u/badmancatcher

A close friend of mine has unfortunately had a fair few relapses in the past couple of years. After about a year of no contact at all due to relapses, and when they were out of hospital, they reached out. Unfortunately that did not last too long, and they're back in the hospital that over the years they've described as having caused them a lot of distress and trauma. They've been in there for about a month and there's still no roadmap or review for their treatment or anything. I visited them last week, and was allowed to take them off site, so we went for coffee.

We talked about what they were experiencing now. They wouldn't eat, shower or take their medication or leave any of their belongings at the hospital, so their brother takes them to their house every day to eat, drink, take meds etc. (as well as carry 2 bags of their belongings with them) as they believed the hospital was poisoning everything, and there were some hallucinated creatures in the hospital that were after them. Of course I know this is a part of psychosis, but I don't know how to approach this when they bring it up. I can't reinforce it, but I also don't want to just dismiss it and patronise them as being paranoid and them also not trusting me. They said they would be far more receptive to treatment if it wasn't at this specific hospital, and their brother and General Practitioner are apparently trying to get them transferred to another hospital instead to make them more comfortable and receptive to treatment.

Today, I was meant to see them, but they've had to cancel as they've been forced to have a depot injection, which apparently the nurses were not keen on delivering but their doctor decided this was the needed treatment. They've described at length their medical trauma over the years, and being pinned down and forcefully injected has always been one of the worst repeating incidences for them. A reasonable fear they've expressed even when they were stable.

I suppose where I'm going with this is I don't know how best to support them without making them worse. I know depot injections can be really successful for some people, but very distressing for others. Some things they describe are reasonable, like just wanting nurses to have a bit more sympathy, and not be patronised by them and doctors by giving what is equivalent of 'motivational social media quotes.' Other things I don't know though. They said they were on their meds to me, and I assume their brother was ensuring they were taking them, so this does seem extreme to force them into an injection in a specific hospital they hate to be in while taking their medication. What do I say when in one sentence they express a reasonable fear of being restrained and treated like a child unsympathetically, but then in the next breath they also talk about hating the specific hospital they're in because the hospital is poisoning them and that's where the creatures are?