Mental hospital no, psych ward, yes, multiple times, depression is a miserable ***** of a disease.
It's a horrible place. Nobody there wants to be there. Not the patients, not the nurses, not the doctors, nobody.
They vary greatly. Some let you have your cellphone, some don't, some have groups you can go to during the day, some are pretty much just holding tanks.
Sometimes people have been there a long time.
Sometimes you get lucky and don't have a roommate.
It's not at all a therapeutic environment. The food is bad, the lighting is bad, you don't get to go outside, the company is as crazy as you are, most of the nurses are too jaded to give a ****, the doctor sees you for about five minutes a day on weekdays and usually is someone who berates you and doesn't care, and you usually end up feeling more like dying while you're there than you did when you went in. If you're overweight at all you'll go days at a time in the same scrubs because they will not have your size in the ward and won't care enough to get it from another floor. If you're autistic you will get overwhelmed and you will have a meltdown at at least one point. This is probably beneficial, because then they sedate you and you can sleep for a day or so, although you get the shot in your ass so it's embarrassing when it happens, but those things put you out like a light in less than five minutes so you aren't embarrassed about it long. You will make pointless art projects. You will hate at least one of your fellow patients. You will also become friends with at least one of your fellow patients, at least for the duration of your stay, because it's one of the very few places where everyone is as crazy as you are and nobody is judging you for it for once.
Yeah. Try not to go crazy. It's not fun.