Options Behavioral Health System

My personal experience with the inpatient program was a complete waste of time. I was admitted on a Thursday night, and Friday we spent the day with a mental health tech who, while very kind, didn’t seem that helpful. I was there to seriously concentrate on making my life better and learning all I could, but they told us that they usually don’t do anything on weekends! I was told the techs are supposed to do programming with us no matter what, but on both days the woman and then a man that were accompanying us said either «I don’t do programming, so we’re just going to hang out today» and «Well we can just consider this our session today» after sitting around talking. The environment truly made me feel like I was in jail, having to get the bathroom unlocked to go pee, I was on my period and I had to use a cup and throw away my tampons in the front office every time, they kept all of our hygiene items locked up. The absolutely worst part was the rooms. If you look at their webpage, they show you a great picture of a room with 2 beds, nice blankets, decorations, towels, etc. Well, I don’t know which unit has that but it certainly wasn’t the adult unit. We had about a 4 inch foam pad on a hard table, a non-​fitted sheet on top, plastic pillows, and those hospital blankets. There wasn’t anything in the room except the beds and a set of shelves for each patient. In the unit it was ALWAYS freezing, I walked around with the blanket off of my bed because you couldn’t sit in the common area without being cold. Not only that, but on my second night there I asked for another blanket (I already had two, still cold!) and the guy told me he couldn’t give me one. I thought he was kidding! He said we’re only supposed to have one, but he would overlook that I had two. By the end of my stay, there were literally four of those blankets on my bed.
Besides the living arrangements, most of the time there were only four people in the whole unit, and only one of them could speak! And there’s not much of a group discussion when the other guy really loves to disagree with every single thing the tech or counselor would say. The techs were mostly very kind, but one lady said she had never been in that unit, another guy said he rarely is there. It’s like they are just babysitters for the adults, when they are supposed to lead groups to teach us coping skills and such.
Day 2 I asked the doctor to go home, because it felt really useless and that I couldn’t sleep and all the groups sucked. He asked me to stay until the next day so they could get me started on meds. I said fine, because I WANT to get myself fixed up. He started a new medication, and the next day I said OK now can I go home? And he said no, that he couldn’t write me a prescription unless I stayed until Monday. He also said that he would try to get me into a more one-​on-​one setting with the therapist. I did see her, and she was great, but I only got to see her once.
I checked myself into this hospital after combing through the website and deciding it was time to take time off of work and get myself taken care of. However, this seems to be a pseudo-​jail for violent people, because most of the patients were forced to check in there.
My experience was a huge waste of time and money. The ONLY good things I got out of it were 1. a prescription for new meds and 2. the knowledge that it could always get worse – like having to live at that place.