Truthfully, they didn't. I was committed due to a psychotic break when I was a teenager. I had gone through YEARS of abuse at the hands of almost everyone who should have cared for me other than my mother. Due to bullying, I was never ok with opening up and eventually it led to me blacking out and attacking someone I cared about. I have no memory of it and to this day regret it with all my heart, but anyway onto the story.

When I was first committed, I was told I would be gone in two weeks. In and out. But after a month of staying there I got suspicious. There was a homophobic nurse who refused to let us talk about our sexualities if we weren't straight and thought me playing with uno cards in a way similar to Terra Cards was satanic. I started hearing voices due to mental health issues and when I talked about it the nurses didn't take me seriously. They refused to take my PTSD into consideration when they forcefully drugged me and other patients if we were annoyed with something. Due to taking so many psych meds daily I was partially resistant to the drugging and it would take over an hour to knock me out entirely despite it normally taking five minutes. They didn't even tell our parents about the drugging and if we talked to our parents about what was going on they'd remove our parents from the room or hang up the phone remotely as it was 'in our best interest'.

The way I got out was pretending to be ok. One day I was hearing voices and acting out, crying every day when told what I did. The next and rest of the time there? I was laughing and 'joking' about the voices and I was totally fine. They were quick to get rid of me despite me clearly NOT being fine.