is this fictional situation believable?what do you guys know about mental hospitals?

Do you need your characters to interact in some way?

Acute psychiatric patients (as other people have suggested) are often admitted to medical floors with additional support (sitters or restraints) if their main problem is medical. There are psychiatric Emergency Departments for acute psychotic events (patient has 'gone off his meds'). Characters won't get as much interaction in these settings, so you may wish to set your story in a post-acute setting, like an ECF (extended care facility - nursing home). To make this scenario plausible, there should be some reason that each of your characters cannot take care of him/herself.

- homeless man (25-30 years old, depression, suffering from hallucinations, very slight schizo, can't remember his childhood, doesn't know his own name)
I like Jazz's idea - this guy was admitted to acute care for his alcohol withdrawal and subsequently discharged to ECF. This would produce the hallucinations, etc and could explain why he is just now "coming out of it".

- man (20-25 years old, not really depressed, more like "thinks different", acts wild, not really crazy though, does hard drugs)
He has a relative who received guardianship of him by petitioning the court and convincing a judge of his incompetence. This relative may have done this for financial reasons, perhaps your character receives a disability check from the military.

- woman (20-25 years old, hippie-like, pot smoker, confused mostly more than actually depressed)
Let's give her some pulmonary fibrosis that she got from the black mold that grows in her mobile home. The antibiotics she took for the aspergillus infection caused her to have kidney failure. She is on hemodialysis.

- woman (20-25 years old, depressed, trauma from sexual abuse earlier in life)
She had been admitted to the ICU following an attempted overdose. During her ICU stay, she suffered some nerve trauma and subsequent difficulty swallowing from her endotracheal tube. She has had a PEG tube (percutaneous gastrostomy tube - feeding tube) installed directly into the stomach wall. She has no immediate family and has been reluctant to engage in her own self care. Nursing staff at the ECF attempt to teach her how to use her PEG tube to feed herself but to little avail.

- woman (30-35 years old, extreme depression, out of it mostly just staring into space)
She has undiagnosed multiple sclerosis which is presenting as catatonia.

- man (35-38 years old, depression)
Let's give him paraplegia from a failed back surgery. He has to catheterize himself, and periodically rectally disimpact himself. His depression is interfering with these self-care activities that he views as the responsibility of nursing staff. His anger towards his surgeon is all-consuming.

- old man (60+ years old, senile)
He has Pick's Disease (just to keep in interesting). Frontotemporal dementia. He is sexually inappropriate towards staff and neglects his personal hygiene.


Anyway, that was a fun exercise. I love coming up with background for characters. Thanks for posting that.

 

matt b thanks for that ^..

i've decided not too much in detail on the mental institute and how it works and the treatments and what not. i'm not writing down specifically when the story takes place, so i think that will give me a lot of room to work with. the story isn't about the treatments as much as it is about the patients themselves and what they learn from each other. i really think it shouldn't take away from the story, anyways...

all the background information really helped and gave me some ideas though. appreciate them.

thank you.

 

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Bear in mind that if you don't specify a time period, most readers will assume it's present day. So if you're not willing/able to work with the current system's boundaries, you're going to need to pick a time period and let the reader know, somehow, when that is.

 

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Hi,

Can I just add to the idea that you can compare rates of psychiatric care, diagnosis and recovery between countries, that it's a wildly innacurate thing to try. Different countries have different standards of healthcare. Not just different drugs but also different standards of what constitutes a psychiatric illness.

The chances are that in many of these countries where recovery without the equivalent treatment given in the western world is considered so high, is simply an artifact of their system. The rates of mental illness and lack of recovery are likely going to be the same as for untreated patients in the west. However, if the patients have no money or no free medical available, they'll be counted as either recovered or not ill, regardless.

It used to be an old boast of certain communist countries that they had very small rates of psychiatric illness. They didn't. They just didn't treat most people and they didn't report on those that they did.

Cheers, Greg.

 

Nope - because the description clearly indicates it's not. That's what I'm talking about when establishing a time frame.

 

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And as I stated, "let the reader know, somehow, when that is"