Sometimes the world really gets to me. I feel so stressed, inadequate and over-worked that I simply wish I could check in to an insane asylum (a nice one) for a few weeks and spend my days singing with the voices in my head and trying to pick the flowers on the wall. I want my meals made for me and brought to me on a tray. I want to participate in therapeutic drawing and dance classes. I want to veg out in the rec room in front of the television (which shows no violent shows) while playing with my crayons.
I want a vacation in the loony bin without the danger of actually being crazy.
That’s where the Mental Hospital Vacation home comes in to play. Check yourself in whenever you want. Be insane for a bit, get it out of your system. Be a little kid, get papmpered… then go back to your job on Wall Street with a new sense of inner peace.-- futurebird, Apr 10 2003 (?) Mohonk Mountain House http://www.mohonk.c...wband/main/main.aspParticipate in therapeutic drawing and dance classes, veg out in the rec room in front of the television, and have your meals brought to you on a tray. It's surrounded by ten thousand acres of untouched land, so if you want to spend your days singing with the voices in your head, no one's going to notice. I went there for the Sep 11 anniversary, and it did me the world of good. (Only one and a half hours from NYC, too, if the Tappanzee isn't snarled up.) [DrCurry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] Analyze This. http://www.medal.org/ch18.html [dpsyplc, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] I too have wanted this from time to time, but never enough to have myself admitted.-- snarfyguy, Apr 10 2003 Weeks ago, someone posted "everyone should spend time in an asylum."-- waugsqueke, Apr 10 2003 I was that unlucky someone, waugs. Seemed like a good idea at the time (and still kind of does, to me), but it was thoroughly fishboned by all and sundry.
Still, I like this idea a whole lot more. A kind of Mental Health Spa where you can go to top up your sanity when it's flagging a little, rather than wait for it to dissapear altogether and then having to rebuild it all from scratch. There should be more preventative remedies like this in the world of mental health.
Plus I also just like playing with crayons...-- lostdog, Apr 10 2003 They’re coming to take me away – ha ha – ho ho – he he...
Besides the song, it reminds me of “Crazy People” (1990) – Dudley Moore, Daryl Hannah.
Many larger (US) corporations support and cover such activities. It’s called the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) at my workplace. Don’t know if they’d let you slip out “for a few weeks”, but I think it’s an important cause. I see people teetering on the edge daily. (+)-- Shz, Apr 10 2003 I used to go to the place in your link, [DrCurry], when I was a kid. It was kind of shut down and gathering dust and the big house was a lot like the house in "The Shining," except this was before the "The Shining." We used to go and swim and pick blueberries. Teenagers used to dive off really high rock outcroppings into the unbelievably clear water.
Then I heard it got bought by some developers. Last time I drove by they wouldn't even let me in for a look (no reservation, y'see). Bastards.-- snarfyguy, Apr 10 2003 If you want to commit yourself for a while, I'm quite sure you can just go ahead and do it.
Otherwise, this sounds just like a regular spa.-- waugsqueke, Apr 10 2003 Does this make you an asylum seeker?-- sild, Apr 11 2003 Having spent many, many years in an ad agency, I think that Crazy People is one of the sanest movies ever made.
We had an EAP, too, [Shz]. They send you, from what I hear, to the kind of places they make documentaries about.
This ought to be like the Golden Door with SSRIs.-- grecosartre, Apr 11 2003 I love EAP! Don't nobody talk down EAP! That lovely program allowed me to slip out of work for a month (meant to be two weeks, but a respiratory infection doubled it) when I was recovering from surgery, trying to get away from my abusive fiance, and in love with someone who was not my fiance. In short, I was nuts. Completely off my head. Bless EAP, which offered me the combined luxury and curse of long daylight hours to spend either in troubled sleep, or in careful consideration of my f**ked-up life. I would run screaming from EAP and its advocates if offered it now; then, it was the right medicine at the right time.
Unfortunately, the EAP that helped me didn't send me to a facility of any kind. Shame. I was picturing something like the place in "Splendor in the Grass", where Natalie Wood went when Warren Beatty finally drove her three cats mad. I imagined a place with high ceilings and sun-filled rooms, ample canvases and copious paint lying around, where I could go all silent and artistic after my psychotic break.
"Nice" sanitaria do exist, if the family of the nutjob in question (sorry) has enough money to pay for a place like La Quinta de Los Locos, with the wide lawns and the weeping willows and the Olympic-size lap pool where the inmates try to drown themselves every Tuesday during Wataerobics. If the swanky "retreat center" is anything like the one I visited for a research project in school, it has an entire ward set aside for the creepy skinny girls with the too-bright eyes who hide Gummi Bears in their mattresses and vie for the weekly title of Queen Anorexic.
Wooooh. [shudder] Go to a place like that once, you'll put some serious effort into acting sane -- probably for the rest of your life.
You can take this outpatient's word for it.-- 1percent, Apr 11 2003 If you ask me, what you're actually looking for is a place to be without being judged by people you appreciate their opinion. Like the role of dreams, such an experience is actually an experience isolated from reality, where you can really be you. This would work only if you are the only sane person over there, otherwise you'd again be busy in relationships and would not be free. There is at least one existing alternative to this which is Vipassana workshop where the participents spend 10 days meditating, but one of the main rules is that you are not supposed to communicate in any way with others, and hence you get a completely personal experience. The quest is to be by yourself but not alone.-- gamb, Aug 03 2004 Baked.It's a psychiatric ward !A place for people with real problems.Not for some lazy wanna-be [ futurebird].-- python, Aug 04 2004 A friend of mine committed herself for a month or so while she was kicking SSRIs... those things make you go nuts with withdrawal.
So a short-term committing is possible.-- eulachon, Aug 04 2004 random, halfbakery