I was terrified. I was a 17 year old that had attempted suicide. I'm going to go too far into that as this article is not about that, but I didn't know what was happening. I had gotten out of the ICU and my vitals were looking better... this only meant one thing. I would be sent to one of the pediatric psychiatric hospitals within the Springfield, Missouri area.

When I first arrived at Lakeland, I was in the front, and it seemed nice enough. Then, they took me back to, what I call, the ACTUAL Lakeland. The food was inedible, and they paid no attention to the fact that I was vegetarian, but I ate the sausage for breakfast anyway, as everything else was so gross, I couldn't even smell it, and I was starving.

There were about three girls in red jumpsuits. I learned that this was because they had "tried to escape." At first, this scared me, but now I know why.

One girl threatened to "cut me" because I was "looking at her the wrong way." She didn't have anything sharp, of course, but nonetheless, I was terrified.

I remember my first (and only) night there. I didn't even have a blanket. I didn't have a pillow either. I only had a thin sheet. The bed felt like cardboard because the mattress was paper-thin and on top of a piece of plywood. It must've been 50 degrees in there. I could see my breath. My roommate was very kind, and I won't tell her story as it is only hers to tell, but I will say that she didn't need to be there, yet she had been there for about a month at that point. I don't know how she was functioning. I think about her often, even to this day. I hope she reads this.

The showers were freezing cold. I had to press a button that allowed the freezing water to flow for only 30 seconds, and then had to press it again, and again, and again. As I previously mentioned, it seemed as if it were 50 degrees there. I had no towel. They took my shampoo.

This is the worst of it all: they didn't give me my heart medication. I have a disorder that falls into a group of conditions called "SADS," or Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndromes. It's kind of like the well-known "SIDS," or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but I was diagnosed late, and thank God, I didn't lose my life due to it. Still, I could have died.

I was feeling extremely dizzy, and I only found out why, when my mom showed up. I cried in her lap for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes. It was normal to cry there. Most people did, all the time. The nurses didn't do anything about it. It was just kind of what happened at Lakeland.

My social worker got me discharged within 27 hours, but my mom, who is a (non-practicing) attorney, noticed that they had actually forged that they had given me my heart medication. Yes, you read that right. They wrote it in at the very last minute.

I thank God that I was only there one night, and my heart goes out to anyone else subjected to their borderline abuse. I was so scared that I ended up throwing up my chicken noodle soup due to stress when I got home. I still have diagnosed PTSD from that experience.

This is not meant to scare anyone, but I want the public to understand the crises that these kids are subjected to daily. It's inhumane, and this is a story that needs to be told. I wish that these other kids had the same voice that I do.