What I Saw Inside the Locked Ward: A Call to Remember Our Humanity

There are some things you see that you can never unsee. They etch themselves into your memory—not just as images, but as visceral truths that haunt and demand a reckoning.

Inside the locked floor of a mental hospital, I witnessed something profoundly unsettling. It wasn’t just the sterile walls, the absence of fresh air, or the absence of anything remotely resembling comfort. It was the sheer absence of care—for the soul, for the heart, for the human being in pain.

Institutionalization today—whether voluntary or forced—exists almost exclusively under the direction of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry, upheld by government sanction. This system, proclaims to offer care, but all too often replicates and reinforces the very harm it’s meant to heal.

What I saw inside left me not only saddened but angry. Angry that we, as a society, have progressed so little in how we respond to human anguish. There were no outdoor spaces, no gym, no access to nature or fresh air—only locked doors, fluorescent lights, and rigid routines. The primary form of “treatment” was medication and forced compliance with daily “classes” designed less to heal and more to occupy—and to continue to reinforce the psychiatric narrative that framed each person as ill and in need of ongoing medication to manage their now-named and packaged distress.

But even in that cold environment, healing moments still tried to break through—not through staff intervention, but through the people locked inside. The patients. We listened to each other’s stories. We cried together. We saw each other when no one else would.

And then came this moment—one of several that pierced me deeply and still brings me to tears.

A tiny older Vietnamese woman stood quietly during breakfast, holding a cup of coffee she didn’t want. She asked, respectfully, for a different drink from the cart. A nurse assistant barked at her to sit down. She calmly repeated her request, asking, “Why are you disrespecting me?”

Without provocation, four male staff members grabbed her and threw her to the ground.

I was appalled. I stood up, slammed my tray down, and said I would not tolerate such abuse. Only then did they pause. But the damage had been done. That image—this woman, small, brave, and utterly disrespected—will never leave me.

Her question still echoes: Why are you disrespecting me?

Indeed—why?

This system is inherently disrespectful, and I would go further: it is abusive. Healing cannot happen where dignity is denied. Where gentleness is replaced by control. Where the human spirit is stifled by locked doors and dehumanizing routines.

We must do better. We must see. We must listen. We must remember that healing begins with presence, not punishment. With community, not confinement.

Because if we continue to treat distress as a disorder, and suffering as a threat—we will keep retraumatizing those who most need our care. We will keep silencing the very voices that carry the wisdom of survival.

Let us open our eyes. Let us open our hearts. Let us remember what it means to be human with one another.