I’m going to tell you about my (brief) experience with inpatient. 

First of all, if you’ve been to the hospital before, you know you have to wait. For a long time. I waited for about 3 hours, then got a temporary bed. I was interviewed by a psychologist an hour later. After the interview, we waited a couple more hours and then I got taken to the Nexus ward (of the John Hunter Children’s Hospital, in Newcastle, NSW), a place for suicidal teens. 

It was past midnight when I got there, so it was dark, and everyone was asleep. It was pretty scary. I had packed a backpack, brought my pillow, and a stuffed toy that my best friend gave me, which they then took away from me. 

I was examined briefly (just checking my pulse and weight, basic stuff) and was scanned by a metal detector, to make sure I didn’t have any weapons. I was then told to take off my necklace, and that my shoelaces had to be taken away. Anything you could use to strangle someone I guess aren’t allowed in the ward.

They also took the sim card out of my phone. I didn’t really understand this. I didn’t see how cutting off our connections to the outside world would help, but whatever. 

I was then taken to my room. I didn’t have a roommate. It was pretty empty, a bed by the window, and a small desk with a chair. I did get my own private bathroom. 

Since it was really late, I went to bed pretty much straight after I said goodbye to my mum and sister. 

In the morning, I was woken for breakfast. When I came out of my room I saw the other kids. They looked younger than me (I’m 17 - they looked about 14 to 16). 

After breakfast I was just feeling really mopey because I missed home and my family, so I went back to bed and listened to my iPod (very disappointed I now had no internet on my phone, I couldn’t read fanfiction to cheer me up ><)

I spent the rest of the morning in bed until I was woken again to talk to a psychologist. We talked for a little while, and then I went back to my room.

When I was in my room, I noticed the walls. The night before I had just thought the paint on the walls had been chipped somehow, but in the daylight I saw what it really was. Words. Scratched and carved into the wall. They were hard to read, but I worked out some of them: “suicide fuck my life”, “hate my life”, “cut”, “death”, and the one I think was the scariest, that was repeated a couple of times, “let us out”. The only nice message was from a girl who had been there two months ago (she left her name and date), that said “Nexus is really helpful. Take advantage of the help that is available.”

Soon I was told lunch was on. Lunch was actually really good. Instead of the “hospital food” we’d had for breakfast, we got hot meals. It was so good, and the most I’d eaten in about 3 weeks (eating disorder, but I didn’t have the energy to put up a fight with food because I knew they’d force me to eat if I did). 

After lunch, instead of returning to my room and being antisocial like my anxiety would have liked, I stayed at the table talking to two girls. I noticed as we were talking that they both had self harm scars. I’d never seen this many people with self harm scars together before!

They told me that most people there had come after overdoses (myself included), but that one boy had come after drinking bleach. The girl who revealed this to me stated he was “a bit more creative than us”. 

We just hung out and chatted for a while, me, the two girls from lunch, and the boy who had drunk the bleach. They were all so nice! I felt pretty comfortable with them there, which is very unusual with my anxiety. Maybe it was because I knew all of them were going through the same thing I was.

After a while of just hanging out we were called to go do some “class” type activities. Bleurgh. I hate those stupid team activities. It wasn’t too bad. A bit of a lesson on self worth and liking qualities about yourself. 

When we got back from that my mum had arrived! I was soo happy to see her, I started crying. (This was at 3pm). We waited for a while to see a psychologist again, and then when we talked, they said it was okay for me to go home, now that I was feeling a lot safer. 

So we fetched all my stuff, packed up the few belongings I had been allowed to keep in my room (basically my phone, a book, and my pyjamas from the night before) and was out of there! 

So while I was only there for one night, it had a huge effect on me. Never do I want to go there again.

This really opened my eyes about getting better, and I want to try my hardest to recover from depression, because I don’t want to end up back there, and not just overnight, but for months. 

(sorry this was so long)

My day summed up in an image.

I went to the hospital. Six and a half hours of mostly just waiting around. But they gave me breakfast. And mum got me chocolate milk.

I did not go to bed last night so I have been awake for, oh, 21 hours about. Exhausted.