Actually it might be the best essay I’ve ever written

To help the reviewers get to know you, describe an experience you have had…. Explain why this is meaningful to you.

True mental illness, in contrast to the trend of being an emotional teenager, is highly stigmatized in today’s culture, but I do not feel that I have had an experience which has impacted me nearly as profoundly as my stay in a psychiatric hospital over the spring break of my junior year. I was sent to the hospital for what was thought at the time to be, and initially diagnosed as, major depressive disorder, although I have since been found to have an anxiety disorder which causes depression. I learned a lot about other people from my stay there, and while it had a debatable impact on my personal illness, I do not feel that I would be the person I am today without the experience.
The first thing that I learned in a psychiatric hospital was that everyone there was a person. I was placed in an adolescent ward, and the other girls there were eager to make friends with me. The girl who thought someone was lurking behind her. The one who had scars all down her arms. They were friendly, and nice, and they were people rather than abstract, inhuman concepts of insanity.
The second thing that I learned was that “ward” should be used in the sense of a prison rather than in the sense of a hospital. Staff, as they were called, always watched you to make sure that you were doing all right, but on the other hand, you had to have contact with someone every fifteen minutes or risk causing an alarm. Privileges that most would consider rights were taken away, like the ability to wear a belt or to keep a container of shampoo in the shower, for fear that someone would find a way to use them fatally. I heard of plots to escape, rooms in which the cameras didn’t work, ways to circumvent the system. I found the extremes to which human nature would drive us for freedom.
However, the third thing I learned because of the hospital was by far the most important to me. I found out how many people cared about me. My parents visited constantly, transferring messages between me and friends. When I returned home and to Facebook, I found messages wishing me well, hoping I would get better. In real life, I was told repeatedly and by many different people that they were there for me if I needed them, and that they cared about me. Several friends, some of whom I have never met, sent me a care package full of candy and love. I still get messages from people online who find out about my past, and who think I’m brave for surviving. Receiving these messages is quite possibly the most meaningful experience I’ve ever had.
I’m no longer ill, through careful use of medication and psychotherapy. I am not glad by any means that I was sent to the hospital. It’s deliberately unpleasant, but by the point you arrive there, you’ve exhausted your other options. Still, I am glad to know what I’ve learned from it, and I think it is a defining experience in my life.