Is that such a bad thing? You might think you’ll be gently escorted to a private room with a view of trees and flowers and tended to by caring staff who respond to your every need and help you address whatever brought you there in the first place. It will be like a restful, refreshing vacation, right?
Wrong. Tragically, terribly and dead wrong.
You’re infinitely more likely to be trapped in a miserable hellhole, little different from a turn-of-the-century brutal insane asylum, where you’re locked up away from your world, your family and friends, and left to the treatment of callous staff who look down on you, degrade you and subject you to brutal restraints and abuse. You’ll live in terror of those who can make your stay unimaginably worse or much longer, on a whim.
At least that’s the result of a shocking and exhaustive study by the University of Birmingham, which examined 111 prior studies of incarcerated mental health patients in 25 nations as part of the first comprehensive study uncovering the negative experiences of psychiatric patients. What they found was horrifying—a searing indictment of the entire international psychiatric industry, which, the study finds, leaves patients worse off than they were in the first place, and newly traumatized.
“Wards were commonly described as prison-like.”
“Many individuals report adverse experiences during their hospital stays, ranging from feelings of neglect and lack of empathy to more severe incidents of mistreatment,” the study states.
Further, the study insists that what is needed is “a shift in focus from managing behavior to holistically enhancing the inpatient environment in ways that respect patient dignity, promote safety and support recovery.
“The most restrictive interventions in mental health inpatient settings, namely seclusion, restraint and rapid tranquilization, are commonly practiced … and are recognized sources of potential harm to patients.”
The study estimates that 25 to 47 percent of patients suffer PTSD after restrictive treatments in mental health centers. “It is important to acknowledge that many patients have very negative experiences,” the study states.
The study further notes that “wards were commonly described as prison-like with staff sometimes seen as custodial rather than caring.”
Dictatorial and tyrannical staff, “frequently seen as unprofessional, uncaring and unfair,” can make patients feel powerless, infantilized and patronized, as well as dehumanized.
Hospitals and staff often made patients afraid to state their religious beliefs, and racism and bias can lead to differential treatment, causing a “perception of racial bias in care practices,” according to the study.
Patients also commonly cited prolonged seclusion and restraint, excessive force by staff and the coercive administration of psychotropic drugs.
The study makes clear that this is not a problem with only a few bad hospitals or any particular aspect of housing, treatment or specific geographical locations—it’s everything and everywhere, endemic to the very nature of psychiatry itself. Psychiatry is a sick, power-mad, false pseudoscience that torments and traumatizes the afflicted in the name of enriching its practitioners, grifters inhabiting an entirely separate world from real medicine—a world where scam and mistreatment are commonplace.
“Many participants described these experiences as traumatizing, dehumanizing and disempowering.”
All 50 states have some form of involuntary commitment law allowing people to be forced into incarceration in psychiatric institutions against their will for various lengths of time. Given this study, it is crucial that such facilities, which can snatch people off the streets and whisk them off to suffer behind locked doors, must be made humane and effective or shuttered forever.
Mad in America, an online publication that monitors and exposes the psychiatric industry in the US, stated of the Birmingham study: “Their findings reveal that adverse experiences are not limited to coercive practices like restraints or forced medication, but extend to the overall inpatient environment, interactions with staff, and systemic failures that undermine autonomy and well-being. Many participants described these experiences as traumatizing, dehumanizing and disempowering—raising fundamental questions about the effectiveness and ethics of psychiatric hospitalization.”
Shockingly, there is also substantial evidence that psychiatric hospitalizations increase the risk of suicide, both during and after psychiatric hospitalization.
The study carries two very important messages. For psychiatrists and “mental health” staff: Reform at once or shut down your dreadful, hellish loony bins and go away.
For patients, the message is simple: Stay out of the clutches of the mental health mafia—at any cost.
