This is the best description of what short term hospitalization is like. The severe car accident analogy is great. In patient hospitalization is like being in the ICU to stabilize, and then you have to do the thousands of hours of physical therapy afterwards to get back to full functionally. I’ve been in a US PHP program twice in the last 25 years and the second time in 2007 started with 11 days of in patient hospitalization after a suicide attempt. The folks that hate in patient hospitalization most likely are early in their mental health journey (2000-3000 hours of various therapies, workshops, and PHP for me so far).

Being early in your mental health awareness makes the lack of control in an in patient hospitalization terrifying.

For me the 11 days were a godsend, and I needed the doc to stabilize me on my new meds. They weren’t going to release me until they’re saw me improve on the SSRIs and that took 11 days. I was then put into an outpatient program for 3 months. I will say the outpatient programs and my workshops are where I did the heavy lifting wrt emotional learning, learning CBT and DBT, etc. Those two PHP stints laid the foundation for my recovery.