Modern practices are improved but not really any better.

I was involuntarily put into a mental ward in a Hopsital after trying to commit suicide aged 18. You enter a facility that is seperate from the main hospital. Two huge metal doors greet you with bars on the inside. There is barbed wire fencing outside and security so you can't escape.

Everyday I was watched while having a shower by a female nurse because they thought I would hurt myself again. I slept in a room with 6 other women many of whom would cry all night. Sometimes I sat with them and hugged them but even comforting was forbidden because you aren't allowed to hug one another.

Your mobile phone was taken away. Your shoe laces, tooth brush, jewelry, razor. Anything you take for granted is locked away and you have to ask for it back daily. Then if you want to brush your teeth or shave your legs you are watched like a hawk. No privacy. Eventually you just give up even more and no longer even care about what you look like because there are no mirrors.

We weren't allowed to have any hot water in our tea or coffee because we could burn ourselves. It was horrible and cold. The showers had no hot water just luke warm. I wasn't allowed to speak up as a human being. I wanted to leave and I couldn't under the law.

I was sedated with a needle in the back of my neck if I got angry or upset and ended up in the "plastic" room. Its made of soft plastic with nothing in there. Everything is molded to the walls so you can't pick up anything. You stay there until you are "calm" enough to let out which could be days or hours. It depends on how angry you are.

You get some stupid speech every morning on how life will get better while being given pills in a cup. You get a one on one with a psychologist who you beg to be let out but they won't.

Everyone just wanted to go home. When I finally got out 8 months later I had lost my job because I had been gone so long, my boyfriend had left me and I had no home because I couldn't pay rent and all my stuff had been thrown away. I was In a worse situation and had to go into share housing and got involved with bad people which made things worse. I had no where else to go.

I'm almost 30 now. That experience makes me help those with mental illness. People need to stop the stigma. I now have a business, a home, a loving partner and I have come to terms with my Illness but not everyone ends up this way. Being involuntarily put into that hospital left me in such a bad situation it's no wonder people go in and out of institutions because there isn't enough support.