Arbour HRI Hospital records

February 4, 2015

October 26, 2014

The conglomerate knows the answer to the question of whether or not there are cameras in the bathrooms and shower rooms at the Arbour HRI Hospital in Brookline, MA.  There is no doubt that there were cameras in bathrooms/shower rooms at the crisis unit in Somerville and also at the Bournewood Hospital; the conglomerate never stops torturing me about the video it got of me that was filmed in those places, as if it were my fault that the cameras were there.

 

When this note was written, I was at the all-female unit at the Arbour HRI.  I think that most of the staff at that unit are used to docile patients who don't know their rights.  Overall, I found the Arbour system's treatment of women to be anything but empowering.  All of their discussion of how to improve your self-esteem and take care of yourself means nothing in a situation where a patient is saying "No" to a staffperson or asking questions that a staffperson doesn't want to answer.

 

______________________

October 25, 2014

I went to most of the groups without ever being prompted to attend them; I wrote down the schedule of groups every day from where it was posted in the hallway.

I asked to be admitted to the hospital.  When I asked for that, I was honest about how the constant abuse to which I was subjected outside the hospital was affecting me.  If I didn't care about whether or not I felt like hitting people while living in a shelter and being harassed there and being harassed and stalked everywhere I went when I was not at the shelter, I wouldn't have asked to be in a hospital.

It's difficult to initiate social interactions when you're being harassed.  I did what I could to interact with people as normally as possible.  

Every day in every hospital and psychiatric unit to which I have been admitted since 2010 has been an all-day, and often all-night, struggle to deal with being harassed by staff and patients.  Every attempt to get the harassment stopped has involved my thinking carefully about whom to ask for help and how to address the issue, because of the denial with which the issue is surrounded.  Every hospital and psychiatric unit has said, in writing, that I am paranoid and delusional.

I don't think that being harassed by people who are trying to harass you is a "trigger"; it's harassment.  Attempts to stop the harassment are not "acting out behaviors."  Harassment is aggression/violence and, considering what happens to mental patients who are consistently identified as being paranoid and delusional, the denial of harassment is aggression/violence, also.

__________

October 24, 2014

When I told the psychiatrist mentioned in this note that I could write online about his tie, I wasn't asking for his permission.

_______________

October 16, 2014

It's incredible how much being treated respectfully by someone who has the power to help you improves your mood.  

There was a lot of discrepancy about getting things faxed when I was at the Arbour HRI.  Some staff were helpful and did the faxing which I needed done.  Others liked to make things difficult for me, so they didn't.

I wasn't "journaling" as an emotional coping skill.  I took notes about what happened at the hospital, and I spent a lot of time preparing for court so that I wouldn't get committed.  That's what a lot of the writing and faxing were about.  

__________________

October 9, 2014

I'm not paranoid.

______________________

October 7, 2014

I would not be surprised if the incident described in this note were the one in which the charge nurse told me to "wait 5 minutes" for her to finish doing checks before she would get me a pad.  I could feel that my period was starting and I had one pair of pants and one pair of underwear at the hospital, both of which I was wearing.  The supply closet is in the one hallway of that unit, which is not a large unit.  Staff get things for patients all the time while doing checks.  When I told the nurse that it couldn't wait 5 minutes, she yelled down the hall to a mental health worker "Can you get her a pad?"  The charge nurse did all of this with a big smile on her face.

There are people at every hospital and psychiatric facility who like to inflict emotional distress on the patients, to get reactions from the patients, and to get the patients punished for the reactions.

Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, February 4, 2015 @ 4:52 p.m.