Life on a Mental Health Ward: First few days
We began a tale of mental wards the last time. One never gets used to being in a mental/psychiatric hospital. Every stay is a new experience. It is also another detour in one’s desperate escape from the enemy of mental illness.
All types of mental health ailments are represented in the ward with people at various stages of recovery (or at least were in those times). There were patients sectioned under the Mental Health Act and voluntary patients like myself.
This can be a little discomforting for some people who are surrounded by others who they think are the actual ‘weirdos’ or properly mad ones! The irony of a mental health ward, indeed; discrimination and stigma even within the circles of those mentally ill themselves is just as real.
The ward itself consists of several individual rooms for each patient. My room was very simple, basic and very sparse. Nothing exciting, nothing bright or cheerful. A bed, table and wardrobe, the latter probably signalling ‘long stays catered for’! I wondered if a prison was more endearing than this. There was a window but it probably was sealed for our safety. The only times I was ever disturbed there was when I was due for medication or had a visit from the consultants.
My early days in the mental ward consisted of sleep, sleep and more sleep. With hindsight what had been going on in my mind had drawn most of my energy and made me physically weak. Intense mental energy can be very draining. It saps all your energy and makes one listless.
I guess the policy may have been to allow patients to rest as much as possible and reduce all that mental electrictiy! I do not remember eating or washing myself for a while. Now, this just shows the indignity of mental illness and any serious illness for that matter. And this is why it is so painful for the mentally ill where stigma is concerned, as who would choose to wear these shoes?
Thankfully, the nightmare on this occassion did not last forever. I finally regained ‘consciousness’ into the land of the sane and living. It was a slow emergence though, but at least I was coming out of the maze.
I was so happy to get moving around the ward. It was like learning to walk all over again, taking purposeful steps and moving somehow like some zombie. I guess the heavy dosage of the drugs administered made my movements desperately like one doing a moon walk. It would take a further week for me to be strong enough to be taken for supervised walks in the grounds outside the ward.
Being in a mental ward was an experience of a home being a workplace for me. The ward was home to those of us on admission but a workplace for the nurses. It would also take me a while to work out who were the nurses and who were the patients. There was always a nurse for each common area in casual clothes monitoring patients and their interactions.
I was later told by a friend who used to be a mental health nurse that patients were not to be threatened by the appearance of medical staff in white. Makes sense now…
Next time the tale continues….
Have you had an experience as a patient or visitor in a mental ward? Please share with us…
Blessings
x
About The Author
