Acute Psychiatric Care

 Let's say that you are deemed a danger to yourself or others and the facility or a loved one or someone else call 911 and you get taken to the hospital.  What is it that you can expect?

1) Well for starters you will be stripped down and all your clothing removed (except for underwear. You will have a hospital gown and that is it.

2) You will be placed in a room with only a mattress (sometimes no bed frame and just the mattress on the floor)

3) You will be locked in a small room with no windows or a very, very thin window and have magnetic locks on the door.  There is no going out.

4)  The bathroom is a separate room. With just a toilet and sink and most of the rooms you are in will not have a call bell and it will be at the discretion of staff to let you out to relieve yourself when they want.  Banging on ur door does not work to get staff attention as this is a common occurrence in the er and most nurses ignore you because of that.

5) There are usually 3 or 4 rooms with magnetic locks beside each other in the emergency room.  They usually have one security guy who periodically checks people in the rooms. He is usually sitting or standing outside the rooms.

6)  It will be incredibly boring and you will have a hard time to find things to do to pass the time.  The staff do not allow you to have cell phones or electronics in the room and most of the time no pens either.  People have hurt themselves with pens before.  I found myself folding dream catchers and paper airplanes.  I would tear the paper into tiny squares and play solitaire with them trying to hop one square over the other.  But honestly you can only do this so long and then you are bored again.  If you were lucky you got a magazine to read from the staff.