The Kindness of a Psych Ward Staff Member Saved My Life

I hit rock bottom in life a little more than 10 years ago. I lost everything that was important to me, from my child, to my car, to my house, to my dignity.

This is when I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I ended up spending six weeks in a short-term psych ward. The average stay there was five to seven days. I blew that average right out of the water.

• What is Bipolar disorder?

I made a lot of poor choices before that hospital stay, which ultimately cost me custody of my child. For a time, it also cost me my family and friends. When I was staying at this hospital, I had no friends or family to come visit me. Everyone had written me off. I had no one to call during open phone time. I had no one to bring me money to get a soda or something besides the semi-edible hospital food.

That kind of isolation will wear on a person, until they begin to truly believe they are nothing more than a body breathing air and taking up space. This being a difficult point in my life, I actually contemplated ways to end my life while in the hospital. I hated myself, and I felt like no one should waste their time on me.

Since I had that attitude, several of the nurses and techs treated me as such. There was one who didn’t though. He treated me as if I were a person, as if I mattered. He was always subtle in his approach to letting me know I had value, but it was always there. It was the little things like getting me a soda every week or so or buying me french fries from the cafe downstairs. He knew I wasn’t getting that stuff any other way. He would let me choose the radio station and encourage me to rock out.

These don’t sound like huge things, but they were life-altering for me. I was able to slowly come back from the brink of the dark abyss because of his actions. I started writing while in the hospital, to get the words that were poisoning my soul out. I started trying to live again, even though every day was like having a glass shard in my heart.

I learned a valuable lesson from this man’s treatment of me. I learned that you never know how much of a difference you can make in a person’s life by being kind. So be kind, always. He’ll never know that he helped save my life, just by treating me as a person.

Now, I try to pay that forward whenever I can. Random acts of kindness are my favorite things to do. If you’re ever in a position to either be kind or say something hurtful, then always try and choose the higher road. You never know when you’ll be saving a person’s life by doing so.

If you or someone you know needs help, visit our suicide prevention resources page.

If you need support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. You can reach the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741-741.

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