Mental hospitals only exacerbate the situation, if anything.

I don’t understand what mental health professionals are thinking by locking people up in secure facilities. Seriously? What makes you think that removing a person from his/her life, from everything s/he is familiar with, from everything that may comfort him/her and dropping him/her in an environment completely devoid of privacy, humanity, normalcy, etc. is supposed to help? How in the world does placing someone who is suicidal with a bunch of other suicidals “help” him/her? It doesn’t. It only makes things worse, because you talk to these people, feed off their negativity, their own loneliness and learn their personal techniques to self-harm.

It would make sense if adult patients received any sort of help. I’ve been to a state hospital four times; the greatest extent of help I’ve received is being interviewed by a psychiatrist for five minutes the second day of admission, a doctor who didn’t even look at me as he wrote things down on his notepad. The rest of the time? I sat in my room or stared blankly at the television set, drowning in my depression, which was worse than it was on the outside.

You people–the people who work at and support these places–think it stabilizes us, keeps us safe. Maybe it does prevent us from harming ourselves (temporarily), but in terms of stabilization, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. It gives us time to think, to plan, to drown.

I am petrified of going inpatient. Petrified of the apathy, the dischord. But this doesn’t discourage me from contemplating suicide. No, all it does is encourage me to research it more thoroughly and develop a better plan.

You wonder why people leave and return so quickly. Is it perhaps because your facilities are useless? Do you honestly think the cutter will enter your hospital and leave in a week or a month and never use a razor again? Do you think that locking up an alcoholic will make his desire to drink go away? Do you think taking the life away from someone who is depressed–while ensuring their heart remains beating–will enable them to feel the sun?

You’re wrong. Part of the reason I want to kill myself is to extinguish the fear of ever being put in a mental hospital ever again. Those places are living nightmares.