The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness

In mid-December 1987, Lori arrives at her new facility: a long-term unit within New York Hospital called 3 South. She is very uncomfortable there, and also feels like this stay is a pivotal one that will either make or break her.

After the immediate and acute aftermath of her suicide attempt, the staff extend a new choice to her: she can either be discharged immediately, as she wants to be, or sign herself into an extended-care unit within which she can expect to remain for at least one year. Within the unit, doctors would do everything to try to get her on the correct medications, and, crucially, she would have to enroll in intensive therapy in order to both acknowledge her illness and take ownership of her own responsibility to help herself. The goal of a stay in the extended-care unit would be to end her ping-ponging in and out of hospitals and programs.

Lori, still vibrating with the glimmer of self-knowledge and acceptance of her illness, decides to stay. Hospital staff and family members alike who have watched Lori fight against her own treatment for years are astounded by her decision. They don’t know that the two choices that the hospital offered to Lori cut straight to the heart of her own growing sense that she does, truly, need help.