[Salone]

Drink tonight: Peppermint Tea, no alcohol.

I've delivered to a few, and was forcibly put in a 'behavioral hospital' by a very corrupt judge and counselor when I was a teenager. They vary. You got your outpatients like Glitch said, and then you've got your permanent ones, which range from semi decent to fucking scary. I've delivered to the 'fucking scary' kind.

The worst thing is a lot of people who are mentally unfit or have learning disabilities do not get sent to the ones that can care for them, and instead are abandoned to nursing homes or even jail, where they are around people who are harmful to them and do not know how to care for them. I've met a lot in my previous job, and it's a sad thing.

One thankfully got shut down not too long ago here in town. They made one of the residents do the lawn work outside, and were abusive as hell. The state finally shut them down after finding *shudders* several piles of human feces in the kitchen area.

As far as my own personal experience, I was only there for 2 weeks and it was a fucking nightmare. Treatment is not given, because treatment means you leave. The one I went to gave each kid pills and shots each day to keep us...I don't know, sedated or something? I still don't know what the shots were, they never told us. Went to bed when they told us to, got up when they told us to. No doors to our rooms. I got paired with some very young kid who had anger issues, supposedly because I was the 'most calm' and 'level headed'. Also, I didn't belong there and was part of a god damn Cash For Kids program. Strict meals, hours sitting in a quiet room doing tedious 'schoolwork' and listening to people talk, never being directly addressed about whatever may have brought us in or helping us. One girl was in there for being repeatedly gang raped. They sent her to essentially kid prison for that, instead of getting her the proper help she needed.

I was lucky. I got out. I only spent two weeks there. Some of the kids were there for months, years. Others were just abandoned by their families. They pretty much grew up there, in that hell. I heard so many pitiful stories, so many lives ruined. I made friends with a guy there who really needed help, tried to commit suicide. He's the one who introduced me to tabletop RPG's. Obviously couldn't keep contact with him after I made it out, but I bumped in to him about 7 years later at a tabletop meet. He told me he was stuck in there for over a year before he was released, and was never given help.

Their diagnosis system is off too. They have you look at a series of pictures. Not an ink blot test though, actual drawn pictures, and want you to tell them what is supposedly going on in the pictures. Most of them are of violence or things that can cause violence, like a boy and his dad with a rifle or knives and things like that. They then use what you tell them to tell your parents and the state that you are 'Homicidal, Suicidal, Depressed, and a Danger to those around you.'. It's how they get you.

Emilie Autumn's 'Fight Like a Girl' album is eerily close to the treatment people receive in a lot of those places, if setting is omitted. There are some good places, but there are also those that will abuse you. Stay safe.