Disclaimer: This article is based on my personal experience in three psychiatric hospitals (two of my experiences take place at the same location, but at different times).

Content Warning: This article discusses a suicide attempt. Reader discretion is advised.

“Good Lord, why me?”

That was the question looping through my mind the third time I was hospitalized. My reason for being there might be dismissed as trivial, but deep down, I knew something was wrong. My empathy had been pulled in a direction I couldn’t manage, and my inability to help with issues outside of my control sent my bipolar disorder spiraling into crisis.

It was Christmas weekend 2022. An ambulance pulled up to my brownstone apartment after my father called for help. I had been in crisis while on the phone with him and had swallowed a handful of pills prescribed for my bipolar disorder.

When the EMTs knocked, my landlord appeared on the steps, asking if I was okay. But I was already dissociating. The paramedics came inside and escorted me out. I tried to lie my way through it, but they knew.

At the hospital, they confiscated my phone and handed me charcoal to drink to help rid my body of the toxins. I thought I had escaped this cycle. I thought medication and therapy would be enough. Yet there I was, back in the same place I had been at 19—and before that, at 17.

Three hospitalizations: the first after a severe breakdown at school, the second after a suicide attempt and the third for the same reason.

At 26, I was officially diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, but the hospital experience felt unchanged.

Cold. Mechanical. Inhumane.

The food was mediocre. The sheets were thin, and the rooms were frigid, with no real blankets to keep us warm. Privacy was nonexistent. The rigid routines and enforced bedtime made the hospital feel more like jail. People screamed in the halls; others shuffled around aimlessly. We wore hospital-issued gowns in shades of blue.

Sometimes, it felt like the only difference between the psych ward and jail was the bars.

And the sharpest sting wasn’t just the conditions—it was the lack of empathy.

I kept replaying my reality: I was a graduate of the illustrious New York University, a LinkedIn News fellow and a journalist who had interned at the New York Post and Billboard, interviewing artists like GloRilla and Gangsta Boo (rest in peace) and writing about Ryan Coogler’s Wakanda Forever.

And yet, none of that mattered in the ward.

All they saw was a Black suicidal woman in need of containment.

I had seen this play out before. At 17, during my first hospitalization, I watched a teenage girl storm off crying during a breakdown. Instead of responding with compassion, a staff member barked at her, “Stop acting like a brat.”

Imagine struggling mentally, hanging onto life by a thread, only to be dismissed as spoiled.

That’s not just unprofessional. It’s dehumanizing.

At 27, during my last hospitalization, a psychiatrist looked at me with disgust when I asked a question. His smug, monotone response made me feel as though I wasn’t a person deserving of respect. I was simply a problem to be managed.

Two days felt like two months. There were no books, no games, no TV—just empty hours and aimless pacing.

One young man urinated on himself while sitting near the phone booth. Staff took their time cleaning it up, moving like molasses. The hospital-issued lotion was so watery that it left my skin dry, so I asked for Vaseline. They gave me a spoonful in a paper cup.

Yes, I was alive.

But I didn’t feel human.

Being Black added another layer to the experience.

I was raised in a two-parent, religious household. On paper, I was the image of success—a young Black woman who had “made it” and checked all the boxes: higher education, professional accomplishments and ambition.

But inside those hospital walls, those parts of me disappeared.

To the staff, I wasn’t an outspoken, educated Black woman. I wasn’t someone’s daughter, friend or peer. I was simply “the suicide attempt in room [insert number].”

And that’s the danger of these systems: they can strip away identity, humanity and dignity until all that’s left is a diagnosis.

The truth is, this isn’t just about me.

The lack of humanity I experienced in psychiatric hospitals crossed racial lines. The providers and staff members I encountered came from different racial and cultural backgrounds, yet I learned that sharing—or not sharing—a racial identity with a patient does not automatically determine whether someone will treat that person with compassion.

The larger problem is systemic. Psychiatric hospital staff can be burned out, underpaid and working within systems that prioritize safety, routine and containment while leaving too little room for humanity. But regardless of the pressures of the job, patients still deserve dignity.

If the staff in these hospitals remembered one thing, I would want it to be this: It could be you.

One life-altering event. One mental health crisis. And suddenly, you could find yourself behind those doors, trading your clothes for a hospital gown, asking for an extra blanket and hoping someone looks at you with care instead of contempt.

For a place so cold, you would hope the people inside could provide some warmth.

Instead, I experienced an absence of empathy when I needed it most. And even in recovery, surrounded by doctors with framed degrees hanging on their walls, I felt utterly alone.

Medical schools can require endless courses in biology, chemistry and psychiatry. Maybe it’s time we place just as much value on something that can’t always be measured by an exam: empathy.

Because when you’re Black, navigating mental health stigma, locked inside a psychiatric ward and feeling as though your humanity has been reduced to a diagnosis, empathy isn’t a luxury.

It can be the difference between simply surviving a crisis and feeling human enough to begin healing.