it was at a hospital i'm sure you know well having lived in miwaukee -- county. i don't know if they've improved any, but i hope they have.
No wonder. I had several friends who went to county, and all their experiences there were terrible. I visited a friend there once in 2000 (she was actually my co-worker also - we worked around the country selling merchandise at festivals and such...fun job!) and what I saw bothered me, and I was quite uncomfortable there. I thought County closed down, though? I have read so many articles in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about County, and the stories were terrible and so sad. Sometimes it makes me cry. County is not a good mental hospital at all. All their stories were very disturbing. I personally think that hospital should be closed down. They don't treat their patients very well. And the stories you have told me scare the hell out of me. I would elaborate more on what some of the orderlies do to some patients there, but I don't want to trigger certain people on this forum.
fortunately, my hospital stay last month and a few days ago was in cudahy (st. luke's southshore) and their staff was *much* more considerate of my needs than they were at county.
I am very glad about that. I was worried about you while you were IP.
The state hospital that the girl that I cared for was placed at, it was a very good hospital. I was rather surprised at how nice and modern it was, and at how nice the staff and nurses were there when I went to visit her. It is a state hospital, so I thought it was going to be a terrible place like County, but I was wrong, and I was glad I was wrong. On the way there (It was a 3 hours drive) I was nervous about visiting her and what I might see while visiting there. I was afraid it was going to be like county. But when I got there I was very pleasantly surprised. She was very well cared for. They had many activities, church services, group therapy, individual therapy, psychiatric appointments, art, games, puzzles, games, TV, movies, and use of a computer (no internet, though) and many patients get "campus privileges" which means they can walk around the state hospital campus on their own as long as they keep the nurses informed of where they are going. They have to earn that privilege, though. They even get to have part-time jobs on campus too as well, which this girl I took care of had, too, which was very good for her, she liked working. I saw a huge positive change in her when I visited her. She was on meds (she is not med-compliant, but at the hospital they make sure the patients take their meds as scheduled), and she got therapy and everything, and she seemed a lot happier. The patients there are very well cared for. No visitors are allowed upstairs where the patients' rooms are, for privacy reasons, which is a good thing, and I think it makes the patients feel safe. I wouldn't like the idea of strangers walking into the patients' rooms at all. They had a cafeteria for patients and visitors to socialize at, and a small park in the center of the campus. I never saw a single catatonic patient there, never saw a single over-drugged patient there. They all seemed quite functional. And some of them can get weekend passes to come home if they show no signs of wanting to self-injury or suicidal ideation or are not a danger to themselves or to others and are stable. Some only get day passes, though, and must stay in town. It depends on their behaviors, and on their psychiatrist's decisions. The first time I visited her, we took her out for a day pass out on the town. A couple months later she was able to come home for a weekend pass (with the promise to us that she would NOT self-injury nor attempt suicide and that she would take ALL her medications as prescribed (diabetic, psychiatric, narcolepsy, and seizure medications) while at our apartment. By that point, I had already moved out of my old apartment and was living with my roommate/best friend and shared an apartment with her. So, I wasn't by myself anymore when that girl came home for the weekend pass, so it was a lot easier on me since my roommate had a car for emergencies. I was quite impressed with the state hospital. I actually have never seen a state hospital this nice before. I thought that only private hospitals are nice, and actually only some of them, not all, are. I was really surprised. After her 6-month stay at the state hospital, they placed her in a really nice group home.
This group home was not covered by Medicaid or Medicare, so she had to get some sort of funding or scholarship or something similar to get into the home, but it was a very nice place compared to most group homes that I have seen that she was in before. The previous group home she was in, was horrible. It was overcrowded, and it was co-ed, which was a big problem for her. In her room, there was 5 beds in this small room. And they weren't bunk beds in this room, either. There were like 30 people in this group home, and I think the house had only 5-6 rooms (judging by the size of the house, I didn't count how many rooms there were, and I didn't think to ask the girl how many room they had). The beds were either bunk beds or were crammed into each other in the rooms. A group home should only house about 6-8 people normally, depending on how many bedrooms they have, and the size of the bedrooms, and there should only be 2 to a bedroom (if the bedroom is big enough for 2 people, otherwise it should only be only 1 person). The new group home she was placed in was very nice, and it consisted of 4 townhouses actually, connected to each other, and in each there were 5 females, and each townhouse has a live-in caretaker. And it was a very home-like setting. The woman who owned and ran it was very nice, and in this group home, you are actually allowed to have a pet of your own if you show you have the ability to take care of a pet properly, which I was very surprised about. I had never heard of a group home allowing pets. But this one did, and a couple girls had their own cats. I thought that was wonderful, because I believe that having a pet can be very beneficial to someone with a mental illness, as long as the person has the ability to take good care of the pet. It was very nice. And they were fed 3 square meals a day, and always given their medications at scheduled times, and everything. The group home was extremely nice. I have never seen a group home this nice, and I told this girl that she is extremely lucky to have gotten a spot in this home and to have gotten funding to pay for her to live there. And, this group home was only for females, no males were allowed to live there. Which was a good thing for her, because she had problems with the other men who lived in the previous group home (I won't say what happened, I don't want to trigger anyone on this forum, and also the group home was not adequately supervised and they all had free reign of the home, all they were provided was beds and 3 meals a days and their medications, that was it). So, this new group home was very nice. I made friends with a couple other girls at the group home, and they were very nice. They were allowed to have their own TVs and their own things. She had her own room. Some of the girls shared a room, but since she was given a small room, she didn't have to share it with anyone. There was also a curfew and also visiting hours, which was a good thing, and the group home was very structured. The other place didn't, and it had no structure at all, and as a result, bad things happened. The curfew was 10 pm. She was also allowed to spend a night at a friend's house if she wanted to, but she was required to tell the lady who ran the group home or the caretaker of the townhouse that she was living in if she was going to, so she could be given enough medication for the night/day that she was going to be gone for. I think she had it really good.
if you'd like me to provide more details about what happened, let me know and i can send you an e-mail.
Sure, I'd like to know more.
