7 myths you shouldn't believe about staying in a mental hospital. [UpWorthy.com]

     I'd seen the movie "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest", .......  

     In 1980-81, when I worked at the only "Patient-Governed Ward" at our (NH) State Hospital, we had a [black Labrador] Puppy on the ward [with his own 'treatment plan', posted on the wall above the newspapers which he used in lieu of a 'bathroom']. The Puppy sometimes thought himself to be 'Staff'-and would endeavor to brighten just about everyone's day ["Mammalian attachment" in a psych ward].

     We didn't have a 'psychiatrist' assigned to that ward either, rather a [national health service corps] Family Physician. We had no restraint beds on that ward either, and those patients who thought they might become 'disruptive' were encouraged and permitted to use the one and only 'time-out room, with a mattress on the floor' ---of their own initiative...just letting staff know when they sought entry, and after they finished using it, and we'd sit and talk about what had been going on for them before they sought to use it, and supplement their treatment plan accordingly.

     One patient, on 'Suicide Precautions' was permitted to have knitting needles and yarn, to knit and/or crochet, with staff present or in proximate distance, for four days-when the [suicide] precautions were lifted. Another patient, who was having difficulty sleeping one night, was permitted to watch the 'unsecured' [no plexiglass screen or restrictive cage around it] television [at a low volume] in the 'common area' that night, and to 'doze' in a chair in the common area.

I'd previously worked on the "Neurology Unit", and remember a patient being brought in, in a wheelchair, from a 'back ward' in another building. For 15 days the patient was given 1.5 million units of Penicillin daily, for Neuro-Syphilis, and then he was able to knowingly sign/discharge himself out of the hospital, and was also able to walk out, on his own accord, unassisted.