Midnight at the Insane Asylum

I've worked at Texas' flagship psychiatric hospital for some years now and, to quote Sally Brown, it's been an education not to be confused with learning anything. The patient care is for the most part pretty good, particularly given that it's, as we say, the state. The basic conundrum of the mental health system is that, unlike in "real" hospitals where you go in and get your leg put in a cast and go home and that's often the end of it, a trip to the psych hospital is often the start of a lifetime regimen of drugs that are better than they used to be but still often have some annoying side effects. More than that, it can be the beginning of a struggle against what you perceive to be reality. Psych meds obviously help and some patients have good support systems, but ultimately it seems to me that the patients face a lonely battle. Do we and the agencies we release them to do the best we can to help them? Hmmm....