The Mental Hospital

The mental hospital exists to ensure that basic needs are being met, and that the “mentally ill” are kept safe and sound (monitored constantly) so that they may eventually recover (become well). But many people would probably like to know, what is it actually like in there?

This can get pretty confusing when you consider the exterior society as being very unwell, and you do not think the problem was anything to do with some sort of physiological defectiveness (eg chemical imbalance) of your brain. Regardless of ones neurology though, it is appropriate to say that it one were to say or do something that would get them into trouble then that’d be unhealthy in a certain sense.

So this begs the question: is genuine dissidence ever healthy? I think that it is essential to live ones life in a way that is authentic towards the convictions that one has, it one is to pursue self actualization with any degree of seriousness.

This short story from the ward might help illustrate my point:

After listening to a crazy lady going off extremely loudly on the patients phone about being “in heat” for quite some time, I finally grew tired of waiting for my well deserved snack.

I requested of my flustered nurse, to allow me access to the kitchen, so I could make my some toast, using my own butter, and reminded her to bring along the key so that the patient fridge (which the butter was kept in) could be unlocked.

I wanted whole wheat bread and there was only two pieces left. The nurse arrived and we dropped the toast in the toaster, and then realized she had forgotten the key for the fridge. She then was sucked back into the vortex of things going on over at the nursing station, in all of its hustle and bustle, and stopped attending to my needs.

I told her that my toast was getting cold, and the head nurse, who is referred to as the “charge nurse” told me happily that I’d “just have to wait.” And I think at this point I had been sufficiently annoyed that I pointed out something to the effect of “it shouldn’t be so hard just to make a guy some toast”. The charge nurse then became angry with me and told her her colleague to not worry about it, and said I was just being “an arsehole”.

I really let both of them have it after that one, and so they gave me some benzodiazepines and even let me clip my toenails unsupervised.