Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital - Page 11

jackflashdrive · #**101** 10-08-2007, 11:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
So if someone starts exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, there's basically nothing you can do? IE - no benefit to catching it early, etc.? I was under the impression that with drugs a lot of them could live normal lives, but I guess that's more like a 10% minority?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well there are a few issues. The first is that schizophrenia is a disease that ebbs and flows. Meaning that even outside of antipsychotic medication a person will often go through periods where they feel fine before the hallucinations and paranoia and the like come back. The frequency of periods of active psychosis helps determine how functional a schizophrenic will be.

Also, some people with schizophrenia are responsive to anti-psychotics and others aren't responsive at all as far as the psychosis goes. Often, people who are on anti-psychotics that are working will stop taking them because they feel the side-effects but don't perceive any benefit, and this can sometimes provoke a relapse.

As I indicated my 1 in 10 statistic is really unreliable, but I can say that the majority of people confined long-term in state mental hospitals are schizophrenics, and schizophrenia is on the low end in terms of the percentage of the population who experience mental illness (this indicates that there are large numbers of schizophrenics who cannot be helped, compared to other mental disorders).

Ron Burgundy · #**102** 10-09-2007, 01:38 AM

Any stories about patients doing gross things with their poop?

Did female patients ever try to manipulate you or other male employees by flirting/offering sexytime?

About what % of the patients had problems with addiction(s)?

Were you ever totally creeped out by something/someone at the hospital? Did you ever have nightmares about something a patient did, or could potentially do?

jackflashdrive · #**103** 10-09-2007, 02:18 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Any stories about patients doing gross things with their poop?

Yes, I knew one patient "George" who was in a wheelchair who had a colostomy bag. He was admitted for suicidal ideation but was one of the homeless guys not really suicidal. He was particularly annoying because he treated the place like his own personal Hilton.

Anyway, George knew that this colostomy bag (bag hanging off his side and into which his crap was deposited) was a pretty credible threat. He would save up a nice big load and if there was a staff member he disliked he would fling it at them given the opportunity. For some reason a few of the homeless guys like George thought that being in a psych hospital for suicidal ideation gave them license to "act crazy" even though 99 percent of schizophrenics wouldn't even do something like that.

Also there was another guy Jim who was a very short black guy with Rheumatoid Arthritis and who was also in a wheelchair. He couldn't move any of his body -- he was completely stiff/rigid (kind of like the opposite of a parapalegic who is limp all over and can't move). He had to be wheeled everywhere, fed by hand, placed in bed, etc. The 'etc.' is that he also had to be held above the toilet to crap, and then wiped by hand. Also if he crapped himself you had to bring him into the bathtub to wash him by hand.

He knew how unpleasant the techs regarded the job of cleaning his crap to be so if there was a tech he didn't like he would save up a nice big load and crap his pants and then wait for the tech he didn't like to be available and for all other techs to be busy and he would ask to be washed. Made you really not want to piss him off. I was on pretty good terms with Jim and I think I only had to wash him once and all I did was fill the bathtub with water and put him in there for 30 minutes and then returned to get him out of the tub. If I had to do things like that on a regular basis I would probably have quit because that really wasn't what I was into. 

Did female patients ever try to manipulate you or other male employees by flirting/offering sexytime?

Oh good lord. There was one patient Samantha who was a 55yo former nurse (real nurse not psych nurse). She had also been a crackhead and screwed up her brain.

Anyway she would constantly be trying to seduce me and other guy techs and nurses and patients. She was really foul looking -- gnarly teeth and face, hair falling out. She would prissy herself up though and come up to the nurses station asking really improper personal questions like (1) are you married (2) do you find me attractive (3) can you come to my room I want to show you something. She had a series of 'boyfriends' on the unit but she was only caught having sex with one once (not by me). I just remembered this story in case it conflicts with anything I wrote earlier about patients having sex.

About what % of the patients had problems with addiction(s)?

Huge percent. Almost everybody smoked for one thing, though this also went for nurses/techs too (and I think smoking nurses are probably unusual in medical field generally but I might be wrong. Tons of alcoholics. Tons of crack addicts.

Were you ever totally creeped out by something/someone at the hospital? Did you ever have nightmares about something a patient did, or could potentially do?

 Grossed out by a few things occasionally, like some of what I just mentioned The closest I ever came to being *creeped* out is when that chick "D" that I mentioned would show me the scar on her stomach. Even then I wasn't that creeped out but maybe I only have this blase' attitude in retrospect 

[/ QUOTE ]

Some great questions, especially considering how far we are into the thread.

#**104** 10-09-2007, 02:27 AM

jackflashdrive · #**105** 10-09-2007, 05:26 AM

[ QUOTE ]
How about a couple of crazy stories people told you about their life growing up (daddy raped them, sold crack to 9 year olds, sister ripped their eye out with a fork or whatever)

Also any good stories? Anybody make a full recovery and go on to be a lawyer or anything?

[/ QUOTE ]

As for the first part of your question, I'm afraid stories along those lines would have been told to me in confidence and I wouldn't reveal such details even on an anonymous internet forum.

As for people going to make a full recovery: I saw a ton of people go in and out of the facility, with a few regulars in attendence at any given time. If someone went on to become a lawyer or something I'd never know because the only reason I would have seen someone after they left is because they had more problems to such a great extent that they had to be admitted again. I'm sure many people fully recovered I just would never know.

Randian · #**106** 10-09-2007, 07:44 AM

I had a 2 week stay in an IL. mental hospital. I guess I'm still not sure if I really needed to be there, but it was definitely a fascinating experience. I made friends with a schizophrenic who wanted to marry me b/c she thought I was jesus (i hadn't shaved in a month...). I repeatedly requested conjugal visits during group meetings, advised suicidal patients on the most efficient ways to die and then would spend hours trying to talk them out of suicide. The food was sub- grade school cafeteria. I spent several days reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, intersparsed with Discover Magazine articles on Quantum Mechanics and Scientific American articles on mental illness. I spent my 24th b-day "inside". I asked one of the nurses for money from the monopoly game, so I could teach some of the other residents to play poker. When that request was denied, I devised a way to bet using Uno cards. There was a 22 yr. old scandinavian nurse named Una, which is not spanish for anything. I have more, if anyone is interested...

dmoney · #**107** 10-09-2007, 12:14 PM

This is an incredibly intersting thread.

Basically all stories are intersting so keep them coming.

Socicopaths are especially intersting.

swingdoc · #**108** 10-09-2007, 02:32 PM

About a year ago I spent a month working at a state prison mental hospital. I worked on a maximum security ward with murderers, rapists, a few pedophiles, etc. Forensic psychiatry is not nearly as glamorous or cool as tv shows might make it out to be. No profiling or any of that kind of cool stuff, unfortunately. It was just like working in any other kind of mental hospital, just all the patients were on trial or already convicted of bad crimes. I'll just give a few general comments in this post and then answer questions/post more specific stories later.

First of all, prison is a terrible, horrible place for people with mental illness. Their illness frequently makes them outcasts in the prison system, making their time there even more dangerous. Psych patients often are reluctant to take their meds (side effects, general paranoia, etc) and prison guards typically have very little patience for anything out of the ordinary. This all adds up to a really bad situation for trying to manage an illness.

Some ridiculously high percentage of the people I saw had some degree of mental retardation in addition to whatever else was going on - something like 30-50% of the patients. One of these patients once offered my boss $1 million if he would discharge this guy to the patient's mom. Boss turned it down. Patient then upped the offer to $1 billion PLUS a ferari!! Nice. Almost half the patients were psychotic, a third depressed or bipolar and the rest were there when they didn't need to be. They all had numerous "axis II" disorders (personality disorders).

swingdoc · #**109** 10-09-2007, 02:46 PM

During my med school surgery rotation I saw a few psych patients in some interesting circumstances. 1 patient from the department of corrections had the weirdest desire to put non-food things into his stomach. Wasn't really pica because he didn't just eat the spoons, knives, pens. He had made several attempts to stick items (forks and knives mostly) through his abdomen into his stomach. When I saw him he was at the university to get an endoscopy because the jail was afraid he had eaten some plastic spoons. The GI doctors refused to see him because he had bitten one of their fellows, so the surgeons just made sure he was anesthetized first and scoped him.

Another guy took a shotgun to his own face. Problem with shotguns is that it's hard as hell to shoot yourself and not slip forward with the barrell. This guy came in missing his jawbone, tongue, nose and one eye. Once he was stabilized and put into a coma, he had a TON of really, really long surgeries with the plastic surgery team. Kinda interesting cause with that much of the face gone, the surgeons had to get photos of the guy enlarged and taped to the walls of the OR so they had a guide for where they were trying to get to.

daveT · #**110** 10-09-2007, 05:44 PM

^ that's insane because you know after all that hard work, the guy is going to look in the mirror and decide he doesn't want to live anymore.

This is one of those situations that I think it would be better to just let the dude die. Why should tax-payers have to pay for the upkeep of these type of people?