Surviving the Hospital Part 4: Coming Home
This is the fourth and final installment in the “Surviving the Hospital” blog series. If you or your spouse is facing psychiatric hospitalization I hope that this has been a helpful resource to you in addressing many of the issues that come with psychiatric hospitalization. This can be a scary time for all involved, though remembering what the priorities are can help make this process a lot less painful.
Lower your expectations
You’ve seen how low your spouse was before they were hospitalized and have seen how they have completely transformed in the previous days. Things seem back to normal. Life will be great again, right? Wrong. It is easy to have high expectations when it comes to the homecoming. Remember to treat this like recovering from any major surgery. There is a recovery time and it is important to give your spouse time to adjust back to life at home.
This will take some time, though during this recovery process also be on the lookout for things that are out of the ordinary. Your spouse may have some new medications with possibly different side effects. Be aware of them. Know the threshholds and know what your action plan needs to be when you reach a threshhold. The medical team treating your spouse can help you identify these threshholds and what needs to be done when those situations come up. Your medical team is just that – a team! They want to work with you to come up with solutions to help prevent your spouse from having another hospitalization if at all possible.
Establish Routines
During the time your spouse was hospitalized they had a fairly strict routine established and for someone who is suffering from mental illness that routine can become their safe haven – a way that coping with their illness is made quite a bit easier. In the hospital everything is controlled and they get to a point where they really know what to expect. Then when they leave the hospital there is that feeling of chaos that starts to creep in.
Consider helping your spouse develop a daily routine that they can keep at home, especially if they are not working. This will challenge them to keep a schedule and to resist sitting at home and possibly wallowing back to the depression side of bipolar disorder that placed them in the hospital initially. Establish some household chores that they could be responsible for during the day. Another idea is to find if there are support groups that meet during the day that your spouse could integrate into their routine. This not only gets them out of the house, but it gets them socializing with other people in a “safe” setting where the environment is a little bit more controlled.
The Recovery Continues
The transition back home can be a scary one for both the patient and their family. As much progress has been made while hospitalized, there is still that cloud of uncertainty surrounding the homecoming. Learn as much as you can during the hospitalization. The key is to learn enough to be observant while your spouse is home to know when things are getting out of control. If you can master the observer role and understand at what point your spouse needs non-emergent medical help you can help prevent further hospitalizations.
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If this is your first visit to our website – welcome! It is my desire that you are able to find hope and encouragement from this blog especially if your spouse suffers from mental illness. We try to take it day by day, though this journey is especially challenging. You should not have to go on this journey alone!
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Good tips. I can’t think of much more to add, except that I cannot emphasize enough the importance of TIME. The passage of time, I’ve found, is the greatest source of healing. Time to adjust to medications, time for medications to kick in, time to assimilate back into society and family life, time to return to “normal”, time to adjust to a “new normal”, time, time, time. You can never, ever take too much time, and never allow ANYONE to rush your healing. Not spouse, not well meaning friends and family, etc. Take all the time you need.
As for resources, might I suggest bphope.com It’s a magazine and a website with lots of useful info, blog posts, a forum, etc. I’ve not made the best use of it that I probably could, but I’ve “liked” them on facebook and enjoy the posts there! Also, bipolarhappens.com by Julie fast. I want to check out some of her books. There are not too many books written from the well spouse’s point of view, and that is something I would like to change. Because like it not, we are bipolar also! We have to walk it out every bit as much as the one with the illness, and it is not easy.
I have looked at bphope.com some and have been very impressed by what I have seen. I need to look at that a little bit more. I had not heard of bipolarhappnes.com, though I will need to check her out. Thanks for the resources!
Blessings,
Sara
Thank you for these posts about when/how to get help. I’m pretty sure now that there have been a couple of times that my husband may have benefited from an outpatient program. I’m not sure if they are offered in my area or what the out of pocket cost would be. Now I know when to seek help. My family has only been on this bumpy road for around a year and a half and your blog has been so helpful and encouraging. I checked out bphope.com. It seems like and excellent publication. I may subscribe. It is helpful for me to hear about ways that the mentally ill spouse copes as well as the healthy spouse. At this point I am just trying to soak in every bit of information that I can about bipolar and schizoaffective disorder. Knowledge is power! That is what we need to support our spouses and encourage them!
Charity, I couldn’t agree more! Our husbands are in such a scary spot right now that encouragement and a wonderful listener for a wife is what they need more than anything. There are some great resources out there and I am trying to share as many of those resources with the readers. I’m so glad that you are finding encouragement from this blog. Let me know if there are any topics you are searching out information on – I’d be glad to blog on them!
Blessings,
Sara
Hi there,
Thanks for this site/article. My husband is coming home from a 9-day 5150/5250 today (we live in CA).
Before he was involuntarily committed, he made a very serious attempt at taking his life, after, he spent 3 days in a coma–not medically induced. I’m sure that this has been the most frightening time of his life.
I’m so glad I found your site, as I’d been thinking that things would be rosy now. Your article gave me a dose of reality, so that now I can prepare for issues unpleasant that may come up. I will help him by sticking to a routine. He will be in an IOP program for 2 weeks, which will help, I’m sure. He will then return to work.
Thank you again, I will keep my expectations realistic, and my hopes high.
I’ll join the site when I have a bit more time. BTW, I also have bipolar (1) my husband suffers from bipolar 2. Thank goodness I am in a good place right now, I tend to almost never suffer depression, and am able to be high-functioning mostly.
I can’t wait to come back and explore your site.
Take care,
Rachel–CA
Hi Rachel, Thank you so much for leaving the comment! I hope that your husband’s homecoming was a smooth transition. I know that from our experience I even got sucked into the thinking that the hospital would take care of everything and return my husband to me with the pieces put back together. The transition back home was a lot more difficult than I was prepared for, but something that took a lot of time and patience. I’m thinking about your family as you all adjust to him being home. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you!
Blessings,
Sara Anderson
I just read your blog posts on hospitalization. I’m sure the outpatient therapy would not have ever helped my husband. He just doesn’t “do” talk therapy well. It’s like he can’t tap into what they want him to think. It may be because he’s older (65).
Anyway, he’s in the hospital right now. He had a urinary tract infection last week, and it looks to me like the anti-biotic interacted with his psych meds. If you do a search of info about levofloxacin and its side effects, well, it looks pretty scary. There have been reports of psychosis as a side effect, and the effects were irreversible!!
So he’s pretty messed up right now. We called 911 and had an ambulance take him in. I have been his legal guardian for a couple of years. When he was doing real well, we talked about letting him go back to being his own guardian. He didn’t want to. He seems to feel safer knowing I’ll be making the decisions. But it looks like he may wind up being institutionalized again.
My problem with much of the bipolar info online is that it is NOT from a Christian perspective. That’s what I want to know. Is this illness demonic?? It sure looks like it to me at times! But thank the Lord for the meds!!
And you’re right on about needing to stick with a strict schedule at home after your spouse comes home!! That’s probably the most important aspect of helping them stay well, that and having the guts to get help as soon as you think they need it.
God bless!
Barbara