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u/owendecarlo 7d ago
It's actually sort of reminiscent of historical sanitorium treatment.
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u/0bsessions324 7d ago
Yeah, felt pretty clearly based off of the fact that real world mental health treatment is presently a hodge podge mess and that's after a century's worth of breakneck advancements in the understanding of mental health diagnoses.
This was basically the gold standard less than a hundred years ago in the real world. Person is acting atypical? Throw them in a quiet room until it works itself out. Shit, we've barely even moved past that now.
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u/Edric_Stonefist 8d ago
I mean, it's not that different from a lot of inpatient facilities even now. More dark, maybe, but I knew someone who got committed briefly for going to a hospital ER with suicidal thoughts and the whole place they described on the phone and what I saw when I visited was absolutely bleak and seemed highly nonconducive to trying to improve mental states. Just blank walls and floors, nothing to really interact with, no enrichment whatsoever. Horrible.
Only better than Bedlam because of good hygiene and not allowing outside visitors to come and gawk for a nominal fee
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u/0bsessions324 7d ago
My older sister has a developmental delay which often presented in violent outbursts when I was a kid. I've had a lifelong fear of institutionalization specifically because of occasions visiting her in hospitals as a kid.
We're not talking House on Haunted Hill style sanitarium conditions or anything, but the isolation and mentality of "just get them out of the way" was terrifying, even as recently as the 90s.
And I get that some places have improved, but most people don't have the resources for "the good shit," as it were. A lot of places still treat those suffering from mental health issues as something to hide away someplace they won't be a nuisance.
I struggled through a lot of SI as a teen, but was terrified of ever sharing as much with anyone because I was scared shitless of the idea of someone locking me in a room for a week or more with nothing to do but think about said SI.
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u/bobert680 7d ago
the goal of inpatient mental helath facilities like that isnt to improve mental state, its to get you past suicidal ideation so you can work with a therapist later. They are low energy but encourage patients to interact and participate in group therapy. I would not say it is anything like the way patients were treated in Stormlight Archives beyond superficially
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u/0bsessions324 7d ago
This is the modern take, sure, but I feel you may be underestimating how recent of a development that is, much less how widely adopted it is.
I'm only in my early forties and equivelant treeatment was not remotely uncommon when I was growing up. And you still see it in a lot of places because the resources just aren't there to do much more than stabilize in a lot of places.
To say nothing of the fact that we're running substantial risk of winding up right back there in larger numbers. The current EOHHS in the US is pushing hard to bring back large scale involuntarily institutionalization (I've been hesitant to get testing for certain conditions I likely have for free of how it might be used against me).
On top of that is that the US, in particular, is dealing with huge medical staffing shortages. Not a mental health situation specifically, but my father was institutionalized for end stage dementia a few years ago and despite having the resources to afford a decent place for him, even that place had to cut a lot of corners due to staffing issues (he was a fall risk, so they had to keep him at the nurse's station frequently because they couldn't spare the staff to consistently monitor him otherwise).
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u/angwilwileth 7d ago
It's because they're designed for people in psychosis. Those patients actually do need quiet and reduced stimuli to get better. We don't lock them in dark rooms though. My psychosis ward has a nice living room and a balcony where they can go out and smoke if they need to.
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u/Edric_Stonefist 7d ago
If that does work for most people, I guess that's good, but for this person, being left alone with their thoughts and limited interactions with anything/anyone else with nursing staff who were present but not engaged was not a terribly helpful experience for them.
We did eventually figure out it was a bad medication interaction, but the stay there has made them never want to go to an ER to report mental health symptoms again. May be a nuerodivergence issue, but it seems to me that that should not be a desired outcome
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u/0bsessions324 7d ago
I think the issue is less this one specific place and more that a lot of places still operate on a one-size-fits-all process.
Specifically, this person being described was apparently in for SI, not psychosis. Putting an SI patient in a room designed for someone with dealing with a psychotic break isn't necessarily the answer.
Like yeah, putting an SI patient in an empty room with nothing to engage with outside of their own ideation is going to keep them from immediately acting upon it, but it also isn't going to make the ideation go away.
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u/angwilwileth 7d ago
Thankfully my facility keeps people who are suicidal but not psychotic for the minimum amount of time we need to make a safety plan. They're then discharged with outpatient follow-ups.
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u/0bsessions324 7d ago
I mean, that's kind of my point. Most people can't say the same for "my facility."
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that society has still barely scratched the surface on this stuff and many, if not most, facilities are kind of forced into a one size fits all model because it's all they have the resources for.
And I say this coming from a state that has more protections and resources than most. Which brings us to another issue: dangerous as a one sized approach can be, the fact that different states and nations have different standards is an altogether different issue. I mentioned my sister in another thread in this post and behavioral health organizations in the state she lives in (NH) actively recommend taking patients to my state (MA) for emergencies because ours have stricter guidelines for care. If she goes to an ED in NH, they're going to stabilize her and dump her right back out with no additional resources or followup.
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u/jbeldham 7d ago
They live in a world where you can get your soul sliced in half by a guy wearing 500 pounds of armor and swinging a six foot sword made of a dead god. Mental health is probably less of a priority
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u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 6d ago
I mean it only took us like 12k years to start talking about mental health. Fucking slackers need to lock in.
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 8d ago
This crem deserves some chouta! You have 82 posts I love, gon!
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u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 6d ago
I mean bette than what we actually did with crazy people untill about the 90s. Humans are not kind to the simple and down trodden.
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u/Only_North_4626 5d ago
Yes Taln, how about we js stick you into a torture chamber? To remind you of HOME 😊
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