none of this is true. What you are doing is the equivalent of spending time in NYC and professing to be an expert on the entire United States. Not even prisons do this. Stop fear mongering based on your personal experience. How do I know? I do admissions at such a facility. There is a patient bill of rights and a human rights committee. None of what you claim is even legal in this state.

Personal property is personal property. Everything on your person is logged upon admission. If you were admitted through the courts your belongings and paperwork go with you and are locked up on the unit. You can see the belongings whenever you want, and depending on your legal status, you may use your belongings at will, though they will be locked up for safety when you are done.

Most people may have belts and shoelaces and electronics with cords. Plastic silverware is used by everyone except people who have a very specific doctor order not to have it, based on behaviors at the facility. You may use the phone 24 hours a day. No one can deny you the phone, even if you are calling the police station threatening to kill the president. Getting a phone restriction on someone is a very long process that requires several signatures, unless they already arrived with a restraining order.

There are shared refrigerators for personal food, there is a tv for every 6 patients, once committed you may have in your room your computer (with free wifi), you may hang whatever you wish on your walls, you may keep your cell phone, you have your own toilet and shower, you can keep whatever crap you want so long as it doesn't attract the attention of the fire marshall, you may change your linens as often as you want, you may place whatever you wish in the outgoing mail.

No one may force you to take meds without a court order. No one can make you shower even if your whole pod complains that you stink. Mechanical/chemical restraints are only used in a psychiatric crisis for the safety of yourself or others. No one may search your room or your person without a written order by the campus police lieutenant.

Stop trying to scare people out of seeking treatment just because you were in a shithole (which, no offense, is an observation you made while locked up for a psych problem). No two hospitals are the same, and telling someone who may be in crisis to "stay away" is incredibly irresponsible.