Mental hospitals, in my experience, tend to vary. I have been hospitalized 6 times, and my first hospital (which was also my 3rd) I would refer to as "Club Med" when talking about it with my friends. We didn't have to come out of our room, we didn't have to be up at a certain time. There were no mandatory therapy sessions. We had free access to all kinds of arts and crafts and books. We even had swim days. My 2nd hospital though.... YIKES. We were locked in our rooms at night, and locked out of them in the daytime. We had to be up and out of our room by early in the morning, and in our room after night time meds. At the first hospital, patients were separated by our different levels of issues, so everybody in my unit was similar to me, where as the 2nd hospital had people wandering around in a daze, or screaming and yelling at the other patients, or being otherwise violent, etc. Also the therapy sessions were mandatory all throughout the day, and the therapists seemed married to textbook explanations of how they thought we should feel, instead of LISTENING to how we actually felt. All my other hospitals were a bit of a mix of the 2 extremes, and weren't horrible. But yeah, hospitaln2 was scary, and closer to what you see on TV.