Perks of going to the Psych Ward

yeah super embarrassing we were like two golden retrievers but what do you expect from her first kiss right what was yours like come on why not yeah you both haven't had your first kiss wouldn't it be cute hey no kissing don't maybe split you up I'll put Boys on one side of the room and girls on the other do it half of us are gay Susan I'm so sorry have have you never had your no I have yeah it's just um well hello my name is Alyssa and I have been admitted to a mental health hospital multiple times throughout my life and I think I'm finally ready to talk about that experience I feel like there's a weird double standard when it comes to how we talk about mental health I'll see things all the time on social media that say depression is ugly be kind you never know what someone else is going through and then two posts down there's a viral video of an unhoused person clearly in crisis but everyone is just laughing at them this sort of thinking has even made its way to Hollywood I'll get so excited to see some new horror movie until I realize that it's just another boo mentally unwell person is scary and don't even get me started on the I spent 24 hours in a haunted insane asylum challenge like me too dude but we just played ping pong and it wasn't even haunted I just feel like the general public has the wrong impression of psychiatric hospitals and the people there which is super damaging considering facilities like this save lives every day so I'm here to do my part to help fix it a psychiatric hospital is slightly different from a regular Hospital the biggest difference being the reason you're admitted there are two types of admission the first is voluntary which is where you go to the emergency room and say hi um I don't feel safe can you please help me and they go oh okay good job coming here uh here's a tuna sandwich we'll be right with you and the second is involuntary which is where your doctor or psychiatrist feels you're at grave risk to yourself or others so they write you a note and send you to the hospital when you don't want to go speaking from my own experience those kinds of admissions can be tough it made me feel crazy like I wasn't human anymore but some kind of feral animal that needed to be locked up because if you've never been through it before and don't understand what's going on the admission process can feel strange so to help ease your anxiety allow me to explain how my first involuntary admission went I was only 13 Going on 14 at the time and I wasn't allowed to take much in with me the hospital will usually collect things like your phone your keys and your wallet and they'll hold on to them until you're discharged you know to keep it all safe and they won't let you in with certain clothing anything with drawstrings shoelaces metal accents or wires and they do this to keep you and everyone else in the hospital safe but that doesn't leave you with much so you end up in a hospital gown and grippy socks but to be fair these socks are the comfiest things I have ever worn in my entire life and they last forever so that's a perk like I said I was pretty young back then I had just started my first week of high school and I was terrified of my classmates finding out that Alyssa was sent to an asylum I wanted to be at the pep rallies and the football games yet here I was on a Friday night peeing in a cup eating pizza that somehow tasted like nothing laying on an indestructible bed it was literally a giant eraser and watching the same two episodes of Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta on TLC for six hours straight as they waited for a doctor to transfer me from the ER into the facility so if I wasn't clinically troubled before I definitely was now keep in mind this admission was over 10 years ago but my point is here in the United States Mental Health Care still has a long way to go it isn't taken seriously so it isn't well funded and because of that the hospital I stayed in only had 10 beds and I'm sure there are more than 10 people in crisis at any given moment I'm lucky there's even space for me to complain and live to tell the tale because things used to be a lot worse historically what we know as insane asylums we're not at all a place for those struggling with mental health to seek Asylum or receive help instead they were used as a place to discard and hide away whatever people your community your family or the police simply didn't like having around I won't go into the details of how horrific conditions were back then but I will tell you things didn't change until something called the moral treatment movement began so to reiterate the scariest part about 24-hour abandoned insane asylum challenge is the lack of empathy a person would have to make visiting a historical site of systemic oppression about them and not the victims and although conditions have improved immensely over the years our attitudes obviously haven't so again the scariest part about these hospitals will always be being the patient yourself wait isn't there supposed to be a doctor with like a like a big scary needle and then they throw me in a room with pillows and sedate me or something uh no if you have trouble sleeping we can give you melatonin gummies oh okay no thanks I'm good ugh it's a little uncomfortable but I guess I can whoa robot robot bed explained to me I'd have my own little spot then ensuite bathroom a view of the city and a knockoff Tempur-Pedic mattress to lull me to sleep every night maybe I wouldn't have gotten so worked up about this place seriously though it was just a hospital and I got lucky because the facility I went to was attached to a college that meant more funding nicer facilities better food not by much but hey they had mac and cheese and I was even able to technically transfer through their school system and have my missing assignments sent to me the only catch though was uh uh hello oh hi sorry don't mind us we're just observing you're observing yes observing we're psychology Majors oh okay so you're just gonna stand there and watch me like I'm a betta fish in a pet store cup Illy get over yourself how else do you expect them to learn oh I don't know maybe by not taking notes on me as I go through one of the hardest times of my life I was sent here to ReDiscover my will to live not be the pitiful protagonist of someone's college essay like they're already making me do macaroni art the least they can do is let me pick my pasta with dignity but I digress I don't know it just felt like a weird tourist attraction the students barely talk to us their Professor only talked about us in front of us and it was clear they were all scared to get too close or make eye contact for too long like I said mental health care and our attitudes still have a long way to go and this was only my first day I was informed I'd be staying there for at least a week so I had to figure out how to keep busy stay sane and make sure I could get out do you think if we took one of their badges they would notice no yeah I doubt it but you wouldn't get far because you need that key to get down the elevator ugh figures we'd have to plan an escape like those fish in Finding Nemo dude I love that movie another thing I was terrified of too was the other patients I'll admit it TV shows and movies had me expecting I'd be rooming with a Teenage Mutant Ninja murderer and of course all it took wasn't awkward so what are you in for to realize every kid in here is just as scared as you are I wouldn't call any of those kids I met crazy I'd call them my friends hey no jokes about escaping it's not a joke Susan majority of nurses at these places super cool super sweet Absolute Angels sent by God herself to restore my faith in humanity and slide me some Fritos from the vending machine when the hospital runs low on snacks but I'll be honest every now and then you'll get a Susan it's obvious she only took this job for a power trip she'll talk down to you like a toddler she'll revoke your TV privileges for not taking the aforementioned macaroni art assignment seriously ugh as she knows nothing of Fine Art and if you're unlucky enough to have her assigned as your designated nurse for daily check-ins she'll say things like just choose happiness I would if I could Susan I would if I could thankfully though if this also happens to you you can request a different nurse I don't know I wouldn't want to be a bother you will request a different nurse look normally I'm the last person you'd ever expect to advocate for themselves but that just goes to show how some annoyances have a powerful way of trumping social anxiety because at the end of the day A bad nurse will tick you off but a good nurse will make all the difference my new nurse who I'll just call Maria was a young woman probably in her late 20s or early 30s and what made her a great nurse was that she actually listened to and advocated for us when we were feeling horrible and hopeless we could cry it out with her girl or guy and she never judged us when we missed an activity she made sure to do every everything in her power to get that therapy dog to visit us for round two and if we ever had to be admitted a second time a third time even a fourth Maria would always be there with open arms she never made you feel like a burden for needing help she made you feel like a person again so if you're thinking about getting into this line of work please take it from me don't be a Susan be a Maria eventually my week was up I was discharged given antidepressant medication to take and a therapist to check in with and sent back to school as if nothing ever happened though to my surprise people did notice my absence even people I rarely talked to asked where I was and if everything was okay a girl I hadn't talked to since fifth grade baked me a cake and brought it to my house while I was gone so again speaking from experience please believe me when I tell you people will care if you disappear one day they will notice they will miss you more than you will ever know back then I wasn't ready to talk about where I actually was so instead I just told people oh yeah I was um really sick uh it was pneumonia I had it once when I was really little and I guess it just came back and got really bad um I was in the hospital for like a week but they had like a school program there so that's why it says I transferred but I didn't really and yeah I felt bad lying to people especially my friends but I felt worse knowing how they'd respond if I had told them the truth being admitted to a psychiatric hospital became this shameful dark secret I hid within me for years it became a stain on my transcript I had to awkwardly explain to teachers and later professors it was a disappointing checkbox to tick whenever I switched doctors and had to give them my medical history but most of all it was the growing fear of the look on other people's faces when I'd inevitably tell them yeah I went to one of those not too long ago which is why I was surprised and relieved to see how much things have changed since I was admitted over 10 years ago I can't be the only one who's come across the tick tocks of patients doing dance Trends with their nurses or talking about what they eat in a day and opening up about what these stigmatized facilities are actually like The Good the Bad and the Ugly it's not an easy conversation to have let alone start I really could have benefited from seeing positive posts like this when I was younger I definitely wouldn't have been so scared and it was posts like these that ultimately gave me the courage to write this video as well as to remember no one should feel ashamed for being sad and needing help in 2019 I was really going through it to say the least I was the new kid on YouTube and some people in this vast Community didn't like that they doubted my story they questioned my success and they spread very harmful and serious rumors about me this not only made all my new friends wary of me it led to them abandoning me to avoid the drama because if anyone stood up for me they would also become a target of gossip and eventually ostracized by the time I heard what people were saying about me it made me paranoid anxious and overall it destroyed me from the inside out so in August 2019 I voluntarily admitted myself into a psychiatric facility here in California for three days but I was so ashamed at the time that I didn't tell anyone not my team of artists not my managers not even my own roommate I lied and told her I'd just be gone for a couple days and I left and if anyone asked I simply had a family emergency when I was discharged I started working on rediscovering the courage I needed to confront this person and thankfully within a few months my real friends returned to me apologized and defended me we've since rebuilt our friendships and they're stronger than ever and when I look back now I'm so proud of my younger self for doing all that she did because frankly I wouldn't be alive to tell you this story had I not admitted myself that day seeking help doesn't make you a burden it doesn't make you an attention seeker you're not being over dramatic or too sensitive what you're feeling is real it's sad and it's scary so please take it from me if I can do it I know you can too thank you for watching this video please check out the helpful links Below in the description and as always stay safe people care about you

Channel: illymation

Views: 5,432,141

Keywords: illymation, illymations, illyanimation, illystrations, storytime animation, animated storytime, animation, illymation real life, illymation face reveal, illymation ex, illymation boyfriend, illymation abusive boyfriend, illymation song, illymation animal crossing, illymation vidcon, illymation cat, illymation luigi, hospital stories, psych ward stories, mental health education

Id: xAlV1hsdPB4

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2023