as a former psychiatric nurse, and the sister of a severely mentally ill person, it'd like to comment on Gilgono's remarks.

- Patients were not allowed to talk about where they worked or what
they did for a living and engage in any meaningful conversations

I understand the meaningful conversations should be allowed, but as far as the personal details and locations that makes perfect sense. I have seen many times where one patient has had unhealthy fixations on another. Not just crushes, but convicted rapists who have to separated from the patient they are stalking and tried to rape. One patient had detailed plans for years of how to dismember another because she was convinced he played a role in an evil plot. Do you really think letting these people know how to contact you when you are both released is a good idea? You can't just say you'd not give "those" ones your info...one of my sister's "friends" had her convinced she was in for depression. She'd actually killed her brother. She also seemed just fine and was released...where she went off her meds and tried to kill again. So how would you know?

- Patients were only able to listen to ipods and alike in the hall between 2pm and 4pm.

I don't know why the times weren't longer, but giving wires that can be used to strangle to be used in private...bad idea.

- Patients were not allowed to hug or touch each other

I don't defend this, but I could see how hugging, beyond causing problems with a sexual-abuse background (either as the abuser or abused) could be bad. Hugging is seen as comfort or security usually. Ignoring the worry that one will misinterpret the hugs as romantic interest, there remains the fact that one could mistakenly feel the other is more dependable and supportive than they are, causing coping and security issues when it is revealed they are not. My sister does this one a lot. She gets a new best friend who is just so wonderful because she is projecting what she wants to it to be, and then a little later discovers its not what she thinks, gets angry, hurt, depressed, and feels unloved and betrayed. Yes, hugs can do that.

- Patients were not allowed to visit other patients' rooms

Rape. Accusations of theft. Accusations of physical, mental, or sexual abuse. That being said, a lot of places have more than person per room. I see the thinking behind the rule, though, just as I see that the ability to maintain social skills or learn to appropriately interact is equally important.

- Patients were subjected to random body search and their personal effects ransacked at all hours. I had my entire belongings searched once at midnight!

I've seen self-harm and threats against others with staples, wires, you name it. Had "swallowers" who have to get washcloths and pens removed from their throats...the list could go on forever. I've learned just about anything can be a weapon to be used on one's self or towards staff. It's my conscience and years of education down the drain if someone is seriously harmed. I've found hidden lighters, knives, a gun--only once, though--and more drugs than you care to count. I understand maybe the OP doesn't harm other patients or staff or self harm...but a lot do, and magazine staples can be dug out and hidden at all hours...hence the "anytime" searches. If you wonder why I keep mentioning the staples...they ended up in someone's eyes.

- Patients could not exchange their email address, phone numbers etc., if papers with such things were found, they were confiscated and shredded

That goes back to stalking. Plus, who's to say you're not sitting there with a nice new job and someone tries to blackmail you with the details of your stay in the looney bin?

- Patients can only be visited by blood relatives or spouses

I basically disagree with this rule. All I can think is in the cases of boyfriends or girlfriends or such that visit and far too mush drama ensues for the patient good, but that happens a lot with just family visits.

- All patients' belongings had to have their names written in BLACK waterproof marker; underwear, slippers and magazines

Yeah...horrible. Because you'd much rather have laundry give your underwear to someone else to wear, or someone to take your things and not have them labeled to prove they were yours. This is a common sense rule.

- of course no mobile phones, Blackberry or computer access

Hard too have therapeutic interventions when drama is calling every two seconds, or popping up in chat. The best way to sit back and look objectively at a situation you need to work on is to distance yourself from it...not remain immersed in it and all the unhealthy emotional relationships related to it. If things were going so well with your "outside life", then you wouldn't be inside a hospital, would you? So work on you and leave the outside world to be dealt with once your well-being is a bit better. You don't need that stress.

- Patients had access to only one public phone (there were about forty-five patients) that can only dial out using calling cards

The calling cards is a no-brainer. The facility can't pay for every call, especially when most patients' treatment is paid by the government and not privately or with insurance. They also can't include a set rate for calls, as some may call more than others. I already discussed why cell phones are bad...

- Family and Friends couldn't ring the patients or have their calls diverted to the pay phone

I have no clue why they couldn't ring in and divert to pay phone, they have been everywhere I worked and my sister has been in. Yeah, stupid rule.

- Patients in B21 were not allowed to have money or go to the in-house shop to purchase their own calling cards, laundry cards or snack items

Sounds like a lock-down unit to me. Were these perhaps acutely ill and unstable patients or criminal/violent? Many times those types of patients are not allowed off unit at all until it has been seen they are stable. Staff would go get things for them if really needed, but snacks beyond the 3 meals and bedtime snacks provided were a luxury earned by demonstrating they were stable. And before anyone says "snacks are a right not a luxury"...please, think about that. Also think of all the diabetic patients who aren't making clear decisions because they are mentally unstable...we should let them have the 5 bags of Skittles they want instead of a healthy meal? Nope, sorry! (Another true story)

- Patients were not allowed to sit outside in the courtyard even during the day time. It had a huge fence around it but still no.

I don't understand why they were never allowed out there. Maybe the fence needed repaired? It's not fenced to ensure people stay in to degrade people, you know. The people who live around a psychiatric facility would love for the patients to wander across their invisible property lines and then rabble-rouse and try to blame and stigmatize the patients even more. Public reaction to mental illness is often as savvy as refashioned witch-hunts. They think it's contagious, and they need to be in fear, and thus really look for any good excuse to get rid of the crazy people....

- All patients had to brush their teeth in public in the hall

Yeah--weird.

- Male patients had to shave in the hall sink area without any mirrors

Sharp objects = weapons to be used against themselves or others. You can feel where stubble is. My eyes are bad, I can't see the stubble on my legs when I shower, so I shave by feel. And when I'm done and put my glasses on I find I did fine...so they can do their faces the same.

- Patients were not allowed to floss their teeth or rinse with Listerine or any other mouthwash

I bet you think I'll say floss can be used for strangling, but the first thing that comes to mind is, again, self-harmers (Man, are they crafty...you have to give them credit!). Wind some floss around your finger. Nice and tight. Tighter. Now leave it there, and go around with your hands in your pocket. Then say goodbye to the tip of your finger. And the mouthwashes often have alcohol. Never underestimate the desire of people craving a substance dependency. One lady we actually thanked for drinking mouthwash when admitted...because the time before it was perfume, and the minty mouthwash smelled much better than old navy cologne. She did that whenever she couldn't have alcohol. Eventually her liver and kidneys shut down, and she died.

- Patients were not allowed to talk in the dining room during meals as it was not a cafeteria.

Dumb rule. Just keep it to a dull roar.

- Patients had to have a plastic mug to drink out of. Only in the beginning before your belongings were delivered were you allowed a paper cup.

Paper cups are very wasteful, especially when one considers we are talking about a lot of people. Even "regular" hospitals issue patients plastic drinking containers. Regular mugs can be broken and shards used to hurt with.

- Patients were not allowed to exchange or give away any food items on their trays. Nor were they allowed to keep fruits for later; apples and bananas

I'm guessing the diets were monitored because of physical health issues, like diabetes, kidney problems, or weight issues...even allergies. Giving the wrong person your banana or tomato could have bad consequences, and you can't assume they will tell you why they shouldn't indulge their craving. Once again, healthy decision-making is not what lands someone in a psychiatric ward. All I can guess on the fruit for later is there must have been some nasty hygienic issues where people left the fruit to rot after it fell behind a dresser or something.

- Patients were not allowed to snack or drink beside tap water and barley tea kept in a thermos which often ran out and were not refilled until scheduled times. Though guests were allowed to bring in food and soft drinks to share (!)

I'm not understanding this. Are you saying you are upset they didn't provide unlimited soda and juice? Did you pay for unlimited soda and juice? Because it's not too healthy and I certainly can't have free access to it all the time...and it costs me much more at the store than tea.

- Visitors were allowed between 1pm and 4pm in a locked room, but were kept watch through a window. Once the visit was over, patients were subjected to body search and any items brought in were inspected

Who do you think gave the patients the drugs I found? The patient hadn't been anywhere, but the dysfunctional mother was convinced her baby had to have her painkillers...that were never prescribed, even outside the facility. The gun was in a man's underwear when he came back from a visit with his brother. One man got his hands around his wife's throat during a visit, trying to strangle her for putting him in there...as part of a CIA plot involving the Shah. And a lot of dysfunctional families end up in yelling in crying matches that undo weeks and months of treatment. If it wasn't supervised, things would be bad. If searches weren't done, things would be bad. Should we leave people to have the same issues they came in with, wanting to hurt or kill themselves, or drink themselves out of depression until they die, or do the drugs to cope or jump form abusive relationship to abuse relationship seeking the acceptance they can't give themselves? All of that comes from outside the walls of the hospital. We supervise and search because as much as you bitch, we care about you more than you care about yourselves, and we are trying to help. And believe it or not, not a single one of us has had a perfect or even easy life either...if we can make it through life, so can you.

There are 5 things that if we can improve on everyday would result in two valuable aspects of our life. One of the results would be being more productive during the day. The other one would be having more inner peace within ourselves. The 5 things that improve productivity and inner peace are time, character, mentality, emotions, and health.

Most people either have one or the other in terms of productivity and inner peace. But imagine working at your job everyday having absolute clarity, being emotion-free, and getting more results done in less time. It will take some small changes, but small changes 1 day at a time can have monumental changes for a lifetime. I’ve outlined some of my ideas below.

Time

Managing time is always something that can be improved on. For example, what time of did you wake up today? Whatever the answer is, realize you can knock off 1 hour and 45 minutes to it by just waking up 15 minutes earlier per day. Let’s just say you usually wake up at 8:00 AM, but you started waking up 15 minutes earlier every day beginning from this Monday. So Monday – 7:45, Tuesday – 7:30, Wednesday – 7:15, Thursday – 7:00, Friday – 6:45, Saturday – 6:30, Sunday – 6:15. By next Monday, you would wake up at 6:15 AM, which is almost 2 hours extra just to begin your day with.

Another time management skill that could be improved on is tasks that can be done faster. For example, maybe you’re a freelancer and you get paid $10 per researched and written article. Let’s say you do an article in 1 hour and 30 minutes, so in 6 hours, you make $40. Try to see if you can reduce the time only by 15 minutes until you get to 45 minutes per article. So it would look like 1 article in 1 hour 30 minutes, 1 article in 1 hour 15 minutes, 1 article in 1 hour, and 1 article in 45 minutes. It takes 3 tries to do this, but the results are doubled. Instead of writing 4 articles in 6 hours, it would be possible to do 8 articles in 6 hours, if you can do 1 article in 45 minutes. The pay would then be $80 instead of $40 – double the amount of money in the same amount of time.

Character

Let’s go into character. Character has to do with being a good leader, whether this is being a leader of a group or being the leader of themselves. For example, go about life treating others with respect, the kind of respect you would like to have from other people. You may disagree with other people, but there’s no point in dealing with it in an angry way or telling other people that they are wrong in order to be right. Instead, learn to be open minded and settle differences by understanding another person’s point of view. This helps build character by being understanding and responsible for making the best out of the worst.

Another thing that helps build character is doing one thing to help a person out a day. It can complimenting somebody on the internet or doing something to help someone in real life. You’ll see that helping people has a contagious effect to it. For example, a few days ago, I was driving to Walmart. I came to a stop after I was exiting off a freeway. A few cars a head of me, I noticed a bum standing on the corner stoplight asking for money. Someone from the car rolled his window down and gave the bum some cash. It was green light and he drove off. When I started driving, I didn’t think the bum was expecting anything, but i rolled down the window and handed him $3. “Thank you sir, God Bless You” was the answer I got. The car which drove off will never know that I did this act, but his action had an effect on me. The funny part was when I got to Walmart, the cost of my supplies cost $42, and I had $41 in cash in my wallet. I had to use debit carb; and even thought it was irritating, when I think back on it, helping a homeless guy survive for 1 hour with $3 is more important than being irritated for 5 seconds.

Mentality

What can you do to improve your mentality. This is what goes on inside your brain such as your thoughts and your thinking process. A big portion of having a good mentality is having mental clarity. Hundreds of things go on our minds everyday, but if you can select one the things that matter the most and focus on them, you will be able to make life a lot simpler. Thinking doesn’t have to be complex or complicate unless you want it to be. Try to improve on thinking effectively, but simply, and you will get productive results.

Another advice on improving mentality is reading. Make it a habit to read everyday. It can be from a newspaper, it can be from a blog, or it can be from a book. As long as you’re reading something that’s going to help you out in some way, shape, or form, you will be investing in yourself through expanding knowledge. This lets you see things from another person’s perspective as well as makes you more worldly, letting you become more creative and giving you ideas for the future.

Emotions

Part of the biggest problems humans deal with is their emotions. I’ve written many articles on dealing with emotions on this blog, but if you haven’t read some of them, one thing that I would recommend you to do is spending some time everyday to sit down and go through a period of self-therapy. This will save you hundreds of dollars from seeing a real therapist.

For example, sometimes I worry a lot about the future. There’s always some type of “thing” that I’m afraid to do because I feel like I might  regret it later on. Facing it though is probably one of the best ways to overcome this negative emotion. This requires me to sit down somewhere quiet and ask “What’s the worst that can happen if I perform this action?” When the answer comes up, I will visualize it in my head. When you go through something enough times in your mind, eventually that negative emotion will won’t have that big of an impact on you. Then when the real thing happens, you won’t feel as much pain because you will have already gone through it many times. This makes us less emotionally invested in little things that bother us everyday.

Health

Finally, there is health. There are many ways to improve health but the main one I want to target here is exercise. Exercise helps combat chronic diseases by making sure you are getting enough blood circulation and oxygen throughout the body, it helps manage your weight by losing calories, it helps bring your mood up, it gives you more energy (haven’t you ever felt a burst of energy from doing high level physical activity – I know I have from playing basketball), it clears your mind, and finally, it gives you better sleep.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time everyday, if you woke up earlier like from the first example of waking up 1 hour and 45 minutes earlier, you would be able to get your jogging done, take a shower, and be ready for the day with energy and clarity. Also, you can always find small ways to do more exercise. I used to make the effort to purposely find the parking spot nearest to the shop that I would go to. Now it doesn’t bother me as much. I kind of purposely park farther now so i can walk to the store. It’s good on the legs.

In conclusion, try to improve on these 5 factors a day: time, character, mentality, emotions, and health. You will feel better, live life happier, and get things done. If you ever get stuck, you can always ask the question, “What can I improve upon tomorrow from what I learned today?” You will usually find an answer to that. Write it down and work on it. Improving something small each and every day adds up to a huge difference down the road, even if it’s just 1 new thing a day.

photo credit: Vince Alongi