Psych

Pine Rest.
Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services.

Someone said the name of this place in passing to me today, and it stopped me in my tracks.

Do you know what it's like to check your child into a psychiatric facility?
I learned pretty quickly that for chronic mental illness, hospitalization is usually only good for two things:  safety and stabilization.  You take someone who is very ill, someone who might be at risk for harming themselves or someone else, or someone who has lost touch with reality, and you put them in a safe place for a brief period of time.  There is a strict schedule which keeps them from sleeping too much or too little.  There is routine that creates predictability, and in turn reduces anxiety.  Meals and meds are at regular intervals.  Bathing is required. Some degree of socialization is expected.

 Regulating the meds are just a part of the stay, because we all know that meds don't fix anything.  Talk therapy is offered every day- an upgrade from the weekly or even bi-weekly appointments that out-patient care provides.    A typical stay is 5 days.  Cory always left feeling better than when she got there.

 There was only ever one other kid there who had what would eventually become her diagnosis, and at the time, Cory was still healthy enough to find his delusions of aliens in the courtyard as bizarre as the next person.  A lot of the other teenagers were there for suicide attempts, substance abuse, anger management, and depression.

If you ever have to go, there is a small table where you will sit and fill out paper after paper of your family history and child's medical history while she sits beside you with her doll or chosen stuffy in her lap.  You will hold her hand.  You may want to cry, but you can't because that might scare her, and she is scared enough already...not just scared to be left in a hospital far from home (which she is) but also scared to be left in any room by herself for any length of time because the voices won't leave her alone.  She hasn't slept much to speak of in days.   Neither have you.

The first time you bring your child to one of these places, you don't know the rules, so you watch as the few clothes and personal items you threw haphazardly into a bag are combed carefully over, more studiously than security for an international flight.  Strings are pulled out or cut out of pants.    Wires are pulled out of journals.  No jewelry.  Not even her retainer because it could be fashioned into a sharp.

The people here are kind and patient.  They bring her a sandwich to eat, pre-packaged, which they point out to her is quite safe, knowing she has become suspicious of her food being tampered with.  She eats the ham and cheese, all wide eyes over the triangle of her sandwich, her stuffed duck clutched in the crook of one arm, watching the staff cautiously as they explain what will happen next.  They do this well.

If your child is a girl, it will be a female staff person who takes her into a private room and has her undress.  If she wants you with her, as Cory wanted me, you can be in the room as the staff person has her "gown up" and then show her body to them section by section.  Any scars, marks, cuts, or bruises are carefully recorded on a body diagram.  It is humiliating, for sure, but has to be done because the hospital must document that they are returning your child to you in exactly the same condition in which they arrived.  Safety first.

You get to see your child to her room, maybe help her put away her things, but most of the minutes left before you have to walk away from your heart are spent reassuring her that you will call every two hours and that you will be there every evening the minute visiting hours start and that you will stay until they throw you out.  The two of you quickly whomp together a ritual saying, "You call me and I'll call you." which is repeated every time you speak until you bring her home again.

When it's time, it kills you to walk away and leave her looking so small and frightened, all alone with strangers in a place that is not home.  When she is ill enough to be hospitalized, her voice has reverted to six year old Cory and it hurts your heart. You have become Mommy once again.  Is she really sixteen?  Seventeen?  Surely not.

 The moment you are out of her sight, you begin sobbing your heart out, not understanding what is happening to her  or why she has to be burdened with such a horrible illness, but knowing she is safe, and it is the right thing and the only thing you could do.

"The fact that she is so frightened, Mrs. Mansfield, is the very reason she needs to be here."