by Tracy R. Walsh
Taking a page from Nellie Bly, the psychiatrist who blogs as “Simple Citizen” spent a day as an inpatient at the adolescent Residential Treatment Center where he ordinarily works:
I first learn how boring the morning is, and how many times you get woken up. First they shine a flashlight on you every 15 minutes during the night to make sure you are still in bed, alive, and not hurting yourself or trying to commit suicide. Then the phlebotomist wakes up anyone who needs their blood drawn for labs that have been ordered. (likely by me)
Then we get woken up again by the sound of “med-pass” when all the kids who take morning medications have to go to the nurse one by one, take their pills, swallow, open their mouths and move their tongues all around to show that they really swallowed and didn’t “cheek” the pill. Then it’s shower time. I have to push the button every 25 seconds to keep the hot water coming, and there is no bathroom door or shower door – there are curtains only. The curtains are only held up by Velcro, so you couldn’t use them to hang yourself.
After a day in the facility, he concludes:
I see how residential treatment can help. I also see how it can drive you up the wall, make you want to scream, and leave you overweight and out of shape when you leave after 90 days. I can see how it seems pointless at times. I felt a little bit of the helplessness these kids must feel, and that was even knowing that I wasn’t really locked in there. How would it be to spend 90 days there? How about 180 days like some kids I’ve seen? Or worse – be told you’re going to Disneyland with a short stop on the way and then find out your parents lied to you and they’ve admitted you to a locked psychiatric facility? (It’s happened multiple times.)
Dinah Miller praises this type of experiment while noting its limitations:
I don’t believe these experiences are anything like the real thing, nor do I believe they are meant to be. For one thing, the person having them has not gone through the lifetime of events, traumas, distresses that led the inmate or patient to be in those places. Or in the case of the patient, the doctor also is not experiencing both the internal discomfort that comes with the mental illness, or the side effects which come with the medications, or the emotional upheaval that comes from having been left there by their family … Still, I like that these people did this, it’s good that they want to try to understand what their charges are going through. Even if it’s not a complete understanding, it still acknowledges that the condition is different with a willingness to see and understand what the other is going through, for better or for worse.
The Dish 