Leaving hospital after 6 weeks in psychiatric unit

Hello @HelloBPD and a warm welcome to our little forum.

Sorry to read you are feeling so anxious and the suicidal thoughts are crowding in tonight. I am one of the moderators and also a counsellor, and this forum is moderated 24/7 so there is always someone to assist any members in crisis. There is a limit to what we can offer of course being an online service.

I imagine it would be normal to feel anxious about going back home after 6 weeks in care and worried about how you will cope. I'm glad you want to live and you can see a life for yourself outside of your depression - that's a good start. The thoughts will come and go (more often when you are stressed) but they are only thoughts. You don't have to act on them, or even believe them.

Can you talk to the nursing staff at the ward tonight about how you are feeling? They will be able to better support you and suggest some ways to get through this, and hopefully get some sleep.

There are many people here on the forum who have been in this situation with SI and will have some insights and words of support for you. We know much more about BPD these days and how to treat it. Medication has limited results usually but good therapy and DBT work seem to help people improve over time. BPD is unique in that the symptoms seem to reduce with aging and sometimes people can go into remission completely from the illness. Look up Dr Marsha Linehan online as she is a bit of an expert on BPD, not in the least because she had the condition herself for many years. She developed DBT as a mainstay treatment.

Please take care of yourself and I will email you privately so you have that point of contact also. I am on shift through to 7am so feel free to chat further with me if you don't feel sleepy.

kind regards,

Frog

Glad you are getting another week's respite. @HelloBPD

It helps me and probably others to know, that you were able to process a little with Sane mod and come to a better decision about time of discharge.

Best of luck.

Hi @HelloBPD and @BlueBay

I am intrigued that you have been able to have such a long admission in hospital. I have BPD and I've had 44 psychiatric admissions over the past twenty years, but none of them have been for more than 72 hours because the attitude of the hospital has always been that people with BPD don't belong in hospital. Virtually all of my admissions have been involuntary and I sure as heck didn't want to be there anyway. However, as I developed more insight into my issues, I would seek admission when in crisis but usually get turned away because "borderlines don't belong in hospital." Once, I was so desperate after getting turned away, I called a talkback radio station! That scored me an admission but the staff made it very clear that I was not welcome. So yep, I am curious as to how it is that any hospital has kept you for so long. I am wondering if perhaps you are in a private hospital??? It's fine if you don't want to share

Hi @HelloBPD I saw your post before it got removed (I'm sure you didn't know about the rule of discussing medications on the forum ). That makes much more sense now, knowing you were initially admitted with postnatal depression and later diagnosed with BPD. If ever in the future you are in crisis and seek an admission to a public psychiatric ward, can you let me know how that experience differs to your current one? It will be an interesting social experiment to compare the difference in treatment/attitude/response you get if you go in saying you have BPD compared to when you went in with postnatal depression. Of course, I really hope you never need to see the inside of any mental health unit again! I didn't know they had mother-baby psych units. That is kind-of cool.

@HelloBPD,

After the passing of a family member, do you feel like you treat the ward as your new "family" now ? They look after your safety, food, etc, and are reasonably social/trusting. Is that the reason it's hard to leave them?

The drugs they give you in there are just bandaids for symptoms - like using buckets to get rid of water in a ship with water onboard instead of plugging the hole and giving the boat a new coat of paint.

It's really only going to get better if you have a great connection with your partner and you want to move in with him. The psych ward isn't the only secure place you can trust.