Stayin’ Alive
Not everyone on a psychiatric floor is there because they are suicidal, but for many the thing that lands them behind the locked door is suicidal ideation. This, to put it very simply, is thinking about or planning suicide.
For all my adventures on the mental health merry-go-round, I’ve never dealt with suicidal ideation. My anxiety tends to arise because I’m panicking that I’m going to die; I am very much interested in staying alive. Being on the floor with many people contemplating taking their own lives was alarming and also confounding. There were so many rules and accommodations on the floor that were in place to keep us all safe from ourselves. While most things made perfect sense, there were other rules I found truly confusing.
Makes sense: all silverware was plastic. When we returned our trays to the cart after eating, a staff member had to count our silverware to ensure that every piece was thrown out and no one was absconding with a potentially sharp plastic shard.
Confusing: there weren’t really any faucets. There were no handles to turn or pull but instead the sinks functioned by push button. But this wasn’t like a normal push button sink like you might find in a rest stop bathroom, it was a much smaller button.
Makes sense: No clothing with drawstrings or shoes with shoelaces. Also no bras with underwires which, having been stabbed in the armpit innumerable times by a rogue underwire, I fully understand. (This one was inconvenient though as I had no bras without underwires so my blessed godmother had to buy me some. Until those arrived it was a Swing Low Sweet Chariots situation, which I found deeply uncomfortable especially because my nurse on my first full day was a really cute guy.)
Confusing: no toilet seats. The toilets were one solid peace of metal.
Makes sense: there were no plastic bags anywhere on the ward. Paper bags were used for everything.
Confusing and also deeply upsetting: each patient was assigned a ballpoint pen by room number. If you wanted to use your pen you had to go pick it up from the desk and they signed it out for you. You could keep the pen all day long until the shift change. They they collected up all of the pens and you had to wait for the next shift of staff to start before you could go get your pen again. I spent most of my waking hours keeping my mind busy by doing the puzzle books that by dad had brought me. Taking away my pen was akin to taking away the tenuous grip I had on my mind at the time. I was so sad every time they took the pens away that I had to go call my mom or my sister to distract me until I could get my pen back.
Makes sense: there were no shower curtains, so to take a shower you went into this giant bathroom with a one shower open to the entire room and tried to balance the heat of the water with the chill from the vastness of the room around you. Also when the showers were open there was always someone stationed right outside the doors and they knocked to check on you every few minutes. They also counted and collected all towels.
Confusing: we were not allowed any snacks between meals during the day, but once 9 pm hit and after everyone had their evening meds, the kitchenette was unlocked and we could eat anything we could find (graham crackers and a Dixie cup for the win).
Makes sense: every fifteen minutes, staff checked on each patient to ensure we were still breathing. Every fifteen minutes, twenty-four hours a day.
Confusing: no one was allowed to touch anyone else. I understood patients not being allowed to touch each other, but our nurses were also not allowed to touch us. That felt so strange when I was used to other experiences with nurses who often would touch my shoulder or hand as a gesture of comfort or kindness.
When I worked in retail one of the things that raised a red flag when they were counting down the register drawers was if a staff person had a lot of line voids on their shift. A line void would occur when you typed an item into the register, but then for whatever reason you needed to delete that item, i.e. the customer changed their mind. One day I asked the store manager why line voids were bad. He told me they were a sign of possible theft. I could not understand that and, while at first he didn’t want to explain to me how to steal from the store, eventually he did explain how people can just pocket the money when a customer pays cash, and then void the line on the register. The customer thinks they paid the store for the item, and the thief gets away with some pocket money. It was so simple that I was actually embarrassed that it took me so long to understand, but also kind of proud of myself for not having that devious of a mind.
I did not understand several of the rules on the psych floor. I don’t know why toilet seats and faucets are dangerous. I don’t know why the nurses were not allowed to touch us with a simple comforting hand. I do not understand why I couldn’t keep my pen even if I was standing at the nurses’ station the whole time during the shift change, literally surrounded by people.
The truth is: I do not want to understand these things. While I’ve never suffered from suicidal ideation, one never knows what could happen down the road. Mental health issues aren’t always lifelong problems. They can spring up seemingly out of nowhere. If I ever should find myself contemplating self harm or suicide, I don’t want to have ideas in my head about how to hurt myself with a toilet seat. Whatever the reason for the lack of toilet seat, I’m sure it is not a little trick like using a line void to walk away with a little money. The facilities that provide inpatient care have these rules and accommodations because of things that have happened to make the strict environment necessary.
Normally I like to understand the situations and environment around me. I am uncomfortable if there are things happening that do not make sense to me. In this case, though, I am fine being in the dark. I think it best to leave the protections and the rationale behind them to the professionals, and to not ask the questions that we don’t want the answers to.
If you are experiencing suicidal ideation, my blog is not the best resource. Please call 988 and seek immediate assistance. Do not delay!
