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We Need A Review Site For Psychiatric Hospitals — So I Built One

Kit Mead
The Establishment
Published in
6 min readJan 2, 2017

Rating and reviewing psychiatric hospitals helps patients keep them accountable.

WWhen I arrived at my first psychiatric ward, at George Washington University, I was crying. Instead of helping me to alleviate stress, the hospital gave me sedative pills to make me quiet. I took the pills, terrified of being seen as noncompliant — I had read so many stories about people’s experiences. These places almost always view us as noncompliant if we want alternatives to the treatment plan.

A more recent psych ward stay, at Georgetown Hospital, felt safer; Georgetown staff actually seemed to care, did their jobs to try and make me feel less distressed, and listened to me when I rejected the idea of adding an extra medication. And the medication they gave me finally felt like it was working. When I talked about the difference in treatment quality with my friend Sara Luterman, an autistic advocate and editor of NOS Magazine, their response got me thinking. They said, “There needs to be a Yelp for psych wards.”

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.

Kit Mead
Kit Mead

Written by Kit Mead

I write about ableism and prejudice a lot. Main blog: https://kpagination.wordpress.com.