My psych ward experience (WIP) - by Jae

This is a post about my experience with being hospitalized in a psych ward

Background

For several months before this incident I had dealt with psychotic symptoms. These varied from severe to less severe at times. This is explained in another article on my website (link). I was undergoing an assessment by a psychiatric clinic specializing in psychosis but I had never been hospitalized before this.

The catalyst

At the end of May I was at a congress for the organization that I am part of. As it came to an end, at the last day of the congress, we had a party to celebrate 30 years of the organization existing. It was great fun. Lots of live music and alcohol. This is where I believe it all started. I had a couple ciders and a glass of wine. This wasn't a problem at the time of the party but I was clearly intoxicated.

As the night ended and we went back to our sleeping quarters, I had a hallucination before going to sleep. As I turned off the light and went back to my sleeping bag I heard someone sprinting right behind me, as if they wanted to hurt me.

This wasn't a big issue at the time. I was used to having these scary hallucinations. Looking back at it though, it was clearly a sign of what's to come. However I did not know this at the time, and I was completely unaware of what was to happen when I came home to Malmö.

At home

The day after the party, when I arrived home, I felt pretty normal. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and I sure wasn't ready for what's to come. I was home alone, which wasn't something unusual for me. At the time I lived with my father and stepmother. They were away in Spain which is why I was home alone.

As the day ended, and I went to bed, I suddenly got a bad feeling. It was a feeling of impending doom and of being watched by something. As I was getting ready for bed I went out of my room to the bathroom. This is when I started hearing footsteps around my house and became convinced an alien had come to my house to kill me. I locked myself in the bathroom and grabbed a metal object.

Eventually I heard this alien walking away from the bathroom door. This is when I rush out of there and run into the kitchen to grab a big knife. Quickly after that I ran into my room and locked myself in there.

Home invasion

As I was inside my room I was panicking. What is just a girl supposed to do in a situation where an alien from the moon has come to her house to kill her? Even though I believed I had supernatural powers, these were far from easily controllable by me, and could therefore not be used in this situation.

At first I thought of calling the emergency line, specifically the police. I thought maybe they could help me in this situation, but this thought quickly turned to fear as I imagined a scenario where the police would kill me for holding a knife and trying to defend myself. The thought that maybe this alien in the house wasn't real hadn't even crossed my mind.

What I did instead was to call my wife (at the time girlfriend) and asking her what to do. I was crying really hard at this point as I thought these were my last moments. I was sending photos of my room door and telling my wife that you can see the alien peaking through the top gap of it. This was of course not real and she did not see any such thing in the pictures but I was pretty convinced.

After many minutes of crying and trying to convince my wife that there is an alien inside my house, she convinced me instead to call the emergency line. She assured me that nothing bad would come out of this and that they would protect me.

I did as my wife told me and called 112. They of course did not believe me that there is an alien inside my house trying to kill me. To my surprise, they called an ambulance to my house and tranferred my call to one of the workers in this ambulance. I spent almost an hour talking to them and crying this entire time. They tried to convince me that there was no alien inside the house and that I am safe to come out. This was not something that I was capable of believing at that moment.

After an hour of crying on the phone to the ambulance workers I heard the alien walk away from my door. This is where I took my chance and unlocked the door to my room and ran as fast as I could outside. On my way I dropped the knife and metal object I was holding. The ambulance workers led me into the vehicle and strapped me into the seat.

On the way to the hospital they asked me many questions which I cannot remember. This was part of the assesment that would later result in me being hospitalized.

The hospital

As the ambulance arrived at the hospital, they led me into the psychiatric emergency unit waiting room. This is where they left me. It was not the first time I had been here but it certainly was the scariest.

I was all alone there, in a poorly lit room, with a few couches to sit on. I was almost falling asleep. A nurse came into the room and asked for any identifying documents, which I did not have on me. However, they believed me when I said who I was, as they did not see a reason I would lie.

After about 20 minutes of waiting I finally got an appointment with a nurse at the unit. She asked me a couple basic questions about somatic symptoms and about suicidality. All of these were answered honestly by me as I did not have anything to hide. I was somatically healthy and I was not suicidal at the time.

The nurse eventually led me back to the waiting room, where I had to wait another 20 minutes until I got an appointment with a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist was very nice to me and asked me what had happened. I explained everything from my point of view. About me being God, about the aliens trying to kill me, about the voices they were sending to my head, and about the shadow people.

The psychiatrist evaluated me as being in the middle of a psychotic episode. They asked me whether I wanted to go home or whether I wanted to stay at the hospital. Of course, as I believed the was an alien out to get me in my house, I did not want to go back.

To the psych ward

I was led by two nurses into another department of the hospital. As there was no space in the psychiatric unit for people with psychosis, I was put into the intensive psychiatric care unit.

I was led into my own room and told to take off all my clothes. I did as instructed, even starting to take off my underwear. To which the nurses quickly told me not to do that.

I got psych ward clothes. An oversized shirt, oversized pants, gray boring socks, and an oversized sweater. I wasn't too fond of this as I liked the clothes I usually dress in.

They told me it's sleep time at the psych ward and asked me to go to sleep. They offered me sedatives to help me sleep, but I was sleepy enough to go to sleep without them. And I was slightly distrusting of the medicines they would give me.

This is the end of the second day of this story.

The next day

As I awoke I could see that my parents had been messaging me the entire night. My wife wrote to them the night prior telling them that I wasn't feeling okay and that I am at the hospital. The first thing I did was to call my parents and tell them what happened. I was slightly more lucid at the time but still believed I had been attacked by an extraterrestrial.

Luckily I was allowed to keep my phone in the psych ward. I do not know if this was special treatment for me or if that is generally allowed at the intensive care units. However a lot of other stuff was restricted as it was mostly people who are an immediate threat to themselves that are kept there. I wasn't allowed to have a phone charger as I could use the cable to hurt myself. Neither was I allowed to have soap or towels. And to shower you needed special permission to enter the shower room, which was also made to be difficult to kill yourself in.

All my belongings other than my phone were locked into a cabinet in the room that could only be unlocked by nurses with special permission or when I was leaving.

When my mother heard what happened she immediately took a day off from work. She works as an assistant nurse in the normal intensive care unit (not the psychiatric one). We planned for when she was going to visit me. This was also something that was heavily restricted. Only people very close to you were alllowed to visit and only during certain hours of the day, from around 5 pm to 8pm. And the visits were maximum an hour long.

The room I was in was not very nice looking. The windows were not translucent except at the very top so you couldn't see anything outside other than the clouds and the top of a big tree. The walls were gray and boring. The room itself was pretty small with no electrical outlets, a hospital bed, a radiator, and the cabinet where all my belongings were locked up. There were also two doors, one leading to a small personal bathroom and one leading to the hallway outside. The bathroom door could not be locked and the door to the hallway had a window on it so nurses could check on you throughout the day and night. In my confusion and uneasiness about the situation I felt kind of like a prisoner at that place. Even though I was there voluntarily and could ask the head psychiatrist to be released at any moment, I still felt very much restricted. But my wife assured me that this was the right thing for me and that it would get better.

Next thing I did after calling all my near ones was to go out into the hallway and look around a little. The nurses told me it's time to eat breakfast so I did that. Some other patients were also out of their room and eating breakfast. I took a banana, an apple, and some orange juice and went with it to my room. Patients aren't usually allowed to eat in their rooms but as I had no cutlery or plate or anything dangerous I was allowed to eat in my room. I was still new and scared and distrustful of the nurses and other patients.

The hallway was also pretty boring. It was pretty long with 12 rooms in total. I was in room 11 at the very end of the hallway. I tried walking around a bit out of boredom but the nurses told me I was only allowed at my half of the hallway. There was one bench at the end next to a barred window, and a chair in the middle of the hallway. There was also one communal room where we all ate. It had a window to look outside and wooden chairs and tables. There was also a non-functional tv behind a plastic screen. All the doors that would lead out of the hospital were locked electronically and only nurses could open them.

After I had eaten breakfast I was once again led to an ambulance to go home for a moment and pick up stuff like keys and my passport for proof of identification. I also picked up some school books I would need in the coming days as I was still in high school at the time. I was also there to close the door to my house and lock it, as I had not done that when I ran out to the ambulance the night prior.

After that we went back to the psych ward and the nurses locked my belongings in the cabinet.

The next couple hours were pretty calm. I was just in my room on my phone and texting family members about what happened. Even my grandma from Poland, who I don't talk to very often, wrote to me and wished me luck with everything that is going on.

After some hours of sitting in my room a nurse came in and told me it's time to eat dinner. I went to the communal eating room and sat down with another girl at a table. The nurses brought food and it was quite disappointing. It was unsalted boiled chicken with boiled potatoes and mushy peas. Maybe I shouldn't have expected better but it was still very displeasing. After a while of eating I started talking with the girl across the table from me. We introduced ourselves and talked a bit about why we were here. She had visible self harm scars across her entire body. She told me she was there involuntarily but that she would get out the next day and go to a rehabilitation program. I was happy for her that she would get out soon and wished her luck. We joked about how this place feels like a prison and how even prisoners are probably treated better in Sweden. The nurses were not very happy with those comments but they didn't say much in response.

I complained to my mother about the food after dinner time. She said she would bring me something better when she came to visit. And indeed she did. She brought me three cheese burek. These too I was allowed to eat in my room as no cutlery was required.

During my mother's visit we got our own room to sit in and talk. We talked for about an hour about everything that had happened, what I talked about with different people, and just some chitchat about my father.

After the hour was over a nurse came into the room and explained that my mother had to go. We got 5 more minutes to talk and round things off before she really had to leave. They said another patient was waiting to have someone visit and that there was only one visiting room.

After the meeting with my mother I went back to the usual. I went into my room and was texting people on my phone and watching various youtube videos. Eventually the nurses came in and told me it's time to go to sleep, so I tucked into bed and snoozed.

The following days

On day two at the psych ward I did everything as usual. I put on my clothes and went to eat breakfast, talked to my family a little, wrote to my wife, and hanged around the hallway. On that day I also had an important test at school. I got a meeting with the head psychiatrist at the ward and got permission to leave on my own and go to school for the test. I then also got permission to shower before and to put on my normal clothes and take my backpack and school supplies out of the locked cabinet.

At school I was pretty demoralized. The test went okay but I didn't do as great as I had hoped. Of course, no one at my school knew I was currently hospitalized in a psych ward. At school I always pretended like everything was normal and like nothing was wrong. It would be embarrasing to talk about what happened and I knew no one would've believed me about an alien attack.

After the test I went back by buss to the hospital and spent the next couple hours chilling there. Everything went as usual. We got food, which was again very displeasing, but that didn't matter to anyone. I overheard some nurses talking about how they would order some food. They were talking about pizza, chicken wraps, and kebab. It made me miss the food I usually cook or buy. But I knew that staying here was for my best and that my mother would bring me something good when she comes to visit.

When my mother came to visit me that evening she brought with her a schnitzel and french fries that she had cooked. She also brought me a bottle of coca cola. Even though I was participating in the boycott at the time she didn't know this and I didn't have the heart to tell her.

I ate and we talked a little about how it is at the ward, how restricted I felt, and about what other family members were saying about the whole situation. My father wasn't very pleased with the fact that I was at a psychiatric hospital. He was never happy that I was getting assessed for psychosis in the first place.

When my mother went home I went to the eating area to chill a little and sit down. Another patient walked by and noticed I had cola, she made a remark about how she wishes she also had some. I felt bad for her and took a glass and poured half of it into the glass and gave it to her. At first she didn't trust me and said it could be poison but eventually the nurses convinced her that it's safe and that she can drink it. She was happy and thankful that I offered some cola to her, and I also felt happy about it.

The next day was mostly a repeat of the usual. Eat breakfast, hang around the hallway, talk to my family members and wife, watch youtube, etc. This day would however turn out to be quite bad for me. I talked with my father about my experiences with psychosis. He said that someone psychotic can be very dangerous, especially when "they're running around with knives". My father asked if I could tell the doctor that he had special permission to read my entire journal and get informed of whether I am dangerous or not when I am discharged. I refused this as it felt very dehumanizing. At this time I was an adult and had a right to privacy when it came to medical things. As a response to this my father told me that I was no longer allowed in his house, esentially kicking me out. This is where I mostly cut contact with him.

The rest of the day went as usual. I was informed I would get a meeting with the head psychiatrist the next day. During the meeting we talked about me gettting transferred to another psych ward specifically for people with psychosis, as space had opened up there.

The new psych ward

The day after the meeting with the head psychiatrist at the previous ward I was taken by ambulance to the psychosis ward. I got to take all my stuff from the cabinet before leaving and got to have normal clothes. As I rode there I was scared. Scared of what the new psych ward would be like. Would it be worse? Would it be better? I had no idea.

When I entered the new psych ward I was in shock. It looked so beautiful. The floors were made out of wood, the walls were painted beautiful colours, there was a fireplace, a working tv, potted plants, comfy couches, bookshelves, paintings. It felt like I had entered heaven. As I was led to my room I was mentally preparing myself to have to give up my belongings again, including my clothes. To my surprise there was no such cabinet in the room. I asked the nurses about it and they said I can keep all my stuff as long as I don't have any medicines or anything sharp on me. This was such a relief. And the room I was led into was so beautiful. It was spacious with a big window into the garden outside. There was a normal bed, a table, a writing board, a comfy chair, a couch, a working tv. And the bathroom of the room was so big. There was soap, towels, a working shower, shower gel, shampoo, tooth paste, all that you could need.

The door to the room also had a window in this ward, and I was informed that nurses will be watching me sometimes throughout the night to make sure I'm safe. I wasn't too happy about this as I was still very paranoid. Luckily for me though this window was covered by cardboard. One of the first things I did in this room was to cover the winndow to the outside as I was scared of people watching me.