How Do We Want To Be Treated In Hospital?

Hospital is sometimes an experience we have when we are having a mental health experience. Currently, the paradigm is medical. You go into the hospital, and the focus is on observing us and deciding which medication we need and what type of mental health experience we are having. This can be an intrusive and traumatizing experience and doesn't take into account you as a whole person. You are reduced to a patient and treated as such. This treatment is the beginning of a stigmatizing experience. You are not honored as an individual, and often the psychiatrist's treatment of us is rough and inconsiderate. I understand that it is important for us to get the correct care for our mental health experience; however, I also believe it is time for us to leave behind this medically led version of managing a mental health experience. A hospital should be more like a retreat from everyday stressors so hope, recovery, and rehabilitation can begin, and we are only just beginning to understand this as a society. Imagine if going into retreat for your mental health experience was a positive process that guided you and prepared you using education and peer support to gently bring you back to a place where you can once again look after yourself with your new knowledge of mental health. I advocate for a stepping back of the diagnostic, medicalized paradigm we currently have and a move forward with a focus on rehabilitation, learning, and a human approach which is about gentle encouragement to know you are a valuable, resilient individual who is honored and respected as having something important to impart to society as a whole.