For 3 months, the psychiatric ward was my reality. I lost my freedom, but not hope

This First Person column is the experience of Luke Galati, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

The psychiatric ward is a place no one wants to be.

But it's a place you might need to be at some point if you live with a mental health condition.

There's nothing shameful about admitting that sometimes you need help. In 2023, I spent three months at a hospital in downtown Toronto.

I live with bipolar 1 disorder. The best way to explain what I've gone through when I'm unwell is that I feel the highs more than the lows of others who might have depression.

I've gone through bouts of mania, where I lose touch with reality. I think that people who love me are out to get me. I act irrationally. But inside my mind, my world makes total sense to me. I believe things that I eventually realize aren't true as I come back to my senses.

When I experienced mania, I've done a lot of uncharacteristic and downright odd things. Not just in my mind, but also in the outside world. I bought random furniture online, which is actually still sitting unopened at my home. I even went to the airport to try to take a one-way ticket to Banff. I didn't have any luggage, but at the time, it felt totally rational.

I even walked all the way to the suburbs, 60 kilometres from my home. I thought that there were people on the TV trying to tell me messages. It's like my senses and ability to make sense of the world were temporarily miswired.

At the time of my hospitalization, I had stopped taking my medication and I hadn't slept in days, which is a trigger for me. I recognized that I needed to be hospitalized after a call with my therapist.

It was my longest stay of the four times I've been hospitalized.

I want to demystify what being in a psychiatric ward is like because it was tough for me but it's also possible to have a fulfilling life after it.

And I'm not alone in this experience. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, each year there are on average 520 mental health-related hospitalizations per 100,000 Canadians aged 15 years or older.

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By far the hardest place for me to be in the hospital is the intensive care unit (ICU).

This space is small and lacks privacy. You're watched pretty much anywhere that you go. At some hospitals, you have to share a room with someone, which isn't ideal from my experience.

There's nowhere to go in the ICU. There was the bed or the chair in my room or the thin hallway with bright fluorescent hospital lights shining down, with the nursing station behind a wall of glass.

One of the nurses who helped care for me, Lucas Goldman, told me later that the rooms were darker than most places and impersonal by design. It's not a hotel, after all, he said. It's meant to be an unwelcoming place of low stimuli to motivate people to leave rather than stay for long periods of time. Boring by design. Even my phone was taken away until I made progress.

I found the experience tough because I was surrounded by other people who were also struggling. Seeing people of all ages who were in the same boat made me feel like there was something really wrong with me. It made me scared that I'd never snap out of the psychosis that I was going through.

Sometimes it's the little things that you remember most. For me, it's the structure. You get your medication in the morning. The nurses check your blood pressure. Meals come three times per day: breakfast, lunch and dinner on plastic trays. At night, I take my meds. I then do it all over again the next day, every day for three months. That's the point of the psychiatric ward. The structure, meals, meds, sleep and some exercise all helped bring my mania down and kept me steady.

The doctors and nurses are on the other side of a thick piece of glass. It's like being a fish in a tank. It's understood that they need to be able to observe the patients. Pretty much the only time that I wasn't monitored was when I was in the shared washroom.

As I slowly stabilized after the first month, I was moved from the ICU to the 17th floor of the hospital. This was a big step for me and was something that I aspired to because it symbolized progress. More amenities meant more comfort. Having my own room with access to my own washroom and a TV room made a big difference.

In the outside world, I'm a filmmaker and journalist. Naturally, media was a huge outlet for me to get through the hospital days.

Eventually, I was given a radio. This allowed me to listen to music to pass the long days. I found the radio hosts hilarious and they allowed me to feel like I had friends constantly with me, keeping me company.

Being able to catch the news helped me feel connected. It reminded me there's an entire world that's still out there, even if I was stuck inside.

For the first month in the hospital, I wasn't getting much exercise. I was sitting around a lot and I felt restless. I'm someone who's very physically active and loves playing basketball.

So I pretended to play basketball in my room with a yellow bouncy ball. These things sound trivial, but it gave me a sense of play and control in a place where hope can be lost.

I also began walking in my small room, back and forth. I felt like a lion, pacing back and forth in a small cage. I walked from the wall on the east side of the room to the west wall in my room, pacing, getting any movement that I could, all while music played in the background. If you can't run, walk, I told myself.

I read magazines like Sports Illustrated and books about basketball, self-help and the craft of writing. I wrote a book of nearly 400 pages. I expressed myself artistically through writing poetry, thinking of political ideas and reflecting on my life on the outside.

I felt lucky that I had family and friends who would come to see me. This also made a huge difference.

I've had bad experiences with side-effects from medications that I've taken in the past. After finding a medication that finally worked, giving my brain time to cool, it was finally time to leave the hospital three months later. It felt triumphant, knowing that I was leaving the hospital. But I also felt nervous about integrating back into the busy streets of the city that raised me.

I walked through downtown Toronto with a clear blue bag holding all my belongings and took the train back home. Life around me felt like it was moving so fast, like one big blur. I had the goal of just getting home. One step at a time.

Looking back, I realize that being in the hospital isn't the end of my mental health journey. I'm going into my 10th year of volunteering as a basketball coach. I've been focusing on my writing, hoping to one day become a published author.

I hope I won't need to be in a psychiatric ward again. I aspire to live a healthy and happy life, which I believe is possible.

I lost my freedom and sense of control in the psychiatric ward. But I never lost hope and I found my own ways to keep moving forward.

I don't see myself as a victim, but rather someone who went through a tough time.

In late 2024, I made a radio documentary with CBC called Dreaming of Better about the realities that people with bipolar face.

It affirmed the idea that it is possible to manage the condition and live a meaningful life. Turning pain into purpose. It even won an award for reporting on the mental health of young people.

When I meet others who may have a loved one in the psych ward, I encourage them to show patience and give that person grace. Maybe you're going through a trying time with your own mental health. My message is this — don't lose hope.

It was a phase of my life, but it doesn't define me.

I've come to think of my time in the hospital as not the end for me, but rather as a new beginning.

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