Posted by yxibow on November 4, 2008, at 1:14:55
In reply to Psych Hospitalizations Agree or Diagree?, posted by Phillipa on November 4, 2008, at 0:46:19
Unless you're in dire straits and have an actual plan to commit suicide, the psychiatric ward of a hospital is not the best place to be therapeutically.
It's not just whether there is enough nursing staff to attend to your needs or the quality of the place, although those are variables -- its that you're taken from a familiar environment and placed in a situation where you feel even more like a patient than someone working with their limitations and solving ways to cope with an illness.
You don't have much access to family, which if you aren't estranged from them is an important part of the healing process, any friends you have, the views of the city you live in, depending on whether they have a typical program of exercise and arts and crafts, etc.
It may be a place where medication management that can't be done by several psychiatrists that you've already seen to be adjusted but that's about the extent I would say.
And of course the state 14 day holds and the like, there's nothing you can do about that, but that's mostly about appeared agressive behaviour on the streets or attempted suicide.
And attempted suicide does not always end up in a ward anyhow if you are determined not to be a harm to yourself and are released after being seen because it can just be ideation.
The days of long stay state hospitals in the US ended in the 60s and 70s.
What I had for treatment for severe OCD would not be possible today, not just for insurance reasons which is a major one still, but the length is just not seen.
Which is why -- and I don't like to single out people, I am surprised at the 120 day stay that Jeroen is experiencing in a Western country. But it may be different in Europe.
Schizophrenia and related disorders are ones where you do see longer stays -- generally more at Veterans' Hospitals I think, I'm not sure.
The cost of housing someone who can't afford it (i.e. someone homeless on the streets) would be similar to any hospital day rate, which can be up to $5k a day, depending on whether the person also has to spend time in the ICU for methanol poisoning.
And then once the "danger" is over, you see people back out on the streets and the same people are seen back in the hospital again some day later. This is something pretty common in this area, its sad to say. There are pilot half way apartments that have been tried with some success but people have NIMBY attitudes of them being built next to them.
-- Jay
poster:yxibow
thread:860689
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081027/msgs/860694.html