Behind Closed Doors: Real Stories from Psychiatric Wards
In 2020, I worked as a Mental Health Advocate on psychiatric wards, supporting individuals detained under the Mental Health Act (1983). My role was clear: empower people to express their preferences around treatment. With each referral, I only knew a name and a ward - not diagnoses or histories. When I met clients for the first time, I had no pre-conceived stories or judgements about who they are. This ensured that the power remained with the client and their story rightly remained theirs to tell…when and how they wanted.
Human Resilience in the Face of Institutionalisation
These stories show how hospitalisation can render voices invisible, fulfilling the pathology it claims to treat.
A grieving mum: repeatedly sectioned, medicated into sedation, apparently forgotten her grief—the loss of her baby ten years ago. Her trauma remained unresolved because the medical system treated symptoms, not stories.
A scared young woman: locked in her room, stripped of autonomy for wanting a cigarette. Labelled ‘defiant’, she was sedated against her will. She appeared childlike in her distress, aware, articulate, and yet profoundly unseen.
A man in quiet agony: kneeling, praying for forgiveness, drowning in grief. His emotional distress was dismissed as bipolar symptoms. Medication replaced compassion.
I met some amazing human beings with incredible stories. People full of life, resilience, joy, hope, grief, regret, and despair. But what struck me was the resilience, always the resilience. The will to go on. The will to find joy and happiness in each day. The longing to connect. To belong. To matter. To be heard. The undeniable and innate intuition that all human beings hold to trust their own inner knowing about what they need to be better, to feel better, to live—and the medical model’s ability to deny and drain them of this.
Courage, Advocacy & Human Connection
I could go on and on, sharing story after story of people being unseen and unheard. The effect of psychiatric institutionalisation fulfils the prophecy of their pathology. People in pain, traumatised, shut behind closed doors. Hidden. In the shadows. These people—our fellow human beings—are representative of problems on a much larger scale: within society, within the shadows of the collective psyche. The parts of us we hide away, lock away, suppress, dilute, kill. The parts that grieve, the abandoned, fearful, angry parts…full of feeling, full of truth, full of life.
To sit with people who feel crazy because that’s what the world has told them…and listen to them, ground together, until you connect core to core, and now…now they know that they aren’t really crazy…is one of the most worthwhile things I can do with my life. Working as an Advocate allowed me a unique opportunity to use my voice for my clients. This offered me a sense of what it would be like to be sectioned: to be powerless, dismissed, ignored, underestimated. To be the one who gets in the way, challenges the status quo, doesn’t agree, has needs.
As a person who has experienced significant trauma and all the psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual impact that comes with it, this left me feeling intimidated and frightened for my own autonomy. I became very aware of how fragile it can be, given external circumstances and influencers.
Imagining a Holistic, Story-Centered Future
I loved my job. I loved my team—a group of self-aware, kind people. I loved my clients. I left due to the increased workload when I started my studies as a therapist, but I did not want to leave—and one day I hope to go back, in some capacity. To be amongst some of the most courageous and inspiring people I have ever met, to sit with them in their pain and their joy and support them in settling deeper into their core, their inner knowing, and trust it.
But my deepest wish is for systemic change:
A shift from a narrow medical model to a holistic, story-centered approach
Valuing each person’s inner wisdom and lived experience
Creating environments where people are known, seen, and whole
Let us step out of the shadows and into a mental health system that truly listens, so we all may feel whole again.
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Counselling, Psychotherapy, Supervision & Breathwork in Huddersfield & Online UK
By Melissa Rose Spencer | Creative & Somatic Counsellor, Psychotherapist, Supervisor & Breathwork Coach in Huddersfield | Online UK & Internationally