To think it takes something serious to trigger 2 weeks in a psychiatric hospital?

[SnuckIn]

I found out my mum spent 2 weeks in a psychiatric hospital when I was 2 years old.

i asked my Dad what triggered it he said “stress.”

I think it takes a serious trigger event for someone to go into a psychiatric ward for a fortnight

My mum is long dead btw
AIBU?

I was offered a stay on a mother and baby unit for severe postnatal anxiety and depression only a couple years ago so it could have been that

You really wouldn't be admitted to hospital for needing a 'break from caring responsibilities' private or otherwise - A psychiatrist simply wouldn't be allowed to do that.

In the 70s, OCD was considered a near psychosis

i think it was totally different OP and I also wouldn’t over think this one pl

I don't think 2 weeks is long enough for it to be anything to worry about. Would be good to have more details to put your mind at rest though. When they started to close mental hospitals in the 90s, a friend took on a job as a carer for a person in his 60s who was going to live in the community. He was very institutionalised. When he took him to a restaurant, he would eat every scrap of food, put his knife and fork on the plate, then lift the plate up for it to be taken away. He had been put into the asylum as a teenager because he was epileptic and his parents couldn't cope. It was tragic that this person had a life locked up.

@PreferMyAnimals no, she is dead.

If you watch call the midwife, that’s up to the 70s now. Keep in mind how they use the maternity home, and home visits etc.

That puts two weeks in hospital into context at the time.

Oh crikey yes „she’s bad with her nerves“ was heard regularly in the 70‘s and 80‘s. Never heard „he’s bad with his nerves“.

Obviously I have no evidence for this but could it have been a detox? Valium and other benzos were handed out like smarties to women n the 1960s and 1970s.

Medical records are normally kept for 7 years. This was very common in the 50/70s.My late aunt,was a frequent flyer, she couldn't cope with 4 kids,2 with leaning disability,my lazy uncle. She got herself admitted to a psych unit,in a quite well known hospital. It turned out she had epilepsy this wasn't found out for many years. In the 80s, I looked after a little boy for social services, his mum used to go off to the GP,say she couldn't cope and would often get herself admitted.

This has reminded me of the 70’s ..as a child I used to hear some of the mums talking about “she’s bad with her nerves” or “her nerves are bad atm”. Very different phrases in today’s world.

I know a lady who was recently sectioned for about six weeks, she’s now back at home with her two young children and managing well. A family member was offered a stay in the hospital but she wanted to remain at home with the Crisis Team visiting every day for a couple of weeks. She’s doing well now.

Another lady I know was whisked away in the 60’s and never returned home.

i know you are curious as to what was going on with your mum but it was, and is, fairly common. As others have said, in today’s world she might have had support at home whilst having an adjustment with meds.

@MrsJHernandez ECT is still in use today, under more humane conditions, but can still be destructive or miraculous.

I take it there was no further incident of mental ill health during her life? A one off thing at the age you were I would suspect untreated post natal depression, but obviously it’s impossible to know. Don’t torment yourself about it though OP.

My apologies.

I've been offered. Stress, anxiety, grief and major life events. Want a break and some support ... no problem.

Women/girls could also be locked up because people thought they were at risk of becoming promiscuous - sometimes the notes implied that it was because they were pretty and a bit flirtatious. My mother did some academic research and found cases of 13/14 year old girls being taken away for that reason (1920s/30s). She worked with former patients of long stay hospitals most of her working life and came across many elderly women locked up for having babies without being married decades before. Really grim.

Sorry, derailed a bit!

I think if you watch "carry on hospital" or "carry on Doctor" you would also see how a lot of people in hospital were really quite healthy in those day. My neighbour, who is a hospital consultant, told me that when she started in her career, nearly all the hospital patients were sent home for Christmas, because there really didn't need to be there.

She says these days everybody has to be kept in because all the patients who are actually admitted to hospital are too ill to be anywhere else.

In those days, people sometimes were also admitted to local cottage hospitals just because they were "off their feet", as in, unable to manage the housework at home while recovering from illness.

@Latenightreader did your mum ever publish her research? I’d be interested to read it.

My grandmother spent a couple of weeks in local psychiatric hospital mid 70's suffering from depression after my grandad died.

Back then there were many psychiatric hospitals / asylums, and mental health issues were treated much more commonly as an inpatient issue.

The drugs and treatments available back then were rather more aggressive - gran had two weeks of benzodiazepines and electric shocks, and as she said, it put her off being depressed!

As others have already explained, the threshold for psychiatric admission just wasn't the same at that time.

Around 1979/1980, I remember visiting a friend of my mother’s. Whilst there I met one of her friends, a young man (probably late 20’s or early 30’s) who had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and spent several years there. The young chap was put there my his father, solely because he had an incredibly bad stutter and the father was ashamed of having a son with such a disability.

Thank goodness times have changed.

Are you in the UK? Which insurer are you with? Because I can't find a policy with half-decent mental health provision anywhere and I've been looking for ages, would love to know who you're with!

Back in 1992, I started feeling suicidal. I was 15. I spoke to a friend, who promptly told my mother who got the gp for a house call and a letter for a bed in local mh ward. I was there for 5 weeks while I was started on meds.

My next admission was the following year after turning 16, I was heading down in mood. The occupational therapy group always amused me as it was playing bingo for cigarettes which I kept winning and a couple of mh nurses trying to teach me to inhale.

It was totally different scenario to mh services nowaday. absolute chalk and cheese

Back in 2015, I made an attempt to unalive with tablets, when I woke after 12 days unconscious and was reviewed by mh team, they advised where I made my mistake and that if I had taken X first, it would have definitely killed me but I passed out with it in my hand before I could take it. I was being discharged home to finish the job even though I was only conscious for less than 2 hours now was crystal clear of my intention..

So the threshold for services is very different. As others said it was also prescribed as a "rest" for assessment..

Over the past 30+ years, I've had coma therapy, ECT, "courses" which was basically sit and listen to someone reading word for word from a book but not allowed to chat with other attendees, EMDR which was brilliant but apparently I wasn't improving fast enough (it takes more than 4 sessions)

I don’t know when SSRI’s became widely available? “Suffering with nerves” or “being bad with her nerves” were commonly used expressions when I was growing up.

I had an aunt who went into hospital reasonably frequently. My mum always said she was the nicest of all my dad’s siblings. Modern anti depressants weren’t available I don’t think.

Unless she is Doris Stokes I don't think she has much chance of asking the mum who has long since passed away.

Not familiar with UK way of dealing with things but in general no, one event will not cause hospitalization. Its usually a long string of small events that a person deals on a daily basis for a long time. With mothers of young children it often comes with the lack of sleep and exhaustion etc.

There was a much higher rate of admission at that time and few resources to treat people in the community. They did not admit people for frivolous reasons though.

"Stress" is a descriptive term for circumstances that can lead to mental illness, not a diagnostic label, but I am guessing that this is your father's way of understanding and explaining what happened.

Stress can bring about the onset of severe mental illness so he may well be accurate in his description.

It's great that your mom got better.