Modern hospitals are quite safe and generally try to help the sick. Large hospitals separate patients by age and severity of condition. In general, in the department of neuroses, for the most part, there are adequate ordinary people. In the acute department there can be tough things.
They stay in the hospital from a week to two months (very rarely longer). If you are hospitalized at your own request, you can be discharged at any time! Read the law on psychiatric care in Russia.
About medications. We can talk about medications for a long time, I’ll write in detail sometime, but briefly: almost all antidepressants and tranquilizers cause addiction, but it’s quite possible to get off them! Medicines do not cure anxiety, or depression, or delirium, they relieve an acute condition and help you come to your senses so that you can figure out with a more or less fresh mind how you will continue to save yourself (spoiler: psychotherapy). Patients with severe diagnoses often take medications throughout their lives (schizophrenia, MDP, resistant depression). Patients with less dire diagnoses take antidepressants the longest (from three months, usually a year). Medicines sometimes work right away (lucky ones), usually they are selected, changed, and the dose is adjusted - this is very individual.
In the first week in the hospital, you will most likely be pumped full of antipsychotic drugs and you will sleep a lot, this is useful, the brain reboots and rests. Closer to discharge, your dose will be reduced and many will come out quite cheerful!
I think that being treated in a hospital is a good option:
- There is an opportunity to sleep as long as you like.
- There is no need to worry about daily matters.
- Medicines are selected by observing the dynamics every day, this is convenient for the doctor and you.
- You don’t need to buy different drugs and waste money on unsuitable ones in the end; after discharge, buy only what is definitely suitable.
- You will be examined by related specialists and will take blood and urine tests.
- A mental hospital is an existential place, you will think about life in a new way.
- It is possible to visit a psychotherapist for free.
I'll name the downsides:
- Almost always there are really bad living conditions: toilets have no doors and people smoke in them, the food is not tasty, leaving the territory is limited (you need permission to leave from a doctor), sharp objects and razors are strictly prohibited in the acute department, in the neurosis department they are issued upon request. medical post.
- Hospitalism is an addiction to doctors and the hospital regime; patients may begin to fear being left without the supervision of doctors.
- Stigmatization is when a label is attached that a person who has been treated by a psychiatrist, much less spent time in a hospital, is a psycho, abnormal, not like that. Often the patient himself begins to consider himself as such - this is self-stigmatization.
Notable Features:
- There are no forks and knives in the dining room, so as not to provoke intrusiveness or aggressive actions.
- All doors (except the doors to the wards) are opened with a special key, which only the staff has.
- Doctors make rounds once a week: a group of doctors walks through the wards and talks with each patient, this is a whole event for patients and nurses.
- You can contact your doctor at any time if you find one. Some doctors even give you their phone number and you can chat with them on WhatsApp about your symptoms.
- Medicines are taken on time, lining up, like in the movies.
- You can go for walks with the doctor’s permission, you can see relatives, you can use telephones (but not in all departments).
About the worst:
- Patients are not turned into zombies; large doses of drugs simply suppress activity and attention, but with decreasing dosages, activity returns.
- Psychotropic medications are not drugs, although they can cause addiction, like many other medications (blood pressure reducers, for example). Many patients have withdrawal syndrome, but it can be tolerated and the condition returns to normal.
- Some patients who are particularly resistant to drugs are given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), where a current is sent to the brain. But it is not painful (anesthesia) and not dangerous, certainly not more dangerous than suicide from depression. I know people who have had these procedures and they are fine!
- No one will report to your work that you were treated in a mental hospital or a psychiatric hospital, unless the entry on the sick leave sheet gives you away.
How things work in a psychiatric hospital
— I am in a psychiatric hospital with depression. There are many people here with the same diagnosis. There is a huge aquarium in the corridor. The girl from the next room buried her face in him, was silent for a long time and said: “Fish... ******** [good] for you, fish,” - this is how Tatyana begins her story.
This tweet received more than 11 thousand likes and reposts and inspired the girl to create a whole thread about treatment in a psychiatric hospital - in the department of nervous disorders.
The first stereotype that Tatyana debunks concerns safety. No violent patients or straitjackets like in the movies.
- It's safe here. Everyone on my ward suffers from depression and anxiety. All sad, but not dangerous. There was only one case in a month when a dude was kicked out of the men's ward for masturbating on his neighbors. Apparently, he was jealous of the success of their therapy,” writes Tatyana.
The second stereotype is that treatment for depression in a clinic necessarily costs a fortune. Actually this is not true. The state pays for a month of hospital stay.
— I am at the institute named after. Bekhterev in St. Petersburg. The first visit to a psychotherapist is free of charge. If he says that you need to go to bed, you can choose paid hospitalization or budget. I'm on a budget. The state pays for a month of stay. While you are in the hospital, everything is free. Further visits to the doctor are paid, says Tatyana
But the food, as in many Russian hospitals, is very bad. But it's free.
“The food here is simply terrible.” It's impossible to eat. Make some friends before you come here. So that someone would bring normal food,” writes Tanya.
The third stereotype is that you cannot use technology and leave the territory. Actually this is not true. Tatyana emphasizes that the conditions of hospitalization depend on the diagnosis.
— They don’t take away equipment here. Visits are allowed every day. You are not put in a straitjacket. You are free to leave the area. We have depression, not schizophrenia. We want to kill ourselves, not others. Everyone understands that if you take away our phones, we will do it even faster,” Tatyana writes. “It’s quiet, calm and unbearably boring here.” So before you go to bed, subscribe to Netflix and load up on books. Then you will say thank you.
But the place where the hospital is located really does not contribute much to recovery.
— It’s very gloomy on the hospital grounds. Bare trees, gray buildings with bars, a huge pile of crows. Through their croaking one can hear: “You are a nonentity.” Force yourself to get out into the city at least once a week,” the girl writes.
Road by stage
If there is a local connection, there must be an intercity connection. And he is. Communication between FSIN institutions is established in stages. Convicts take “malyavs” with them (
