This First Person column is the experience of Luke Galati, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
The psychiatric ward is a place no one wants to be.
But it’s a place you might need to be at some point if you live with a mental health condition.
There’s nothing shameful about admitting that sometimes you need help. In 2023, I spent three months at a hospital in downtown Toronto.
I live with bipolar 1 disorder. The best way to explain what I’ve gone through when I’m unwell is that I feel the highs more than the lows of others who might have depression.
I’ve gone through bouts of mania, where I lose touch with reality. I think that people who love me are out to get me. I act irrationally. But inside my mind, my world makes total sense to me. I believe things that I eventually realize aren’t true as I come back to my senses.
When I experienced mania, I’ve done a lot of uncharacteristic and downright odd things. Not just in my mind, but also in the outside world. I bought random furniture online, which is actually still sitting unopened at my home. I even went to the airport to try to take a one-way ticket to Banff. I didn’t have any luggage, but at the time, it felt totally rational.
I even walked all the way to the suburbs, 60 kilometres from my home. I thought that there were people on the TV trying to tell me messages. It’s like my senses and ability to make sense of the world were temporarily miswired.
At the time of my hospitalization, I had stopped taking my medication and I hadn’t slept in days, which is a trigger for me. I recognized that I needed to be hospitalized after a call with my therapist.
It was my longest stay of the four times I’ve been hospitalized.
I want to demystify what being in a psychiatric ward is like because it was tough for me but it’s also possible to have a fulfilling life after it.
And I’m not alone in this experience. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, each year there are on average 520 mental health-related hospitalizations per 100,000 Canadians aged 15 years or older.
WATCH | People with bipolar disorder answer your questions:
