michelle_cen]

This almost made me cry and remember how I was treated as an eating disorder patient as a teen. Thank you for calling out the disgusting ways that patients can be handled. As an aspiring mental health therapist now I want the world to be different.

[rukisar]

In many cases, it sounds like this may be a conscious or unconscious attempt by society to silence victims of abuse. Erasing someone's longterm memory sounds like the perfect coverup for criminal abusers.

[junglejim-hsnb]

i was in a psych ward last summer and it was always understaffed, but on sundays/holidays the staff that had to work on those days were verbally abusive and unfair because they werent being supervised and were frustrated with their work hours. one of them kept making bird noises during meals to freak us out and when i asked them to stop they pretended they werent. in the same day after i got mad at them and was talking to my "friends" about how they can't do their jobs they yelled at all of us at the next meal and said we dont have boundaries and need to stop victimizing ourselves. they were basically picking on people in a psych unit who all wanted to kill themselves, and agressively dehumanized all of us. i hope i never become such a pathetic person.

[aujuliawod]

My grandmother died when she was 68. (She would be in her 80s if she was still alive) She was bipolar all her life. At the end they took her off lithium because it was harming her liver and then put her on and off all kinds of crazy things. Her body just couldn’t take it anymore at her age. At some point they offered her ECT but she refused. She’d had it in a mental hospital when she was young and it terrified her. After the lithium she really had a major break down and ended up in state mental hospital wing for older people with metal health problems. It was the most horrible place I have ever visited. Dark, the staff all sitting in their box, locked down(which was crazy because they were all elderly), no plants, nothing on the walls...in her room there was just a metal bed with no window. You put me in there I would be crazy in a couple days. My dad worked really hard to find her better living circumstances but I still think about that place. So weird how we treat people who are just hurting and need the most love and care.

[postcodeox]

My thoughts exactly. Doctors often only look at the symptoms. Most of them don't bother trying to understand cause of the problem

[hollyjean]

I’ve been admitted to a psych hospital. I spent a couple of weeks there, years ago. It’s all true. The only healing was with the other patients. We loved each other.

[Haleh]

I hated working at one, too. I noticed that the employees who were successful had no hearts. I didn't want to be like them.

[rocksteele]

I worked in a "Psych" unit briefly, while doing my undergraduate degree. They treated the patients very poorly, the staff was supremely arrogant and self righteous. I am not surprised it creates a revolving door for the patients.

[NB-wuzo]

Daniel speaks so much truth in this video. All of it is true. I’ve been in and out of psych hospitals since 2007, and most of the patients I met had past trauma or abuse. None of them needed medicine. They did need friends who understood them and people who cared about or loved them. I used to tell the staff and doctors “There’s no pill to treat my trauma” when they tried to medicate me. What gets people who wanted to die to want to live? Knowing that they’re not alone in this world. Knowing they’re loved, that others care about them and they are capable of loving themselves and others. Just connecting to other patients and laughing helped to want to live again. What didn’t get people out of those places? Psychiatric medications, ECT, the staff, being overmedicated or anything to do with the hospital. The only thing these places do is bring like minded traumatized people together who thought they were alone in the world. Once they realize they aren’t alone, and they CAN connect to others, they decide maybe living is better than dying. Thanks for this video, Daniel. It brings back many painful memories of being traumatized in those hospitals, but it also brought back the memory of being connected to other patients instead of feeling alone in this world.

[nachnirgendwo]

I will never forget the way the psych ward head psychiatrist looked down at me. I don't know if I've ever felt so powerless as I did sitting alone with him in his office. He smirked at me as he ticked my symptom boxes, like we both knew this itself was a sick joke. I refused all medication in the ward. I don't know what to say except the authoritarianism in that environment was perverse and retraumatizing.

During my 2019 stay none of the employees spoke about trauma. The inpatients were so traumatized and back then none of us even had the vocabulary for it. That's so disempowering. It felt so messed up.

I withdrew into myself after that. For the first time in my life, I had found justification to build up my own defenses. My psychiatric hold awakened a previously dormant emotion of mine: self-protective rage. I eventually stopped seeing therapists. I've been self-healing for over six months now. I've never been able to allow such bliss and compassion into my heart as I have this year.

Daniel thank you for validating such a range of (my) experiences. I have more healing ahead of me.

[mooncatandberyl]

patients are not the only ones with mental illnesses, psychiatrist have dangerous conditions themselves, such as psychopathy, thats why they chose the profession, power and control over vulnerable patients.

[mgee]

As someone who was in and out of psych wards for eating disorders I can confirm everything you say here. I exactly felt like a zoo animal telling private stories in front of med students. I have so many stories that I have never told anyone, and probably never will.

[christinebadostain]

Been in a psychiatric hospital twice. They were symptom oriented and get the patient on meds, "stabilized" and out the door as quickly as possible. It was not the locked ward type hospitals but they were hospitals/"treatment centers" where I just realized I had to play the b. s. game until I could get out of there.

[bdmenne]

I worked 10 years in a child psych hospital acute unit, before that 1 year long term child psyche unit. Little did I know, I needed profound treatment myself, but still I had keys. A lot of haunting memories, and some good. I tried, and did well enough. Better than most. I was a thorn against most of the staff, ally of the pt.s. Few good staff. Staff meetings/pt. Debriefings so invasive & unnecessary, demoralizing & boring. I remember Preventing injection happy RNs by intervening to deescalate often. So many staff had ZERO business working there. 11 years!! Resonated with your experience, Daniel. 🙏🏻

[raphaellavelasquez]

I've heard that there's a higher risk of a person commiting suicide after staying in a mental hospital than if they hadn't gone.

[SantaFeSuperChief]

I've tried to share your videos (or sometimes just regurgitating the information to them verbally) with some of my friends in the mental health field, patients, therapists, etc and let me tell you these are not lessons that people like to hear. I'm so passionate about my critique of the mental health system, and despite how much science there is to back up my arguments, people still treat me as if I'm some kind of heretic. The horrors of modern psychiatry are so ingrained in our society, that anyone speaking against how dangerous psychiatric drugs are or how ECT is the same as lobotomy, will not be taken seriously. Even though there are studies BY DRUG COMPANIES that back up that information. But luckily I don't personally care if I'm seen as a heretic, if I can convince even one person to avoid psychiatry, then I'll be satisfied.

[aquamarine]

ECT is an incredibly barbaric practice. It is disgusting that it is actually legal!! You're a truly caring and wise person, Daniel. Thank you for sharing your experience!

[ineffablestream]

Spot on, Daniel. I was hired as the state mandated (appointed) Patients' Rights' Advocate for people in locked psych wards in the 70s and saw all that you have so well elucidated, and more than you could say in a 20 minute video, as I am sure must be also true for you. To say the least, it was eye opening. Once I remember sitting in on a Crisis Intervention team interview with someone who was brought in for being in a state of panic. He kept telling the team is was fine but that his beloved dog had just died and he was upset. The team 'assessed' this man starting with asking him to count backwards from 100 in units of 7 (so 100, 93, 86, 79, 72 etc). He did that in about 15 seconds down to zero. Then they asked him who the current U.S. president was and if he could list the presidents from the current one going backwards in time. He was able to get from Jimmy Carter to George Washington in about 60 seconds. So they locked him up for being 'hyper-rational'. I had a team of lawyers who took cases on a rotating and pro-bono basis and we got him out the next day, but he was traumatized (forced drugging and 4-point restraints) on top of being traumatized (the assessment experience) on top of being traumatized (his dog dying). I would sit in on staff meetings and the psychiatrists would hold a chart for one patient and be talking about another, not realizing they were not the same person, and give the 'right' prescriptions to the wrong patient as a result. They had a woman in there once who was on a drug to manage her epilepsy and she accidentally overdosed on the meds. She was also pregnant when this happened. The psychiatrist, in the first meeting with the patient - lasting about 10 minutes - told the woman she had a choice to either abort the baby or stay in the psych ward until she gave birth and then she would have to give the baby up for adoption. We took him, and a few other psychiatrists, to court and either had their license suspended or, in his case, revoked. I could go on, as I'm sure you could. The job and experiences I had were what inspired me to become a doctor of natural, alternative healing, as I witnessed the mental 'health' system more often than not become an endless revolving door nightmare where humans got worse and rarely better - and I wanted to get to people way before they would ever end up in this situation. Very valuable, but painful, awakening process for me. So, yes, Daniel. I can well bear witness to your account.