Medical Malpractice

Insane Asylums / Psychiatric Hospitals anyone?

I'm writing a book about a girl (15) who spent sometime (involentary) in a Insane Asylum/Psychriatric Hospital/whatever you would like to call it (when she was in her preteens: 10-12 yrs old) and I have a few questions: - What would be some reasons she could have been sent there? - What would her time there be like? - What would the longest posible time she would have been there? - She has some semi-rich relatives, how would that effect her time there? - How would she mostlikely be afterwards? Would her Lifestyle change in anyway? (she was sent out because her Uncle gained custody on her and took her out -- doctors would have said she needed to be there longer.) - Would it be posible that she received memory lost? From Medications or abuse? Also any additional information about Insane Asylums/Psychiatric Hospitals would be great!! Also the Asylum is a bit... uh.. like what you would have seen a hundred years ago... (It would be complated to explain how they get away with it... it's a fantasy book so there is a reason you just have to read the book to get it) The time period for the Asylum would have been about 50 to 100 years ago... but I also want to know about modern ones...

Public Comments

1. Not going to touch on everything, but thought I'd shoot a few ideas. Reasons to be sent there -- maybe she saw a relative or person of power in the town abuse/kill/or do something wrong. She tried to tell her parents -- they confront relative/person, who totally denies it. Throughout the ordeal, the parents become convinced (mostly from person) that their daughter has psychiatric issues (everything is pointing against the daughter's claim). They have her evaluated by a psychiatrist that the person suggests. Turns out the doc is a co-conspirator and helps to get her locked away in an asylum to aide the person who committed the bad act. As for semi-rich relatives, due to their rich lifestyle, they travel around the world frequently. She was their only child. They don't seem to fight for her to get out or show much consideration for her one way or the other. Its almost as she's been forgotten. Because of their wealth, the asylum hooks up with the two who did wrong and plots to keep the girl in there as long as possible because the parents are paying big money for her to be taken care of. Longest time? I'd say they kept her until her 18th birthday. Maybe her parents died while she was in the asylum and the girl became adopted by the relative who she accused of doing wrong to begin with. The relative then keeps her locked in the asylum as long as possible.
2. I've been to a psychiatric hospital (involuntarily) when I was 15 and stayed for five days. I was forced to watch jimmy neutron with eight year olds and take zoloft. i ate crappy food and was bored. some of the kids were there for as long as a month. i dont know abot insane asylums but i doubt anyone would be there longer than a couple months.
3. It depends on what time in history the girl was in a hospital. The answers to your questions are very different if we are talking about today versus 50 years ago. If it is modern day in the US, it would not be called an insane asylum. The goal in this day and age is to get patients to a point they are able to cope with "real life". They do not routinely stick people in these places indefinitely at this point in time. In regard to memory loss...ECT (electro-convulsive therapy or shock therapy) usually causes temporary (yet rather severe) memory loss (it also can help when nothing else does and is not anything like what older movies make it look like). Some meds can cause memory problems...usually short term memory is effected. Sometimes it's like in the middle of a sentence you lose what you're saying or you can not, for the life of you, find the word you are looking for. It is a lot less likely to suffer memory loss from abuse at this point because treatments are totally different than they used to be and the standards are much higher. Modern day: reasons to be sent to a psych hospital would generally be acute psychosis, or danger to self or others. Not responding to treatment would mean a longer stay...not everybody gets better with meds or even more intense treatments. The length of stay would be limited...maybe several months in more serious situations. In the past, length of stay could be indefinite. Really, though, you need to specify what time period you want to work with if you want to make the story realistic, because that will greatly influence the appropriate answer.