when people hear “recovery neutral” or “recovery apathetic” they immediately assume that the person means that they simply don’t want to get better or maybe that they actively want to worsen their disorders. however, in my experience, those who are against recovery usually aren’t against it for flippant reasons. most of the people i’ve met who are somewhere on the neutral to negative spectrum of opinion on recovery have experienced profound abuse at the hands of the people that claimed to be on their side, trying to help them.
my experience with recovery was, for the most part, pretty mild. compared to what people i know have experienced at the hands of the mental health system, i was treated rather well. however, my experience in the mental health system drove home one majorly important lesson: you never want to be in the mental health system if you can avoid it.
for most mentally ill people, the idea of being in the system actively is not one they associate with healing or safety. we typically associate hospitalisation with profound agency loss, systemic abuse, and feelings of being trapped.
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in the past when i’ve been in the hospital, i was in an involuntary ward after taking painkillers with alcohol. the first thing they did at the hospital was they put me in a dark room with a girl who had been restrained and was tied to her bed. this girl was, understandably, very distressed and was screaming and crying. i did not blame her or have negative feelings towards her, but i did feel sort of as though i was intruding on someone’s private moment. like it seemed very insensitive to put someone in there with her both for my sake and hers.
eventually someone realised i was there. i don’t know how long it took for them to remember me. there were no windows and only one door and it was dark so i couldn’t read the clock. but eventually they moved me to a different room where i could have some peace while i waited for a bed in a ward.
i was there for more than 12 hours, during which the nurses refused to give several other patients that were in for mental health reasons their medications, stating that they “needed to be seen by a psychiatrist” before they could get their heart burn medications or whatever physical thing was killing them at that moment in time.
i figured out right away that being here was not going to be good for my mental health and that my primary objective was to be as compliant as possible and pretend to get better so that i could go home.
one might see the problem with the message that was sent there: i didn’t believe that the hospital would help me, both because i witnessed the hospital denying care to others but also because i was mostly ignored, regardless of what i may or may not have needed, due to my compliant behaviour. it became clear that this wasn’t a place of healing, but a place of containment, where the “crazy” would go to ensure that they didn’t make the public too uncomfortable with their “sickness.”
when they finally got me a bed, i learned quickly that the only healing i would be finding in this hospital was shallow and required as little effort on the part of the staff as possible. at the time, i was still relatively psychotic and wouldn’t come out of my break for a few more months. so my insight was relatively poor and i refused medication to the best of my ability, which the nurses elected to make fun of me for because a patient with poor insight and paranoia is certainly going to react well to being mocked.
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my parents and then-partner came to visit while i was there. and it is important to this story that you know that the nurse involved actually is friends with my parents. my parents decided to bring me some takeout as a little pick me up since i was in the hospital.
now it’s also important to acknowledge that my father eating food off of my plate was a sore spot for my entire life. like this man just saw my food as an extension of his and would eat off my plate without even asking. not only do i find that disgusting (keep your mouth germs to yourself you gross old man) but also who the fuck does that? anyway, i digress.
my parents brought me spring rolls, yay, my favourite. (i don’t mean that to sound so apathetic. they really are my favourite.) and my dad just sits down at the table and starts eating my food in front of me.
naturally, after 20 years of having my food stolen to the point where i started instantly rejecting any food that he touched as a way to enforce boundaries, i fucking lost my shit and asked for him to please be removed because i didn’t want him here and it was hurting what minimal recovery i could have possibly accessed in such an environment.
the nurse who, again, was friends with my parents decided that i was the problem because i wanted to eat my own food without having to have to share it with someone who didn’t ask and wasn’t invited to eat with me. she told me to “practice gratitude” because you’re supposed to be grateful when your boundaries are repeatedly stomped on because “your parents looooove you”. Fuck you bitch, I hope you read this and I hope it offends you.
You are the most tone deaf, brain dead, stupid fucking bitch I have ever met and the fact that they let you into a psych ward is a fucking crime against humanity. You are not a safe person to have around mentally ill people. You cannot distinguish between a patient who is safe to interact with and one who is a conflict of interest. (prioritising my dad’s feelings over my treatment is insane and you should feel fucking ashamed that you ever spoke to me like that. You are a sick fucking bitch and you should have your license revoked.)
overall, i spent approximately 5 total minutes with a psychiatrist who prescribed me nothing because i had mastered the “compliant and better” act so well that no one figured out anything was wrong with me. (incompetent fools.)
so basically my experience with treatment was… that i didn’t get treatment. i was locked away for 5 days, received no meaningful intervention, the staff mostly just ignored me because i wasn’t a problematic patient who required major intervention, and all i really did was continuously consume food i was allergic to (which they made no effort to keep away from me), i was only allowed to shower once in the five days i was there, and i just sat around biding my time until i could return to my life exactly as i was before i came in but now with a healthy distrust of the mental health system.
and my experience, for what it’s worth, is extremely mild. i didn’t experience severe abuse at the hands of the staff and i know this is partly because i was highly compliant but i don’t think you should have to perform remission to reach the basic respect of not being abused by the people claiming to be trying to help you.
the reason mental health issues often become pervasive, consuming, and chronic is because the treatment for mental instability is not conducive to sustained healing. the only message that patients in inpatient mental health treatment learn is that they are powerless against a system that does not value their dignity. so they learn to avoid it. i learned to avoid it. i’ve learned what i can and can’t say. who i can and can’t be open with. i’ve learned to heal my cuts so that i can pretend the scars are old. i’ve learned to how to convincingly play the part of an innocent young man who didn’t know what she was doing when she said all those shocking things and is really very sorry for the disturbance. how to hide my symptoms and appear normal to avoid having my freedom taken away. and i shouldn’t have to. because treatment shouldn’t be a punishment, but it is right now, and that’s a problem.