The Flawed System of Psychiatric Wards: My Year in Lockdown
Over a year of my life has been spent locked up in psychiatric wards. Not because I wanted help, but because the system decided I needed it. Five times I was institutionalized, each stay lasting two to three months. And each time, the experience was the same: cold, clinical, and utterly dehumanizing. When you arrive, they strip everything from you. Your possessions, your phone, your access to the outside world—they take it all away. They pat you down, remove any sense of individuality, and throw you into a locked ward filled with people struggling as much, if not more, than you are. The wards feel like prisons. You can’t leave. You can’t smoke, no matter how much your body craves it. You’re monitored constantly, like a specimen in a glass tank. The showers are cold, the environment sterile, and the doctors visit you for 10 minutes every few days, just long enough to adjust your medications and move on. They don’t listen. They don’t care. If you don’t agree with their decisions, you’re ...