Editor’s note: This story discusses self-harm. If you or someone you know is in crisis call or text 988 to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7. The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.  

Who’d know a place to make me feel better would make me feel worse? 

During the worst point of my life, after getting the ambulance called on me, I was brought to a hospital for mental care and evaluation. The ambulance would later send me to a mental health facility, where the treatment did the opposite of helping me.  

That week felt so long and dreadful, and my experiences were traumatic. There were multiple things that went down that I’m surprised even happened. Like staff yelling and insulting patients, or physical fighting between staff and patients. 

Now I’m mostly over it, but it took forever to get to this point. I was already at the worst point of my life and I had to climb out of it mainly by myself, but I also got help from friends and family.

Mental health centers need to be reevaluated because of the harsh treatment of patients, harsh working conditions, mental and physical abuse, and lack of availability for people to go in to be treated.

According to “Patient Safety In Inpatient Psychiatry: A Remaining Frontier For Health Policy,” it states how “Universal Health Services [have] seen numerous facilities come under local and federal investigation for issues related to abuse, neglect, and fraud while maintaining a profit margin of over 20 percent for psychiatric services.”

Based on my own experiences and knowledge, I agree. 

Many horror stories and incidents happen, but due to the lack of oversight or inability of people to foresee the care, it’s hard to hold most mental facilities accountable professionally. 

According to Utah psychiatric hospital to shut down after years of safety concerns exposed by FOX 13 Investigates,  a for-profit psychiatric hospital shut down after “years of discipline and patient safety concerns.”

Instead of shutting the hospital down beforehand, the state just kept revoking the hospital’s license. According to the article, the hospital had multiple assault and sexual assault cases and only got shut down due to the multitudes of people speaking up. 

Also, there’s a clear lack of availability for people to get into said facilities. According to the AAMC Research Institute, “more than one-fifth of U.S. adults (21%, 52.9 million) had a mental illness in 2020.” That being said, adults without insurance would have to pay a hefty amount of money to get into mental health centers. And also, people with insurance still had issues, like a lack of available providers accepted or a lack of insurance coverage.   

Also, the government is just not paying nearly enough attention to these issues.  The Utah hospital used the government’s lack of care to their advantage, and continuously swept these issues under the rug. When the government stepped in too they kept temporarily revoking the hospital’s license and didn’t really do much to help prevent the numerous issues going on. There’s a clear pattern going on with the government’s involvement.

Another thing wrong with behavioral health centers is the fact it can be used as a “punishment” to teens instead of a resource. Many teens with mental health struggles who may act out have had this used against them. Primarily from parents, they may use this as a loose threat to get children to behave. 

I can see a possible point of view of a parent doing this. Like how they feel as if they have to to get their child to behave. Yet, something as serious as a mental health center should never be a loose threat, especially to a mentally unwell child or teenager. And for people like social workers or therapists, if they are threatening these places to mentally unwell teens, they have to know how bad it can be by at least a fraction. I’m not saying to make behavioral health centers fun, but it shouldn’t be filled with dread.

Now, for the people who think that not all behavioral centers are like this, it’s still a big deal. Although yes, they aren’t all awful, there are still plenty that are. If it was so easy for the Utah hospital to sweep it under the rug, imagine the others that can do the same. Also, this multitude of bad ideologies and problems shouldn’t be associated with mental hospitals and behavioral health centers. It’s a place intended to care for mentally unwell children, teens and adults and there shouldn’t be this many issues. 

There is little to no coverage in this kind of issue, but there are still some. In the Netflix documentary “The Program,” it shares traumatic stories of survivors of a mental health camp Ivy Ridge. It shares how parents were intrigued to send their students off because of the seemingly fun and still therapeutic environment the patients can have. How wrong that would be.

In the documentary, there were teens sleeping on bare mattresses on the floor, keeping bathroom stalls open even if you’re not suicidal, prohibiting speaking for hours on end, punishments for simply looking out a window and so much more.

Hearing all of this in a weird way I’m not even surprised. All though stuff not in that extreme occurred in my experience, the prohibiting speaking, outrageous punishments and the mattresses on the floor did occur.

If I were the President of the United States in an ideal, perfect world, I would make sure that the staff weren’t awful to patients, that the food wasn’t the bare minimum, I would make sure there was more oversight on these centers. Also, I would make sure that most people can have access to mental health care. 

There’s not a whole lot we can really do but bringing this up online and contacting (email, phone) mayors, council, or even other important local people can at least bring this to their minds. Also posting about it or sharing posts about it can spread awareness to other people online. 

There are serious issues going on in the mental health world and it needs to come to the light. And it’s hard to spread awareness about a topic that isn’t so widespread. But putting in some effort for this serious issue is needed, and change needs to happen as soon as possible. 

Opinions expressed are those of the writer.  These views may not represent those of the adviser; of the Trail staff as a whole; of the Trail’s advertisers; of the administration, faculty or staff of McIntosh High School; of Fayette County Public Schools or of the FCBOE School Board members.