When should I go to the hospital?

If I attempt to end my life, please (gently) take me to the hospital. As much as I dislike the place, their sterile environment, and the seemingly forever lingering pace of nothingness leading to boredom, and worse- sadness, the hospital is a necessary step towards recovery if I had so decided to attempt suicide. As much as my happiness depends on my freedom and the ability make choices, if I had so decided to end my life, then the people around me, though not responsible for any one else’s well-being, should not feel ashamed nor reluctant to place me in a safe (be it restricted) place for a time being, until I can express a hopefulness to continue my life outside of the hospital. The hard question is, when will anyone know (once I am placed in the 4-wall enclosure) when I have come to a better, safer place, where my freedoms can again be granted. An even further question arises in the form of whether or not hope to live is best instilled in the hospital at all; is the hospital a kind enough place (while being safe) to allow me to grow into a thriving human, or are there safe place alternatives that offer more natural enclosures, like that of a forest retreat or a beach cabin.

While such retreats staffed with professionals would be ideal for utmost peace (as observed in places like York, England, where one of the hospital grounds is filled with gardens and nature expected to be interacted with) they hardly yet exist on a global scale, so we will focus on the reality of the common concrete hospital enclosure.

The common hospitals should be the safest haven we know, not the dreaded shackles they have been feared to become. I think we must change the hospital eticate and scenery, so as not to appear as hopeless jail cells of isolation, regimented mindlessness, and lack of communication to the outside world. We need to re-envision crisis wellness and return to natural, almost meditative scenes of existence, those filled with animals and plants, music and art, scholarly works and journals of patients who have come along similar paths.

I envision a hospital that allows continual access to the outside, to nature. Staff should not fear the runaway lunatic, but embrace the walking waking person in peace, as physical freedom is of utmost importance to mental freedom. How can anyone expect to get better without an environment filled with sensations to explore. Overstimulated streets filled with chaotic sounds of cars can indeed be detrimental to the health of the sensitive folk, but no stimulation at all in the other extreme can lead to madness of observing nothingness.

Exploration is an integral part of human health, and when you are allowed only 20 steps by 20 steps, you are mentally squished. So how then can we expand the range of exploration while maintaining safety, while keeping people alive? The answer shall not lie in a punitive reactionary system of privileges taken away at the first site of danger, but rather the answer should arise in a voyage in the other direction; as people’s happiness is explored through added services and added privileges, as people are surrounded more continually with genuine supports, they should be introduced to people who act as guardians, not key-holders.

Hospitals need to be more like safe havens, perhaps as imagined in other parts of the world. Staff should go on walks with their clients, and these walks should be available to anyone, not just the well-behaved. The trick to getting these people to behave is to allow them mobility. Behavior, still is not the main concern. Violence against others is a heavy misconception of the ultimate sadness that a person feels when deciding to end their life. The main concern is not of human control, but of human liberation.

So when shall a person or myself if placed in the hospital know if it’s time to leave? Perhaps the hospital of the future is not a place any of us ever leave, but a core to the society we live in, extending beyond the walls and barriers, past the guards, past the code reds, and past our past, into a future where people care about one another past the clock.