Have you ever been in the hospital or the emergency department to treat urgent health problems?
I was hospitalized once - I was living and working somewhere remote and got some kind of virus from something I had eaten that just wiped me out. Ironically, the hospital I was taken to was one where I had worked previously, so it was an emergency visit but also a reunion with old friends! How about you?
I'm glad you're ok! Did you have to go to one of the trauma centres? Hopefully you weren't admitted to the psychiatric hospital!
I had a very atypical hospital experience, I think - I arrived on foot, just walked into the emergency room, and because they were busy I ended up showing myself to a room and beginning my own admission process. Luckily it was a physical stay - I think being admitted for psych would be more scary, since the problems and lengths of stay aren't always as discretely identifiable, and a patient might feel more out of control.
Well it's good you knew how to admit yourself. Psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union are even scarier. There was political abuse of psychiatry and saw these people as dissidents.
Wow, that is really upsetting. The history of psychiatry is full of these kinds of ethical violations - electroshock therapy, political motivations, gender bias, etc.
Yes but at least after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia now provides psychiatric care as a special law that guarantees treatment for the citizens.
Wow, that's a real turnaround from how things were. I wish every country could offer some kind of universal, subsidized, or guaranteed mental health care. So many people are suffering these days.
Yes me too. Health care in the United States is mostly owned and operated by private sector businesses. They won't want that to happen.
Yes. Psychiatric care in the United States is reserved to the direst emergencies for many people *with* insurance. Those who have money are able to invest in their mental wellbeing for less severe issues or in advance of horrible problems. And those without insurance get no care at all. It's not a very fair system.