Has Anyone Been to Rehab for Depression?
Question by temitopeowosela: Has anyone been to Rehab for Depression?
I want to go to rehab to treat depression.Can anyone tell me what the experience was like? Also, can you recommend a good treatment center for me? (I live in Maryland) Is there any that is free and also provide housing? or what the cheapest a student with no job get?
Best answer:
Answer by luvacat3
I mostly have found it helpful to go inpatient. You can only go inpatient if you are really in a crisis though – like suicidal, or giving all your money away, or think you are Jesus Christ himself type crisis. Otherwise, you are expected to get your help outpatient. You may have insurance for this thru your school. Most universities/colleges require students to have insurance. Below is an essay I wrote up on this topic you are asking about:
Here is what happens in a mental hospital – First, usually it is not a seperate hospital, but a wing of a regular, community hospital. You go to the ER where you are seen by a psychiatrist after waiting a few hours, usually, depending how busy they are. In some states, there is a terrible shortage of inpatient mental beds & they may send you very far away to a hospital that has space. They give you a physical, to make sure you are OK that way. They assign you to a room. They go thru your stuff to make sure you don’t have anything sharp or anything you can hang yourself with (belt) or drugs or whatever. Then you take your stuff and put it away in your room, into a dresser, and you may or may not have a roommate. They do a personal search -most places what they do is have you change into scrubs then they go thru your clothes. If they have reason to believe you are concealing something, they may do a more thorough search.
Then you go see a psychiatrist and talk to some nurses. See a counselor. This is over a few days, on and off. You go to groups where you learn stuff. You hang out in the break room and play cards or watch TV. Every morning they take people’s blood pressure & occasionally weigh patients. Sometimes they give you a personality test, to determine if you have any personality disorders, etc. The psychiatrist will talk to you for about an hour, and then give you meds based on what he/she thinks will be most likely to help you. The staff at the hospital will find you a psychiatrist and a counselor in the community and set up appointments for you. You can take phone calls if you are not in group or meeting with a doctor or counselor or something. If you are a kid, you can only talk on the phone & visit with immediate family. Visiting hours are really limited; you get about 2 hours a day and if your family is coming from far away, that isn’t very long. After a few days, if you are reasonably stable, you can usually go outside for a walking break with staff. In my state, you can’t go outside the hospital for a smoking break anymore (no smoking on hospital grounds in MN). That is a crisis for many patients but staff give out fake cigarettes & nicotine patches.
Most people behave pretty normally. There are not many “take downs’ anymore because the law prohibits them unless a person is endangering themselves or others -it can’t be used as just discipline anymore. I did see this abused at one hospital, though, & it was very upsetting. Straightjackets are not used anymore. If a person does need to be put in restraints, a staff person must sit there and watch them continuously, I believe is the law now. Too many people have died in restraints. Some state hospital facilities are still very abusive or neglectful – in Georgia, for example, many people have died of conditions that were totally treatable, the patient complained or had obvious symptoms, and were ignored. In general, some people under suicide watch are watched continuously, but most people are checked about every 1/2 hour.
Your room is pretty normal looking – rather than bars on the windows, they have glass that I’m sure is unbreakable. There won’t be any hooks or anything that you can hang yourself on. You get a narrow plain hospital bed & a pillow, there is a dresser for you to put your stuff away, and often a desk. Most places you do get your own bathroom that you share with a roommate (but not an adjacent room like in some regular hospital rooms). You don’t get your own phone, usually you have to use one in an area near the front desk so they can watch you and be sure you don’t hang yourself with the phone cord or something.
Psychiatrists rarely seem to be interested in talking to the patient’s family, stupid in my opinion, but that does seem to be the case. If you are suicidal or really out of control, they may put a 72 hour hold on you (called different names in different places) and that doesn’t include weekends or holidays, at least in California or Minnesota, the 2 states I have been in. After that, if they still want to hold you, they have to get a court order & you can defend yourself.
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