Andrea still has nightmares about her inpatient psychiatry admission.

Transcript

I was checked into the psychiatric ward for two weeks. It was a terrible experience. We don’t have a separate ward for postpartum patients here and I know that other cities do, so here you’re on a floor with – it could be homeless people with schizophrenia – it was very frightening. People who were screaming all night, there are certain visiting hours. I was very frightened; I didn’t know what had happened to my life, I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. I felt very guilty about not being with my daughter. My mother would bring my daughter in to visit for an hour or two each day. To this day I have nightmares about that place. Some people were kind who worked there, some were very flippant. I found the psychiatrist in charge of my case very insensitive, didn’t understand or have any particular experience with postpartum, which is now what everybody decided I was suffering from.

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