Visiting the Ward

Posted on August 24, 2005 in Compassion Psych Wards

I went to visit my friend in the lockup the other day. The woman screaming obscenities was still there: she stalked the halls silently, her face a grim mask. The young poet met with her father. And the silent, hospital-gowned schizophrenic who hovered at the entrance of the common room a week ago had dressed himself and spoke to others. My friend showed signs of getting better. I would not say that she was out of mania, but she showed awareness of others and was something of her old self.

Why do I go to see her? Two reasons: first, her hospital is within five miles of where I live. I can make an easy swing to see her after my twice-weekly tutoring sessions. My second reason — which will seem strange to some — is that I like the ward.

Many shun psychiatric wards. People who do not share my illness fear attack. I have seen people agitated on a ward, but I do not see them as a threat. Others of this variety believe that the patients are fakers and deadbeats. I know better. So many of the mentally ill want to lead normal lives but their disease gets in the way. If allowed to recover, they often can — provided the correct diagnosis has been made.

Among my own, one reason is a dread of a place like that where they were imprisoned. I have known of a few to go into tailspins after a visit. The shock of seeing a friend enthralled by the disease frightens them. They find it difficult to see the friend in the person. And their reports are often negative in the extreme. It’s the disease talking through them and they are not aware of it. When these keep going back, I wonder if they enjoy the electric sandpapering sensations. Otherwise, I know, they just want to control the friend, strive to make them well through a kind of shock therapy that does not work. Much of the time they don’t realize what they are doing.

Another reason, that may overlap with these, is that the ward reminds them of their own trauma. I believe, then, they should not go. Those suffering psychosis or caught in a blind rage might recall being locked up in a safe room or strapped down. I have not been through this, so I see psychiatric wards as a haven.

Finally, there are those who cannot stand the thought that they might themselves be in an episode. These might or might not wish to visit the ward. They may be half functional but behave in a controlling or aggressive manner. They might go to the ward and greatly upset the patient. And yet they continue their campaign to “help” the patient. You can seldom get them to stop. Family and patient may decide to ban them. Nevertheless, they may attempt to communicate with the internee because they cannot let go of their impulse to control. They will do their best to make the ill and her immediate support network appear misguided. They will put the best possible face on their actions and enlist the help of condependents with their half truths. They cannot let go. They must be the center of attention.

If I am not careful around these, my blood may boil like the dried hemoglobin crumbs of Saint Januarius (who never existed, by the way.) This is a sign that I have become sick and that I need to return the focus to my own life, remembering the true reasons for my kindness: affection for the friend and wonder at the slow beauty of recovery that I see in so many others.

Perhaps I have said it here before, but two places in my experience cause me to treasure what is most beautiful in human experience: being in a war zone and being in a locked psychiatric ward. In the first, you duck shrapnel, face nervous soldiers, and sharing the misery of civilians caught in the crossfire. In the second, you pass through locked doors after surrending your contraband, face a friend or two who struggles in cyclonic places, and then leave him behind to go outside — that place of cars, shopping centers, grass, and trees that is, for the time being, forbdden to them.

The secret to serenity, I think, is to see the people in both situations as your fellows in survival, to encourage them to not give up. And maybe this advice holds good for outsiders — the so-called sane. Maybe looking into their frightened eyes and truly beholding their humanity is the cure for isolation, the shock of the impulsive, the jittery, and the frightened who live in the hallucination of twenty-first century life.

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*I have lived so long in mental illness — and not correctly diagnosed until this year — that I lost hope that I could ever rejoin society. The current medicines that I take have all but eliminated the depression and mixed states that cripple me in the wrong seasons. When I get manic, I tend towards euphoria rather than what I call “the high and holy rages”. Because I was not diagnosed with bipolar until last January, I count the beginning of my recovery from that point. I am getting better. I am surviving this disease.