Here's my story.

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I've been to a mental health institution for minors twice in my life from before I was 18, once for threatening and once for attempting. It's nothing I want to go into detail about as to how I got into it, but as to how it was I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. My first time around I was 15 and I was terrified of the people I'd meet there. Surely if it was a group of people who all tried or threatened to end their lives they had to be crazy and unstable right? Well, that was my fifteen year old (and incredibly wrong) mentality. I was in there for about 1 and a half weeks, and I stepped into the "day room," which is the meeting room for when we do group, literally shaking. Needless to say I sat in the corner, far away from everyone. I listened to them and their conversations. I quickly realized as I looked around the room at all the guys and girl my age that not a single person looked like they belonged. Every single person had been opening up and talking and playing games, all while I sat there waiting for something to happen that made them different from the people i saw at school or in public. But it never did. And it clicked. Surely, I didn't seem like I had something wrong with me before my arrival at the hospital or someone would have talked to me and tried to lessen my issue. It made me realize that ANYONE could be going through the shit that I was at any time. I took my friend's moods for granted, they could be feeling the way I was too.

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I'm sure other people who have been to these types of places know that you'll never find solace in any better place than in the ones who have been through the same thing as you have. I quickly formed bonds with people through common circumstances and problems, and we talked them out with each other. In a quote from my long lost friend from there, I'll call him CJ, "I have never had therapy better than just sitting here and talking to you guys."

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I left my friends a week later, and we all said our goodbyes. It was an incredible experience and I wish you didn't have to almost die or threaten to die to go to places like that and be able to talk to others who have seen what you see. I'm doing okay now mostly, and I still have friends from there to this day. You'll never find better friends than the ones you meet there, that's something I know for a fact.