‘The unit felt like a jail’: The way my girl was broken by a healthcare system designed to assist her
It grew clear to me in that defining moment that the psychiatric ward where my teen was staying had all the characteristics of a prison.
Our Ruth had placed her trust in the medical establishment. We had done the same. That faith collapsed when she was moved from our area clinic to the specialized ward at the private hospital.
When we departed, she walked calmly down to the patient transport with me and the child therapist – who embraced her warmly and waved goodbye.
When the van door opened at the other end, the forbidding facility dominated the view. We were received and guided up a set of steps and through the secured entryways, one slamming closed behind us, the staff member waiting for the first mechanism to secure before unlocking the subsequent door.
This was a closed environment, devoid of natural light, my eyes aching already from the harsh glare overhead. We were guided to an inner room, surrounded by glass. The monitoring zone, they called it.
The Painful Separation
I felt her hand hold my hand as they informed my exit was required. My protest about not helping her unpack was answered with the policy that “parents must leave the treatment area.”
After repeating my request, they granted me a momentary visit to her room, but demanded I depart immediately afterward, citing hospital regulations.
Even now, I awake suddenly in the early hours with my heart racing as I recall walking through the common area to Ruth’s assigned room. The basic amenities included a individual cot and plastic table, with windows that were sealed.
The voices became distant as they explained there would be a changing attendant every hour through the day and night who would “monitor our daughter”. I put her belongings on the floor. Ruth sat, frightened, on the bed and then I was escorted out.
In an instant, I was sealed away from the air-locked entrances, holding a paper that restricted my visitation with my daughter to only a single hour, two times per week.
How could I have agreed to this?
A Tragic Loss
{Our daughter, our girl, died on February 14th, 2022 at 6:29 PM on the children’s ICU at the hospital in Oxford. She was taken immediately from the treatment center, an government-contracted but for-profit youth psychiatric facility, where she had been left to fatally self-harm previously.|Our Ruth passed away on February 14, 2022 at 18:29 in the {pediatric intensive care unit|
