I genuinely believe that psych wards are designed to make people’s mental health worse. That way, the ward can keep them there as long as possible, force them on medications and use the adjustment period of the medication as an excuse to keep them for longer. I’ve been to various wards, a total of eight separate times, and the majority of people I met there had been there more than once. If the ward intentionally makes someone’s health worse, then if they are allowed to leave, there is a high likelihood that they will end up coming back, thus giving the place more money. Essentially, I believe that the mental health industry is designed to use vulnerable people as livestock to produce massive quantities of income.
Whenever I share this belief with people IRL, they look at me like I’m a conspiracy theorist, but none of the staff in the ward denied it. I’ve never had a therapist say that they disagreed with my view of the system. Obviously, they never outright said that that’s the case, but once I stepped back and looked at it, it started to make a lot of sense.
The way that patients were isolated, often straight-up not allowed to make friends. The way that the ward’s first move was always to drug people. The fact we were given maybe an hour a week of time outside at the least abusive wards. Even the way all the food was painfully bland. The way that they couldn’t bother to give us vaccines during the day, opting to wake us up one by one in the middle of the night for a flu shot, not even letting us use the restroom first.
Either way, it’s strange how every issues was “solved” with drugs. I remember one time, being told that my vitamin D was low. I pointed out that this was probably due to not being allowed outside, and that being outside would improve that. The doctor ignored my comment and prescribed me vitamin D.
The main reason I believe that the system is designed to hurt people is because it makes sense. If all you care about is money, the mentally ill are an easy way to make absurd amounts of cash.
Yeah I've seen this convincingly theorized under terms like "the money model of disability" and "extractive abandonment." You're not alone with this type of analysis, although most people want to just instinctively dismiss the concept.
