I recently was invited to be a guest on “The Psych Central Podcast” by host Gabe Howard. Gabe is a terrific mental health advocate, who I’ve featured previously in my “Stories of Hope” series.
Gabe asked me to talk about my 25 years of experience working in a public psychiatric hospital from the perspective of a health care provider. I’ll provide the link to the podcast episode below, but I thought I would provide a brief preview here of our discussion to whet your appetite.
Gabe disclosed his past experience of being in a psychiatric unit, and how disconcerting it was to find he was on a locked unit. He also recounted how he wasn’t adequately informed about the unit by the treatment providers and how, even much later, a different provider questioned his memory of those events.
We then talked about some of the stigma that has long been associated with inpatient psychiatric treatment. These negative stereotypes have often been perpetuated in the media and many people have also recounted their negative experiences in such units.
Next, we got into some of the larger societal issues which negatively impact access to mental health care, including variability in insurance coverage, and insufficient public funding for mental health services. This led us into a discussion about legislative advocacy as a vehicle to help improve access to needed services.
We also touched on the concept of recovery and its various definitions, and I talked about how we created and implemented a state-of-the-art recovery and rehabilitation program within our psychiatric hospital. This program incorporated many different recovery-focused groups, activities, and also utilized peer support specialists.
I want to thank Gabe for giving me the opportunity to have this conversation with him. I invite you to listen to the entire podcast interview here: “Inpatient Psychiatric Stays From a Doctor’s Perspective.”
Here’s a question: What has been your experience with inpatient psychiatric treatment? Please leave a comment. Also, please subscribe to my blog and feel free to follow me on X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram, “like” my Facebook page, or connect on LinkedIn. Finally, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend.