So I've been hospitalized 4 times in my life (twice at 16 and twice recently as an adult). I, like most people I've talked to, have NEVER found these facilities helpful and instead feel like they often ignore patient concerns, talk down to you, spend little to no time explaining your meds / potential side effects and generally just DON'T CARE about the patients' well-being.

Two of these hospitals had the nastiest psychiatrists I've ever had the displeasure of meeting- doctors who were mean to the patients AND staff which was just bizarre. And even the doctors who were nice enough people would just order new meds without telling you ANYTHING, and spend like a maximum of 10 minutes with you.

Of course there are exceptions and I have had a few nice nurses or social workers talk to me when they saw me upset, and who I felt like actually gave a s*** about their patients, and I do realize that psych wards are 1000x better than they used to be. But overall, these places seem to be full of people who view it as just another job and the patients as a burden.

This young girl was so frustrated by her treatment at the last hospital I was in that she tried to call a patient advocate but they didn't call back. She felt like she was having a reaction to her meds and that no one was listening...

I suppose the most obvious way to improve psych wards would be to increase funding that is so often cut by our legislators. But other than that (since that's unlikely to change anytime soon), what do you guys think could be done to actually improve these places?