Visiting a Psychiatric Hospital

I visited a friend a few times at a psychiatric hospital.

The hospital did not fit the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest image or other Hollywood images. For starters, nearly every patient was a comparatively young adult, a large percentage were young, attractive women. Most seemed friendly. From talking to patients, I gathered that many were there for social media caused mental illnesses. Computers and personal phones were banned. The main connection patients had with the outside world were phone booth style pay phones in a hallway. And patients couldn't leave the building to use the internet. They were locked in. (Doctors and lawyers are also probably concerned about patients photographing other patients and committing suicide with charging cords.)

Visitors were surprisingly rare. Maybe some patients had ticked off friends and relatives. Others probably had few friends, other than imitation internet friends.

I don't know whether other psychiatric hospitals are similar.

Don't expect Mark Zuckerberg or other social media titans to pay these patients' bills, though Facebook admits that Facebook damages mental health. Facebook acts as if "connecting" people needs no justification--amazing what people believe when it benefits their wealth.

Though the hospital was less tragically weird than Hollywood style psychiatric hospitals, the great tragedy here was so much wasted human potential, mentally ill individuals who should not be mentally ill.