Have you ever spent a day and night inside a mental health facility in Kenya? I have, not one day, or two, but weeks. After years of wrestling with nearly every symptom of a mental health breakdown, from anxiety to inexplicable feelings of sadness and hopelessness, heavy drinking and depression, I finally looked myself in the mirror and said to myself: “No-this is not who I am, and I do not want my story to end this way.”
When I was checked into a mental health facility, just like many Kenyans, I had some heavy stigma, myths, and half-truths. I imagined things that go on behind the high walls of mental health hospitals.
Myth 1: Patients are chained and forcibly locked up inside dark cells
This is a half-truth. On my first admission, I spent the night behind a heavy steel door, locked up alone in a cold cell, trapped in terrifying hallucinations. My memory of that night is blurred, but I was later told that I howled like a wolf under a full moon and wailed like a child.
Weeks after my discharge, I returned to the facility to collect some medical records. As I waited at reception, I witnessed another patient being forcibly dragged behind those same steel doors, screaming: “You cannot lock me up by force! Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”
So yes, patients are sometimes locked up in solitary cells. But not everyone. Among many of us admitted that day, I was the only one confined, and only because (I was later informed) that I had started banging on doors, demanding to go home.
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Myth 2: Mental health facilities are dirty, and the staff are rude and abusive
Not all of them. More than 20 years ago, during my early days of reporting on mental health in Kenya, I visited the wards of what was then Mathari Mental Hospital (now Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital). The conditions then were dire—dirty wards, unkempt patients, and overstretched staff. A presidential task force on mental health later recommended relocating the entire facility to Karura Forest.
But other facilities have since emerged to address these gaps. Some now go the extra mile to present a more humane face of mental health care.
At a private hospital, for instance, my experience was starkly different. I was allowed to wear my own clothes, keep my phone, and relax in a lounge equipped with a pool table, Wi-Fi, and a large TV screen. The menu was hearty: chicken, beef stew, matoke, and the staff were polite and supportive.
Still, if you are a stubborn client, refusing medication or meals or bearing an attitude the size of Mt Kilimanjaro, expect firmness rather than indulgence-they have a gentle way of reminding you who is in charge inside there.
Myth 3: Once admitted, you cannot leave; you are powerless, like a prisoner
Before admission, patients are required to sign consent forms, alongside a witness. What most people do not realise is that these signatures grant sweeping powers to the facility and its doctors. I, too, signed without knowing what it meant.
It was only after my first night, spent curled on a cold floor in nothing but a hospital robe, that I discovered how powerless I was. Before my second admission, I stubbornly insisted that I wanted to go home, when one medic bluntly told me: “You are not going anywhere. Do you know I can order you arrested right now?”
The long, dreary days that followed, waking up, eating, sitting in the lobby, sleeping, eating again, were a blur of monotony. When I finally gathered the courage to ask when I might be discharged, the response chilled me: “Why do you want to know?”
I pleaded, explaining that neither my family nor my employer knew where I was, but my words felt like begging for freedom I no longer controlled.
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Myth 4: Patients are injected with strange drugs that turn them into zombies.
True, injections are common for new admissions, “relief,” as the staff might call it. True too, that some of the medications they inject in you might have certain reactions. In my case, the injection transformed me from a calm man who had walked into the facility unaided into a wreck on the first night.
Yes, the drugs can make you drowsy, disconnected, and even hallucinatory. But when they wear out, you often find your thoughts clearer—perhaps too clear, and even feeling a wee bit sheepish on learning about your drug-induced ranting.
Myth 5:Once admitted, patients inside mental health facilities have no rights
But I sat shivering inside that dimly lit cell on the first night, clad only in underwear and a hospital robe, I knew my rights had been violated. Nobody had bothered to explain my treatment options, the possible side effects, or my right to decline certain interventions.
Myth 6: Most of people admitted in mental health wards are gone cases of men and women who have no careers or have ruined careers.
I took a cab to the mental health facility in Nairobi on my own volition, believe me, there comes a time when the realisation that your life is wasting away overrides your sense of pride and the masculine (and feminine too) fear of being vulnerable.
Inside the wards, I met and had great conversations with men and women of all ages and professions-some were teachers, others were police officers, doctors, university lecturers. Some were fathers and mothers, some were young professionals who had just got their first jobs, and others were university graduates. Some were teenagers barely out of high school.
From the conversations that flowed freely, they were not here because they had no careers or lives; on the contrary, they were there for help to heal and become better in their careers, better fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters.
In between the sessions, we had a good time together, telling stories of our lives, watching movies on TV and even playing pool! And when it was over, we exchanged phone numbers and have kept the mental health conversation going among us, including calling to check on each other.
Myth 7: Once you leave, you are never the same again.
Yes, it is true, because to date, more than two years later, the metallic clank of padlocks still haunts me, and I flinch wherever a door slams too loudly.
Yes, it is true, because once you have taken that first step towards good mental health by seeking professional help, you begin a long journey towards recovery, this time with renewed focus and self-awareness.
Before then, you are like a person sitting alone on the back seat of a driverless car that is hurtling towards the precipice. But after several sessions with a seasoned mental health specialist, you begin taking charge of the car that is your life.
But before taking full control of the car, you might have to face feelings of guilt, denial, and fear-the sheer terror of facing a world that runs on myths and half-truths about mental health.
Looking back, life inside a mental health facility in Kenya is not just about the myths—it is about the half-truths that lie between them. Some facilities are harsh, others are humane. Some practices heal, others traumatise.
But if there is one lesson I have drawn, it is this: the voices of those who have lived inside these walls—whether patients or staff—are indispensable in reshaping how we understand mental health. Only by telling these stories can we dismantle the stigma that continues to silence so many.
