What was good about the hospital?

• It seems to have gotten Rye out of the manic state that he was in.  He now takes 1000 mg of Depakote a day and can take Seroquel 25 mg at night as needed and from this his mind and body seem to function at a regular speed.  He is slower now and his mind seems to function with more purpose.  He now seems to want to do the right thing and make healthy choices vs. being drawn like a magnet to dangerous things and dangerous choices.  He seems to be able to think things through better and can regroup faster when he gets off course.    He is no longer on self destruct.
• It gave us all a break from the chaotic lifestyle and pressured speed we were all starting to function at to accommodate Rye.  It made Don and I realize how much we were enabling Rye to stay in a manic state and were enabling his bad choices.
• It gave us a chance to realize Rye needs a weekly therapist in addition to the psychiatrist he sees for medicines.  That he needs talk therapy once a week and med checks about once a month.  And he needs a male therapist that is pretty tough.  Someone he can’t manipulate and someone he feels comfortable talking to and whose suggestions he will listen to.
• It made Don and I realize that Rye needs much more structured time.  He is going to need to be kept very busy with structured activities.

What was bad about the hospital?

• The hospital Rye was in was exactly like a children’s version of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’.  It was all about control at any cost and there was a Nurse Ratched on every shift.  Honest to God.  A couple of these women even looked like her and had that same cold, calculated, sadistic type personality and demeanor.  Super creepy.
• Rye was never allowed outside or off the unit (which was very small to being with).  He went 2 weeks with no real exercise or outside air or any healthy, physical way for his body to move the meds through his system or to release tension and anxiety except deep breathing.
• The staff did not do any of the testing they said they were going to do.  They had him there for 10 days and the only test they did was an IQ test, which said his IQ was normal.  That was the extent of the educational testing.
• The hospital (University teaching hospital that claims to be very ‘up’ on the recent research) claims to have a behavioral based program.  This translated into the minimization of the effects of medication, no matter what the diagnosis, and blaming the child and/or parents for all behaviors the child exhibited even if the child was psychotic.   They felt a good behavior plan at home could fix everything.  And the social worker and nurses made that very clear.
• The behavior plan they utilized on the unit, however, consisted of making the child stay in their room for most of the day and punishing them if they came out when not ‘authorized’ to.  Overuse of two padded, locked rooms on the unit in which they would lock the child when they did not follow directions.  They did this to my son at least 3 different times and I saw them put a tiny 4 year old girl in there for an hour one evening and let her scream and cry the whole time simply because she would not eat her dinner – and then they were super nice to the mom the next night when she was there to visit and my guess is never told the mom about the previous evening.
• The other part of their behavior program is they PRN medicate the children whenever they don’t follow directions.   My son was almost held at the hospital an additional 3 days to monitor what they called an adverse reaction to a medication (Seroquel).  It turned out they had actually overdosed him and given him 3 times the dose they were supposed to in addtion to large doses of benadryl.  So, it wasn’t an adverse reaction.  It was an overdose.  By their staff.  And they overdosed him again the next day after the ‘adverse reaction’ as well and even added Ativan on top of it all then and kept him in his room all day so they didn’t notice that he was basically incoherant until I got there and demanded they discharge him immediately.  When I took him home on Friday it took him until Saturday to be able to form a coherant thought or conversation and until Sunday to calm down enough to resemble his real self (we stopped the Seroquel for a couple of days to let the overdose work it’s way out of his system).
• The doctors have no idea what really goes on on the unit.  Or if they do they lie when they talk to you.
• It is not a place of healing.  And the children do not receive therapy there.  It is a place of power, punishment, confinement, control, and would make any person crazy if they stayed there long enough.  In fact, I think this may be the problem with the staff.  They are a product of the environment they have created.
• I will never, ever forget the sounds of my son screaming and crying in those padded rooms (they always made sure to call me when he was in there I guess just so I could hear him in the backgound).  And I will never, ever forget the image of that tiny 4 year old girl being  dragged into that room and then being left in there to cry and scream and plead for nearly an hour.  Those sounds and images are permanently burned into my brain.  And I’m sure they are burned into the brains of all of the children on the unit as well as they all had to listen to the other kids that were in those padded rooms as the cries and pleads  resounded through the whole unit when a child was in there.

Wow.  And I guess that is enough.  I never met with a doctor in person except the original intake which lasted about 30 minutes.  We never got any positive anything from any staff member.  Ever.   [Edited to add: I take that back.  The doctor on the unit the first week was wonderful but unfortunately she left after 2 days as her residency ended.  The one the second week was bad.] When I pressed the doctor on the phone about their goal for Rye (the one from the second week), they did not have one.  They did not do any tests to rule anything out physically or physiologically that could have contributed to his issues.  I think they goal was just to keep him there as long as insurance allowed.  And then when they overdosed him, they petitioned they insurance to keep him there longer to monitor the ‘adverse’ reaction, which ironically they did nothing to stop and just kept piling on the meds until he could not even think right.   God knows how long that cycle could have gone on and how much they could have fried his brain if I had not have taken him out.

Amazingly, I don’t think the experience was a total loss.  It broke us out of our unhealthy cycle at home and got Rye’s meds to a therapeutic level.  I would not do it again, however,  unless it was a complete and utter crisis as I think it can be very traumatizing for the child.   And for the family if the family knows enough about what goes in in the hospital.

Inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for children or teens should really only be used as a complete and utter last resort.