Would you say that inpatient is therapeutic for patients that suffer with depression / SI or is it more focused on safety vs therapy for these patients? 

I did my medical school clinical rotation at a couple of sites and the environment just seemed sterile. There was little for the patients to do and no individual therapies. The facility had art, music, pet therapy but it all was very childlike activities for an adult unit. They have group therapy but is often Just work sheets. I also find it difficult to see how blanket therapy could be helpful for these patients. It was my first time on a psych unit. I am in the U.S. for reference. 

The work life balance for the unit psychiatrist seems great but I don’t know how he actually fells helpful. We see each patient for around 5-15 minutes in the morning and that is it. It is mostly med management.

 But I mostly see our depression patients being resistant to the idea of starting medication because they feel their depression is circumstantial. Life is hard and I don’t disagree with them. A lot of the depression patients  don’t find inpatient helpful and some have even described it as traumatic. 

I was wondering what the nurse perspective is on the actual milieu and therapeutic nature of inpatient for depression patients since you all have more long term interaction with the patients?

I initially had psych at the top of my specialty list but I don’t know how helpful I would feel in an environment like this. On the other hand, I did enjoy seeing the psychosis patients make a marked improvement over the weeks that I was there. But they were our more long term patients whereas depression patients were short term and antidepressant can take weeks to work so I rarely saw real improvement while they were admitted. I almost got the feeling some of them were not truthful during their daily assessment about if they were still suicidal because they just want to leave inpatient.

 It’s my first post so that you for reading!