Blog #4: Privacy vs Sharing

     So I am currently writing a series of essays about mental health from the point of someone with a mental illness, called Spiraling Inwards. The question is how much do I share? People judge individuals with mental illnesses harshly, and I’m not willing to put myself out there like that yet. 

     On the flip side, I really want to be real and honest about my experience. I just don’t know if I want the judgment that comes with it, even though I think it would be beneficial for people to know the truth about mental health issues. 

     I want to tackle topics such as: inpatient care, medication, and finances. The things that no one wants to talk about. Especially inpatient and finances. Psych meds are very expensive, and now everyone has insurance. And there is huge stigma around going inpatient, when really inpatient isn’t that scary at all and usually only lasts 7-10 days. But most people assume only seriously mentally ill people, people that are dangerous. Most people in acute inpatient care though are not dangerous whatsoever, and usually sleep most of the day because they’re depressed or because they are detoxing from something. A lot of people that are inpatient are addicts that are detoxing off meds or pills. 

     The other thing too is that being inpatient is fairly boring. You go to a couple therapy groups a day, and then once a day you have art therapy or gym time. Then of course you get your three meals a day. So it’s very rare that anything vaguely interesting happens. But there seems to be this narrative that hospitalized people are violent, hallucinating everywhere, incoherent; but as I said, this is not true. Could it happen occasionally? Yes. But usually these people are put into a different facility. Groups will start to join together to talk and play games. But for some reason sharing all this makes me nervous, and like people will judge me and what I’ve been through.

     But these are just my thoughts, and I’ll tackle them as I write I guess.

     Signing off,

     Fenisha Estes