Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]

"P" was a totally normal guy who was changing his oil one day when he felt something bite him. His hand started swelling up and he went to the ER where his hand swelled to unholy proportions and became gangrenous. He entered a state of consiousness half-way between sleep and awake that he never left. It was later determined that the bite was caused by an exotic venemous Korean snake that probably hitchhiked in a crate that was delivered to one of his neighbors.



[/ QUOTE ]

Man, that is such an [censored]-up bad beat, it's as almost comical as it is sad.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

do you feel that working there made you more likely to become depressed or suffer other mental illness? i had a friend who stayed in a psychiatric hospital for a week after he had a nervous breakdown and expressed suicidal thoughts to his therapist. he wanted to go in at the time, but i think he regretted doing so. he was heavily medicated during the stay and i visited him several times. i left feeling utterly depressed, not only because of my friends situation, but because of all the misery that was there.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi, I'm also interested in schizophrenics. Any experience with some highly intelligent schizophrenic patients? Or any particularly interesting conversations with them? Stuff that was out there but that you could kind-of almost relate to. Those guys like John Nash are fascinating to me. Are these types of functional/highly intelligent schizophrenics studied more? I'd think there's some value in hearing a lucid schizophrenic describe his own situation; any comments on that?

And I've read that manic bi-polar people, or, more particularly, people going through hypomania can have brilliant moments and speak well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't see any schizophrenics that I thought were particularly intelligent, although many did make strange connections between seemingly unrelated things.

I did see a book by a schizophrenic describing his personal experiences that was highly rated. It *might* be "The Eden Express: A Memoir of Schizophrenia"

Intelligence is more often associated with bipolar disorder, particularly the manic state. At my second hospital I saw more people who were functionally mentally ill and some of the BPD patients here did seem very intelligent (e.g., one guy was a university professor in psychology).

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
do you feel that working there made you more likely to become depressed or suffer other mental illness? i had a friend who stayed in a psychiatric hospital for a week after he had a nervous breakdown and expressed suicidal thoughts to his therapist. he wanted to go in at the time, but i think he regretted doing so. he was heavily medicated during the stay and i visited him several times. i left feeling utterly depressed, not only because of my friends situation, but because of all the misery that was there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Going to a mental hosptial for the first time is quite a shock for patients, visitors, and new staff. You simply can't be a staff member and continue to remain affected, though. You'll either need to quit or develop your own way to distance yourself emotionally from the specific tragic elements of patient's situations. The most common method is for staff to conceptualize the patients as 'patients.' I.e., a different kind of being from me (and perhaps undeserving of empathy or sympathy). When you see a social category instead of a person, work gets much easier.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
So was this guy "P", who got bit by the Communist North Korean snake permanently screwed up by it? He never recovered?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's correct. He was in the 'real' hospital for quite a while before the doctors gave up and shipped him home to his family. I think we got him when his family gave up on him, and he stayed with us for a few months before they finally found a long-term placement facility.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I don't really know how many people are still reading this thread, but I haven't even told some of my best stories. Anybody have questions about the following?

- What happens during adult/kid take down?
- Patient escapes
- How do little kids end up in the mental hosptial
- Anybody die/kill themselves?
- what's it like having people with a huge diversity of mental illness all together in the same place
- Any sociopaths?
- Other strange disorders
- Drinking on job
- What's it like working nights?

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
Any experience with some highly intelligent schizophrenic patients? Or any particularly interesting conversations with them?

[/ QUOTE ]

FWIW. One of my friends is schizo and has an IQ of 125. I am also aware that there is some woman who is a professor at a college in California who gives speeches about this condition. Google her, I think she just gave a speech about two weeks ago here.

Oh here: Elyn Saks :Law Professor at USC.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

My twin brother is a schizophrenic. I seem to remember his IQ having been tested at 140 earlier in life, but he was a perfect student and graduated from one of the best universities in the country with highest honors. He was a perfectly normal teen and in college everything was fine until about his senior year, when he would go off on somewhat odd conversational tangents and was drinking heavily. From there it was a quick and rather shocking decline involving stints in jail and several psychiatric hospitals.

He has not been functioning in the sense of interacting with the world for quite a while now and suffers from terribly disordered thinking and auditory hallucinations. What may be the most devastating affect of his illness is the irreversible damage the psychoactive drugs have done to his intellect. If he were to recover entirely, I would guess his IQ would be no higher than 100 at this point. He sleeps about fifteen hours a day and has gained an alarming amount of weight and his personal hygiene has deteriorated.

Despite all this it is far far better than seeing him on the street or back in jail or the psych ward. The truth is that I am sympathetic with those who stress that the mentally ill are not dangerous, but unmedicated schizophrenics certainly can be, and often are. Should he not take medication his mind looks for an enemy, basically someone he can blame for his current condition. That makes it extremely difficult for family members.

If anyone has any questions about how schizophrenics fare in jail and in psych wards I am happy to answer them. The more people who understand what families need to deal with and what some of the warning signs are, the better. I kind of left out the middle of the story, but the decline itself was a real disaster.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
More stories about crazy people doing crazy things plz.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

The following:

[x] What happens during adult/kid take down?
[ ]Patient escapes
[x] How do little kids end up in the mental hosptial
[ ] Anybody die/kill themselves?
[x] what's it like having people with a huge diversity of mental illness all together in the same place
[x] Any sociopaths? [Maybe related; anybody you had zero sympathy for?]
[x] Other strange disorders ldo
[ ] Drinking on job
[ ] What's it like working nights?

Post deleted by Mat Sklansky
 

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Wonderful thread! I just got done reading the stories out loud to my gf. She just looked at me with a "where's the rest?" look.

So please, more!

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't really know how many people are still reading this thread, but I haven't even told some of my best stories. Anybody have questions about the following?

- What happens during adult/kid take down?
- Patient escapes
- How do little kids end up in the mental hosptial
- Anybody die/kill themselves?
- what's it like having people with a huge diversity of mental illness all together in the same place
- Any sociopaths?
- Other strange disorders
- Drinking on job
- What's it like working nights?

[/ QUOTE ]

honestly you should address all of these. I guarantee people are reading this thread. personally I'm most interested in sociopaths.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

yes, address all those you listed. You mentioned stories that would make WhoAmI's dad wince. Could you elaborate?

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
Re: Sexual Urges. For some time a girl from my school named Kim worked as a tech at the hospital. She was without a doubt the hottest thing in the city. She worked as a stripper at a high-end strip club in New York during the summer, and Playboy picked her up for some online version of Playboy. She was also very very intelligent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pics, obv.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

wdcbrooks: Tragic situation, but it is good that you apparently dodged the bullet. If you have an identical twin with schizophrenia odds are 50/50 you will develop it. Feel free to share any stories that you think would help people understand what it is like having a family member with schizophrenia.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
Pics, obv.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course I immediately went looking for pictures when I typed out that story about Kim. Her playboy pictures were online back in college (and just about every guy I knew saw them -- my college only had 700 students total so seeing the hottest chick naked was a big deal). But dammnit I can't remember her last name. I'll make more effort though and post in bbv4life if successful, but I'll make a note here if I do.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I don't want this to turn into a blog but since a few people have expressed interest I'll tell some stories. Here is one of my favorite stories, which happened on a unit for people who were chonically mentally ill (in and out of the system constantly) and not quite ready to be released into society. They were generally stable though and had more freedoms than patients on the acute units.

My last year of college I was a bit burnt out on patient contact so I was working the night shift full time. Nice thing about the night shift is that at least one (if not two) of the three staff on the unit would get to sleep for four hours or so after the work of auditing charts was completed. If I wasn't sleeping I'd be doing schoolwork or I'd be on the Internet for most of the night.

So one particular night I am sleeping in the exam room on one of those really cushiony exam beds (you know, the ones you find in any doctors office with the white disposable paper on top). I wake up after an hour or two and hear a sound I've never heard before in the hospital. It is the grinding of metal on metal and I can't really localize the source. So I'm sitting there in the dark listening to this noise and then it stops. So I think, noise over, problem solved, back to sleep.

About 30 minutes later the nurse bangs on the window. Hey, two patients have just escaped. The patients were both girls of ~25 who had borderline personality disorder and depression. I would have diagnosed them with being chronic bitches (these were two of the rare people that I felt no sympathy or warmth towards at all, but I digress). Apparently, they had filched a pair of scissors during the day and had cut through the wire mesh on the window in their room to escape. The exam room in which I was sleeping was directly adjacent to their room, which is why I heard them cutting through the mesh.

So I do a room check to make sure everyone else is still on the unit, we lock the room of the escapees, and of course I go back into the exam room to finish my nap.

A bit later I hear someone walk onto the unit through the heavy double doors. Normally this wouldn't wake me but given what had just happened I get up to look. I see that the facility director has just come on the unit. Now she was such an incredibly lazy person that I would have never thought in a million years she'd come to the hospital at 2 in the morning for something like this.

So I'm hunkered down in the completely dark exam room, holding a pillow and blanket and not sure what I should do. If I walk out onto the unit she might see me leave this room and then I'd have some fast talking to do. OTOH, if I stay here and she walks into the completely dark exam room and sees the crumpled white paper on the exam bed, and me holding a blanket and pillow. Well, I'd obviously be fired.

I opt to slip out quietly right behind her as she walks by the room, ninja style. A few moments later she doesn't even notice that I essentially appeared behind her from nowhere. For some reason she starts looking about the unit and the FIRST DOOR she unlocks is that exam room. She doesn't take note of the blanket and pillow tucked neatly in the corner, or the crumpled white paper on the bed.

I do not go back to sleep afer this. She leaves the unit and a few hours later our escapees are brought back by police. They are in an extremely foul mood and one actually has to be restrained in the seclusion room because she won't calm down. I did feel sorry for her on this instance, because she had a history of sexual abuse and to restrain someone you basically hold them down and strap their arms and legs to the four corners of the bed. This involves forcibly separating a person's legs, and for some women this brings back memories of sexual violence.

Edit: That was a lot to type I'll write more later tonight or tomorrow. Next story will be about a sociopath.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Don't really have any q's or anything, but everything you've written has been interesting...keep it up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

what are the qualifications to become a psychiatric tech>?

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

gimme gimme more

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
what are the qualifications to become a psychiatric tech>?

[/ QUOTE ]

see my response to whoiam earlier in thread.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

OK so some people were interested in sociopaths. I'll relay a story about a supposed sociopath that I knew.

Ken was an intelligent 35yo caucasian male who came from a very wealthy family. His family connections were the reason he was in the mental hospital rather than jail. The entire time I knew him he was extremely sociable and an interesting fellow to talk with. I never saw anything in his outward behavior toward me, other clients, or any staff that would indicate sociopathic tendencies.

The only indication of such tendencies came from his chart, and the contrast between the gruesome information recorded there and his social grace was unnerving. His file was an inch thick with incidents that seemed not just criminal but gratuitously evil. He had started a bunch of fires. Pushed an old guy into traffic. Some questionable accidents involving his vehicle and pedestrians.

I asked him about this and he said that his previous behavior was all due to a coccaine addiction, and that when off of coccaine he was a different person.

I went back and forth in believing that everything really just came down to coke. In the end I defered to the judgment of the large majority of hosptial staff who had a longer history of being around him and saw more of his completely sober manipulations of policies and people to what suited him. But the thing with sociopaths is that you can have a mountain of evidence piled thick in a chart recording the objective facts of behavior, but there will always be an excuse delivered in such a charming and disarming way that you can never totally doubt their story that everything is just a big misunderstanding.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
gimme gimme more

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

OK this will be my last post in this thread unless there is a groundswell of resurgent interest. I'll tell you about an interesting patient who I'll refer to as 'Preacher.'

Preacher was a ginormous black man -- 6'2 and about 250 pounds of mostly muscle. He had schizophrenia and a very bad attitude. He had a rough history with the police -- he once sent three of them to the ER during an arrest, and he had more than his share of beat-downs. For a big violent black guy to be brought to a mental health facility rather than jail, he has to be very [censored] nuts.

Whenever he came to the facility the doctors would immediately order sedatives in doses that would knock out an elephant. He would always fight the effects, though, and would walk about the unit as best he could. He moved extremely slowly, and due to the medication there was an effect whereby he moved in very jerky increments (e.g., if he is raising his arm up it goes up in spurts, one inch at a time).

His voice was unaffected by the medication -- he had a very loud booming voice, and he would always walk about the unit giving a sermon about evil and evil men that was not unlike Samuel Jackson's diatribe in Pulp Fiction. It was also funny how when he wasn't giving these religious speeches he was walking up to the nurses for an interaction along the following line:

Preacher: "Hey, you."
Nurse: "Yes what do you need and please lower your voice"
Preacher: "I's needsum hussy"
Nurse: "I'm sorry you need what?"
Preacher: "Hussy!"
Nurse: "Please lower your voice and I'm not really sure what you want."
Preacher: "Damnit I NEED PHUSSY"
Nurse: "Uh, I'm sorry we can't provide that here."

Occasionally he would get worked up to a point where he would need to be put in the seclusion room, but there was no way in hell we techs were gonna do it (I would have quit working there before trying to take down that guy). So we would call the police. Given his history with the police, they would send what is termed a 'show of force.' Something on the order of 18 cops would show up, all with nightsticks in hand. They'd let the black cop try talk him into going into seclusion on his own and voluntarily submitting to an injection that would knock him out for a week. Even though he was nuts, he retained the memory of going against cops in the past and I guess he was sane enough to decide it was not worth it. I never saw him fight with them.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
OK this will be my last post in this thread unless there is a groundswell of resurgent interest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that you have a ton of silent fans here.

But I will be the first to bump the ground.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Definitely keep it up.

Drinking on the job... What's that all about?

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Hi. I too have really enjoyed your stories. I'll encourage you to share more by sharing a couple of my own. I've spent about 4 months total between med school and residency working in different psych units.

During med school my first night on call with psych I got paged by the resident at about 11pm. I went to the ER and the resident tells me that we have a new guy in one of the exam rooms who is probably psychotic and she'll let me do the interview and physical. I'm pumped because I get to practice a little of what I've learned and I'm ridiculously naive. So I knock on the exam room door and enter to introduce myself. I see an older lady, probably in her mid 60's, sitting on a chair looking slightly worried. A young man in his late 20's is pacing back and forth across the exam room. He's wearing sunglasses. Unfortunately at the time, I was unaware that this is the #1 ER sign of mental illness - a patient wearing sunglasses inside the ER, especially when it's dark outside.

I introduce myself and ask Mr. G to sit down and talk with me for a bit. The resident follows me in and introduces herself. We sit down and I start my litany of memorized questions:

Me: "What brings you in"
Woman: "We're concerned because G was arguing with the pictures in our home and became violent."
G: "God, they won't [censored] shut up!"

Etc. It turns out that the woman and her husband are this guy's parents. They have done their best to manage their son's problems on their own. Good and bad. Good that they're dedicated to their son, bad that his problems had to become so severe before he was brought to a doctor. After breaking several pictures at home he attacked his dad and his parents had to call the police to bring him to the hospital.

While I'm learning this G is becoming more and more restless. He's pacing the room, muttering incoherently, sometimes interrupting his mom to yell at her and curse his dad for trying to stop him. He keeps referring to himself as Rocky and refers to his dad as "Dolph".

Being the good student, I ask about special powers or missions. Apparently he has been contracted to meet with Saddam Hussein and pay him $1 million and if he does not, then a nuclear sub will sail to kansas and nuke KC. Honestly I'm a little baffled by this and having some small trouble not smiling. G meanwhile is getting more and more agitated as he tells me this. I glance at the psych resident who looks totally nonplussed. I ask my next question and G throws a punch a few inches from my face. That's it for me! Security comes in and the patient slowly calms down and finally agrees to take an antipsychotic that will also help calm him down. I see him on the ward the next day and he's the most pleasant guy there. Such a scary disease.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Tell more stories. A+ thread.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I don't have anything to add or any specific requests but keep on telling the stories.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I'm really enjoying these stories.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
"D" was a completely normal 16 year old girl when she started exhibiting signs of schizophrenia. Went from being a good-looking honors student with a black belt in karate and a bright future to being a meh-looking batshit crazy 30 year old with a black belt in karate and no future. She had a scar running up her stomach from when she stuck a knife in her belly to remove a nonexistant baby. She'd also swallowed Draino.

"P" was a totally normal guy who was changing his oil one day when he felt something bite him. His hand started swelling up and he went to the ER where his hand swelled to unholy proportions and became gangrenous. He entered a state of consiousness half-way between sleep and awake that he never left. It was later determined that the bite was caused by an exotic venemous Korean snake that probably hitchhiked in a crate that was delivered to one of his neighbors.

"R" was our 'memento guy' (if you saw the movie). He developed encephalitis as a complication of an STD (I think it was hepatitus) and couldn't form new memories. Most annoying guy on the planet. Since he couldn't remember anything he was always in this fresh state of confusion about where he was. Imagine being around a guy for months who is asking you 100 times a day "where am i? where's my mom? etc." Interestingly, he would always ask the same questions in the same order, so we started posting the answers to his questions on every vertical surface of the unit and just tell him to read it. He'd always start reading and then when he got to the end he'd say "No, no, listen you've made a mistake I don't have a memory problem." Once I took him to the bathroom to look at his reflection, since he had aged 20 years or so since he first lost the ability to form new memories. He turned white as a ghost and just held his hands to his face with a blank expression, but of course five minutes later he forgot all about it.


[/ QUOTE ]

lol, none of this happened.

ldo levelled

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

Fascinating thread.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

indeed...no reason to stop now. i did a thread something like this on another site once about my experience in teaching severe behavioral students...

people loved the stories, where as i felt like all i was doing was either venting, or storytelling..

people like this thread, keep it going!

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

"people like this thread, keep it going! "

yup, the stories are entertaining, interesting, and kind of humbling...nie thread...

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

ghostface: no if i was gonna level this thread would be in bbv4life or oot. i'll take your skepticism as a compliment though. Remember I saw thousands and thousands of patients over 4 years and I am distilling for you just the strangest or most interesting cases.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I'm fascinated by this thread as well:drinking on the job stories/people trying/killing themselves would interest me.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

[ QUOTE ]
Preacher: "Damnit I NEED PHUSSY"
Nurse: "Uh, I'm sorry we can't provide that here."

[/ QUOTE ]

Awesome.

This was an amazing read--back in high school I was seriously looking into going into psychology, and even now I give an occasional thought toward nursing. You having what you did gives you points in my book.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

I was also interested in the psychiatric field in high school but correctly decided it was too much to handle for me and went another route. Although this thread is fascinating it makes me happy with my choice.

Re: Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital
 

What state did you work in and what were the criteria for involuntary admission?
(other qestions to follow)

Have you ever heard of or read The Journal of Polymorophous Perversity? (if not I highly recommend it- There is a book based on past magazine issues, I think the mag comes out quarterly, I can't recommend this enough for anyone considering entering the field)

What % of the people do you think lied about having a plan to kill themselves in order to get admitted because they were very stressed/confused/etc but did not want to or would not acutally kill themselves?

Have you ever read anything by Harry Stack Sullivan and/or Thomas Szasz and what did you think of their works?

Are you familiar with Dr. Daniel Fisher and what do you make of him, what are your thoughts on him and his works? (again highly recommended if you plan to enter this field)

Did you ever catch 2 patients having sex, if so what did you do? And if so did the dude approach you later and complain to you in a man to man (rather than biotch you out as a psychotic patient) fashion the way a buddy would if you walked in on him and ruined it for him?

What is the largest item a patent ever swallowed pre or post admission that you are aware of?

What was the most extreme case of self mutilization you were aware of either pre or post admission?

Do you think any of the fat nurses there looked for opportunities to flirt with and or cop a feel/examine the neather reagons of a male patient there, or somehow or other exploit their position to do so (assuming the male patient would cooperate)?

Did any nurses get busted for grabbing the benzo's prescribed for patients?