Discharged to Soon

People with Severe Mental Illness may be Discharged before Well

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I admittedly write this post with purely anecdotal evidence.

My thesis is that there is often pressure to discharge mentally ill patients from hospitals before well because of cost. I am not entirely sure whether the doctors need to free up beds or whether insurance companies are watching the cost.

In my own experience, when I was covered by insurance, I was generally discharged after a short stay of several days.

Even when I was most ill, if I recall, I stayed in the hospital while covered by insurance, for only a week.

I have been a diagnosed schizophrenic since the late 2000s. Today I accept my diagnosis and am doing well on medication.

My short duration hospitalization was not enough time for the medications to take effect. I was completely out of my wits and psychotic. I didn’t trust anyone. When ill, it is a very rare situation where I share my delusional and paranoid thinking with anyone.

The first time in which the care team suggested that my problem might be schizophrenia, I think I was held for a little over a week.

I had as many delusions when I left, as when I arrived. I just wasn’t prepared to return to an apartment in a city several hundred miles away from my family.

I didn’t even stay on the medications.

Am I childish? Can I not manage my affairs? I don’t have the answer.

I didn’t stay on my medications because I didn’t think I had an illness. My delusions were real to me. I sigh when I think of those times.

Would you believe I found a part time job and tried to pick up the pieces of my life. I worked in a retail setting. I did this all while I held onto my delusional thinking about being pursued by an all powerful enemy.

I was completely lost in delusion.

As I write it today, I can partially assemble the delusions, but it’s a little vague.

I was very ill. That’s all I can say. I was released to the world.

Our system in the United States really relies on people being able to pull themselves together and up by their bootstraps.

I couldn’t do it.

I was hospitalized again a couple years later. This time, I also was pressured by my family to seek outpatient care. This was a good thing.

As I look back, if I were emperor of the world, I would have had that first hospital hold me for a period of 3 months. I think the medications would have taken effect and I could have assembled a life.

I don’t want to be one more person criticizing health care in the United States. I shouldn’t criticize, but realize, my experience at that first hospital was as a fully insured individual. I should have been entitled to the proper health care.

The gist of this writing is that this country muddles along with the minimums when it comes to care of the mentally ill.

There’s probably a reason we have such a problem with homelessness in the United States. People are not receiving the care they need for mental illness.

The takeaway is… love and support your mentally ill loved ones. The system isn’t doing it.