"Admitted to cedars in july 2014"

I stayed in the cedars under section 2 of the mental health act for 28 days. On the whole my treatment there was ok. i was on coombehaven ward. Most of the staff were polite and friendly although one or two werent so nice. As other people have mentioned in their post i agree that the staff do seem to hide in the office. you can knock on the door and will sometimes be completely ignored . this happened to me several times. One day i was in the bath and the staff knocked the door. because i didnt respond quick enough they entered and left before i even saw who it was. after getting out of the bath i was called into the little side room and told not to misbehave in the bathroom and to do it in my bedroom. i wasnt doing anything at all. all i did was cover myself up when the staff walked in . i made a complaint about it to the ward manager. i was never told if any action was taken against the relevant members of staff. I strongly objected to the weekly searches of my room which were always done in my absence despite me requesting that i be present when such searches are carried out. I never got my protected time and when i asked just one time to talk with my allocated nurse i waited 2 hours outside the office then i was told things are hectic and sorry but they havent got time. Four members of staff were great. they obviously did care about what was going on in there. some of the others were rude. i was judged for being on benefit ESA and when i said the government had stolen my benefit i was told I had no right as id never worked in my life. so in response to this i wrote down my entire employment history and handed it to them showing that actually i had always worked until i became unwell shortly before i was sectioned. In my opinion i was discharged to early. it seemed they didnt want me in their hospital and i believe this is because im transgender and they didnt know how to deal with me. while i was there i was kept on the correct ward in accordance with my gender. After my discharge i was ok for a few weeks but found i wasnt coping very well and i subsequently had the crisis team visit me most days for a month or so. i was offered to go back to hospital but it be in Bradford. The crisis team had said if I didnt improve then i would be going back to hospital anyway. i have to say that 99% of the time i was treated fairly, i was never physically hurt by the staff. The place does need some improvements. It needs more staff on per shift and those staff need to be available not hiding in the office. Also the basic provision of WiFi could help people alot . i spent £40 on PAYG credit while i was in there. The patient payphones charge excessively giving about 2.5 minutes for £1. The cleaning was good :)

The food was repeatative with a very limited choice. you have to order your meals 3 days in advance . For the first 3 days i was there i had almost nothing to eat . you have to wait for everyone else to come and then they see whats left.