Before I start talking about my experience getting help… I want ‘you’ (if needed) to also get help!
International Suicide Hotlines – OpenCounseling : OpenCounseling
As I can remember, my psychiatrist or my doctor had diagnosed me with depression or to be specific clinical depression.
How did the depression begin? The real cause of my depression is still unknown.
Maybe it’s because of my first encounter with my mental illness in 2017 and the way I handled it, by hiding it behind a smile. Or maybe it’s also because, whenever I felt sad, had a bad day, was angry at something/someone, … all the negative emotions I had, I also hid it from everyone and I just ‘kept smiling’. Maybe all that stuff kept piling up until I landed in this situation.
And maybe before I was admitted to the hospital, I probably was already in a stage of depression. So we couldn’t fight it early on.
As I can see on my previous messages or from stories/memories, I was sent to the Emergency psychiatry (I’ll call it EP) at AZ Sint-Jan by my general practitioner on 16 January 2021. As I can remember, I normally had to go to the EP the day before I had my exam, so thinking it was nothing, I postponed my GP advice just to do my exams and because, I had no motivation to pack my clothes from my dorm and go back to my home town, just to go to the EP.
But with the push of my GP and my mom, who were concerned about my mental state and safety, I decided to go to the EP for them.
At the Emergency psychiatric unit, I had a talk with one of the nurses or a psychologist (as I read from my old text to my friends), I told the professionals that my mind is being attacked by negative thoughts. I was used to forcing myself to think positively (not all the time too) in the past years and suddenly I was ‘attacked’ by the negative thoughts unwillingly.
To describe it better, imagine there’s a person who is all positivity and there’s another person who is all negativity, and suddenly both of them started to shout at each other, shouting stuff about what they’re made off, and there is you, stuck at the chair, sitting between Mr. Positive and Mr. Negative, forced to listen at both of them shouting and screaming at each other non stop.
The next day, they told me that I have to stay at the hospital, probably because they were concerned for my safety, but also probably to attempt to give my mind some rest.
So at the second day, i was sent to the psychiatric unit at the hospital, I was given medication, which were anti-depressant and a medication named quetiapine that made me calm/tired, so probably I won’t harm myself and also, it helped me a little bit with the negative thoughts but for a short period.
For 8 weeks, I stayed at that hospital before the doctor decided to transfer me to another hospital to get better treatment.
Second place, more treatment.
I was sent to UZ Ghent at the psychiatric unit, as I saw in my messages with my friends, I thought this hospital was where ‘my journey would have ended’. I’m not sure what I meant with that, maybe it meant that, with the treatment that is specialized with my problems, that here, they’ll be able to heal my troubles.
But with the state of mind I have in the present days, most likely, I probably meant with that short sentence, ‘death’.
In UZ Ghent, stuff went differently than in my previous hospital. Instead of a few times a week you get occupational therapy.
We got instead, the first 2 weeks a therapy that all the newcomers would get. After you finish the second week, one of the nurses will sit with you and help you decide what kind of therapy you should follow.
The most important therapies, until the present day, i forgot. All i could remember are, in those sessions, you can compare it as a lecture in the class.
You listen, you write down, you ask questions and you talk about the ‘subject’ you’re following, most likely, it would be about your own personal experience.
I got several important therapies such as; suicide prevention therapy, OCD therapy, Crisis managment therapy, …
Those important therapies came most likely in-between or before my electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and one of the main side effects of ECT is temporary memory loss.
During my stay, I had 13 times ECT (twice a week) before they decided to stop the treatment, because it didn’t show any single effect on me. Instead of getting better, my symptoms became worse.
That’s the main reason I couldn’t remember a lot of stuff before my ECT and while I had ECT, the memories of my therapies that came before and between my ECT are all lost. And the fact that I have clinical depression, doesn’t help my memory loss a single bit.
After my ECT
As I can recall, after my ECT, I started to get more occupational therapy, like walking around outside the hospital, playing a board game, working on the yard, a therapy where u have to be creative, but since I wasn’t creative, I mostly played a board game with one of the patients or I played chess with one of the therapist.
But besides those occupational therapies, I felt that my depression was getting worse day by day.
Depression that’s getting steroids
The day I felt more depressed, is also the day where my symptoms became worse.
- I felt more worthless
- Sadness that grew endlessly without any reasons
- The chest, where it felt like that a bulldog was sitting on it
- The urge to cry, that became frequently as in, every 30-ish minutes, and the pain of that urge because you’re unable to cry
- The feeling of emptiness that becomes very frequent
- The lack of energy and energy that is decreasing on daily basis
- Feeling weak, weak as in physical strength
- Tremors that are getting worse
- Memory loss (this is the main reason i made this website, because, I’m forgetting more and more)
- Easily and easier getting irritated and angry and the feeling that you’ll burst out of anger any moment of the day.
- More difficult concentrating, sometimes, you have to read something twice before u can understand it, ….
- Being more confused, and sometimes being in a confused state, that everything feels weird
- Feeling that, I have to get rid of one of my limbs, and with me, that is my left arm and sometimes left leg.
- Feeling hopeless and feeling that this is endless.
- ….
There are more but some things are hard to explain.
There is stuff that I experienced that was particularly weird too, it was when I was in a confused state. I was taking a shower, after I took a shower, I looked at the mirror and I couldn’t recognise myself, it felt like there was another person inside me, that took partly control out of me. I suspected before this event that I was never alone inside my body, since I sometimes heard voices in my head that weren’t mine and sometimes I’m doing stuff where I didn’t realise I was doing something.
Urges, there are a lot of urges when it comes to depression or mental illness. Urges are hard to control.
From before until now, I have so many urges. Urge to stand inside a garbage bin because I feel like trash (lol), urge to hurt myself by cutting or removing my left arm, urge to bang my head on the ground, urge to stab myself on non vital spot like my legs, arms, hands, cheeks, urge to kill myself and more… It’s hard to control and hard to resist the urges and it’s especially hard to not think about them.
A new jorney… in a new hospital.
It’s been a short journey but some ‘stuff’ happened, well a lot of stuff happened.
I won’t sugarcoat it, I did more than 5 hands full of stupid stuff which led to chaos for my circle.
But at the end of this 2 hospitals, I survived.
Now the third hospital, the hospital I stayed the longest and until I got discharged where I weekly go to for a treatment.
I don’t remember a lot about it, the 1st part of my journey page has been written when I was still admitted in the hospital. But I’ll try my best to share my story at the third hospital.
The last day at my second hospital I did something stupid, probably due to me not wanting to leave there. But at the end they transfered me to the ‘third hospital’ anyway. I didn’t know anymore how I felt or what I was thinking, but as my nurses told me, I was very quiet.
The first day in the new hospital, I remember I got my own room, I was used to share with other people but now it’s a single room and it was a big room.
But suddenly I had to transfer to another building due to my ‘doings’ the previous day and I had to stay at the closed ward.
I stayed at the closed ward for 3 months, normally u don’t stay long in there but if I think about it, they didn’t transfer me back to the open ward due to not knowing if I’m ready to be trusted in an open ward.
At second and half month I requested to go to the open ward, I don’t know the reason but I was probably bored, very bored. It was different than my previous hospital, I used to play games with my friends there, although I met a lot of people in that ward and the staff were very friendly, I was probably bored.
Knowing my situation, I was probably scheming something that will lead to an attempt.
But at the end, keeping stuff quiet, I got accepted to the open ward.
open ward
I ended up in the ward I should be and some how, I got a bigger room than I saw 3 months ago before I arrived at that ward.
The days goes on where I got more freedom and more therapy, I still did stupid things but when the days passed, they learnt I was an honest person and they would trust me more and more.
Although I hid some sharp objects in my room, equipments that I bought to hurt myself, whenever they asked me if I have something dangerous in my room, I said ‘yes’.
Those are the days I started getting ‘better’ but still felt miserable.
I started to open up, talk about my thoughts and feelings and went for a walk in the domain.
Not due occupational therapy, but due to talking 1 by 1 at my own pace with a nurse, psychologist and psychiatrist which led me to opening up towards the professionals.
Months has passed and I got a new treatment suggested which was recently at that time introduced in this hospital, named ‘ SPRAVATO ‘. I had to wait few months until I got it.
The last 3-4 months I finally got Spravato, which had a postive effect… for 1 month after taking it 2 months.
Until this day after I got discharged from the hospital (1.5y later) I still take Spravato. I believe that it helps me gain control of my urge, which might be a placebo effect.
