A Psychiatric Ward
Mental health is in the news this year, with government imploring us not to stigmatize ourselves or others, but instead to believe in getting help. But is the government honestly serious? I remember…
When other students were enjoying their Christmas break I was in the psychiatric ward.
At night, I never heard lonely wails of despair down the halls. By day, I never saw a white canvas bronze buckled straightjacket. The nurses wore street clothes. They smiled and asked if I was expecting awful stereotypes.
The above is a version of what I tried, three or four decades ago, to start off a feature in the campus student newspaper, but I couldn’t. Don’t blame my editor, because he didn’t read it, as I worked on the piece totally on my own, as was the custom in those years.
Blame the hospital doctor in charge. I wrote my piece, describing the nice staff I talked to, needing only their true exact quotes. The nurses reported back to me that the doctor had refused permission for me to come and report, telling them he didn’t want their time taken up with interviews.
I had been there because I was working in the ward for a few weeks. I had been regularly supporting a “dual diagnosis” client, mentally challenged with mental health issues. When he went into the hospital I continued doing my regular eight-hour shifts with him. The nurses truly appreciated my support. In fact, they joked about voting me “best person in an emergency,” after I had calmly been in a bare room with my client during his worst psychotic outburst—but staying between him and the door. It was only after my client was to be transferred to a permanent facility up north (actually, we moved him to an open farm) that I went and composed my piece for students to read soon after their Christmas break. (Maybe the head doctor was embarrassed that my agency wouldn’t allow our client into the asylum)
We tried again for permission, with the nurses explaining to the doctor that my piece was fully researched and already written, that I only needed to insert a few quotes where I already knew, planned, what the staff would say.
I think the piece would have run as a two page spread, describing how psych ward patients socialize in their ward just as calmly as the patients do on any other ward. There would have been an explanation of the new wonder drugs that controlled health, such as lithium to level the moods of those with manic-depression. No need for syringes and straightjackets, not like in that movie with Sarah Connor. (Terminator 2: Judgement Day)
I would have explained how, as with manic-depression, schizophrenia is not from weak character. It’s genetically programmed to often be first triggered , manifested, during stress, but not caused by stress, happening during early adulthood. Note: It doesn’t strike any children being terribly abused, rather this genetic disease strikes young innocent adults, so hopefully beginning their studies or career, with their lives before them.
The doctor again said, “No.”
In fairness, it is possible the doctor knew my client had escaped the ward, and was embarrassed about that, and afraid I would write of it. But I wouldn’t have. And besides, I don’t think he would have known. No one could leave the ward without the lock being buzzed. But my client followed people out. Luckily his parents, in their car, heading toward the hospital, saw him walking down the street and took him back.
I was idealistic enough to go through channels to ask for the doctor’s permission, idealistic enough that I did not, although tempted, run my piece interspaced with “(insert quote here)” to make the doctor look foolish—and maybe me too. Actually, come to think of it, I should have run that idea past my editor.
That big article stayed on my mind. A few years later, at a different hospital, I made an appointment to see the head psychiatric doctor or something. This time I probably brought my pages to show him what was already written. He said, in effect, “no” by standing me up. Discouraged, I stopped trying.
I wonder: Why haven’t any reporters, this year, followed in my footsteps and published a similar story? It’s seems like a no-brainer. It’s as if the stigma about mental health has nothing to do with nurses, but instead starts with the very top with the doctors of Alberta Health.
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Sean Crawford
Alberta,
May,
2025
Blog note: When one finds an exciting new blog, going back for years, one may to well to ration oneself to only one named month, going back through all the years. Way more fun than grimly plodding backwards, click-click-tick-tock. And then maybe, ha-ha, one will get through the archives in only twelve visits. (I said maybe)
