Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital

[YoungOne]

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Are you a big guy? From what my mom's told me about the group home she worked at, the guys were the size of NFL linemen and even then it sometimes took several to restrain a kid who was really going nuts. Did you or any of your coworkers ever have to go to the hospital as the result of a confrontation?

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I don't want to Hijack OP's thread but i'll answer it.

I would consider myself a big guy for being an Asian. I'm 5 feet 10inches and weigh 240 lbs (haha, i need to lose some weight).

The group home I work at is for Asians. There are 3 males and 1 female resident. The guys average about 5 feet 6 and 160 lbs, so i'm not scared of them physically.

Your mom must be tough to be working with patients the size of nfl linemen. A 6'3 240 lb dude going crazy would be scary. Luckily for her she's got backup.

Luckily no one has gotten hurt at the group home I have been working at. There had been a few occasions where my co worker could have gotten hurt. One of the Resident was throwing a tantrum and she basically trashed her room.

My co worker heard all the racket in her room but decided not to go in her room until she was done. When the noise stopped, she opened the door to find her room totally trashed. Lights, bed post broken and makeup all over the room and on the walls. She was in a fury because yesterday she couldn't return a open dvd to Target and various other personal issues. If my co worker would of went into her room, she could of easily been hurt. Luckily she waited though.

[YoungOne]

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More stories about crazy people doing crazy things plz.

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I gotta admit these stories are amusing and sad at the same time. I've worked at my group home for about 1 1/2 years now and have experience some crazy things. Paranoid Schizophrenia can make people say and do very weird things.

[WhoIam]

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The group home I work at is for Asians.

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Wait, are you in asia? Does everyone just happen to be asian or is this some kind of private racially-exclusive facility?

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Your mom must be tough to be working with patients the size of nfl linemen. A 6'3 240 lb dude going crazy would be scary.

[/ QUOTE ] Ha, no, it was the orderlies (or whatever they're called) who were that big. From what she's said, some of the teenage girls came close though.

Her best story from this group home (which was for really [censored]-up teens) was the convicted sex offender who escaped and was later found at a nearby farm. I think you can connect the dots.

[jackflashdrive]

Slowhabit: Yes, very much like Ken Kessey's book. There's no way he could have written that without a lot of experience in a psych hospital. Things are better now then they were then. 15 years ago the state was removing patients teeth if they bit a staff member, and doing much much worse. Patients have a lot more rights now, which is a good thing. Still, power hungry [censored] take what they can get.

WhoIam: I am 6'3 and weigh 160 pounds, so no I am not big by any means. Just another skinny white dude. There were a few big black dudes, but they were the minority.

The bigger people were generally but not always more likely to get into altercations because they felt they had less to fear. This is of course more dangerous for everyone.

Youngone:

1)On average, how long did each patient stay at the psychiatric hospital?

They were all Baker Acted so we could legally hold them for 72 hours without a court review. In practice we basically forced all the patients to sign in voluntarily by telling them that if we had to send it to court then it would indicate that they were not cooperating with treatment and that they would end up staying much longer. Of course once they are in voluntarily they can't just back out of it on a whim.

Some people were there for months, but it was a short term facility and average stay was probably a week to 10 days.

2)How much was the psychiatric hospital charging per day?

I think about a thousand per day at my first facility. The second place I worked at had two different units, one that was for people with insurance and billed at much higher rates. Same staff rotated through both units and there was no real difference in treatment except that they got to be around other people with insurance if they had insurance.

3)What's your take on the psychiatric hospital's role on the patient's improvement?

I primarily worked on short-term units for people with acute disorders, though towards the end I worked more with people who were more stable but chronically ill. I think the tremendous financial cost and life disruption associated with being confined unexpectedly against your will has a lot of long lasting negative effects. There are some benefits to some people to being locked up for a period. Appropriate psychotropic drugs are also helpful for some disorders and they get that in the hospital.

4)How cool were the Psychiatrist that you were working with?

I didn't have a lot of personal contact with the psychiatrists so I'll just say that they didn't strike me as very interesting one way or another.

5)What's your opinion on psychotic meds?

At my hospital, for any potentially violent or actually black patient we would use 'chemical restraints' quite liberally. I didn't agree with many of these uses. For disorders like bipolar disorder and depression and a few others, psychotropics are often indispenisble and have helped turn around the lives of countless people.

6)Best/worst part of your job?

Best part was that this job was often very interesting. I got to know people and have experiences and stories that I simply couldn't get any other way. Even the experiences that I thought were awful at the time (I'll tell a few if people are interested) make me smile in retrospect, and I'm glad to have had them.

Worst part of the job was the sense of futility about so many of the patients situations. The most you could do was be kind and treat the patients with more respect than others were giving, but I often had little hope that the lives of these people would be anything other than miserable.

Edit: Oh, and yes whoami sometimes staff had to go to the hospital. One patient snuck up on a nurse he didn't like and picked up one of those big metal trash cans and whalloped her across the head with it, seriously injuring her.

[jackflashdrive]

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More stories about crazy people doing crazy things plz.

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I'm getting some sleep now but I'll post more stories tomorrow. Actually I'll leave you with one story first.

So there's a large black woman named "G". She is approximately 6'2 and weighs 300 pounds easy. She is locked up for depression/suicide, and does not cooperate at all with the treatment so she stays locked up for months at a time.

There is an 8 foot wall that surrounds the courtyard where clients smoke. Whenever G would arrive at the hospital the first thing she would do whenever let outside for smoke break is make a beeline straight for that wall, and my God this woman would hit it running and go right over. Of course we expected her to do this but we couldn't really stop her because there are so many smoke breaks a day that she can just wait for one in which there aren't three people standing between her and the wall.

Funny thing is that G would always run straight to her sister's house, so when she would hop the wall we would just call the police and they would be there waiting for her, bring her back in, and then G couldn't go out for smoke break for a few more weeks.

G did not like this one bit. She wanted to escape. So one morning I am doing the room checks (basically making sure that patients are alive -- we were supposed to do them every 15 minutes but in practice they get done just at the beginning and end of a shift). I find G naked in her shower with her eyes closed. I can't wake her up so I go get the nurse. The nurse determines that her vitals are fine and believes that G is just faking. So the nurse goes and gets ice and PUTS ICE DIRECTLY ON HER NIPPLES. Yikes. But G didn't move or react so then we call the paramedics. While we are waiting for them to arrive the nurse tells me to put G in a wheelchair. WHAT?!? She wants me (a 160 pound thin guy) to lift a 300 pound woman into a wheelchair. She orders me to try. So I have to wrap my arms around G's wet slippery body and try to lift it. It was like trying to lift a 300 pound water ballon. My arms went right into her, with the fat rolling all over me. Then the paramedics arrived and used a special lift to get her on a stretcher and they took her to the real hospital.

Within 10 minutes of being at the hospital G escaped and ran home to her sister's (in a hospital gown). The woman was faking the whole time. She faked her way through the ice! That woman needs to learn poker.

[YoungOne]

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Wait, are you in asia? Does everyone just happen to be asian or is this some kind of private racially-exclusive facility?


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This is a private group home that attracts many Hmongs in St. Paul, MN because all the staff speaks Hmong and we are culturally sensitive to their needs.

At this group home, there are 2 Vietnamese and 2 Hmong residents. The other 2 Vietnamese resident speak English so communication is not a problem with them.

I'm pretty sure we are not exclusive to Asians. I would need to ask my boss though to find out because she makes all the decisions when bringing in new residents.

[gehrig]

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"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.

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can u elaborate on this guy he sounds interesting

[jackflashdrive]

gehrig: You can imegine what "P's" life was like if you think back to a time when you first wake up but you are not quite sure if you are really awake or just dreaming. Very drowsy and confused. Actually when I allued earlier to the situation of a guy pissing on him roommate in the night I was thinking of "P" (ya ya, p/pee). He woke up, walked over to his roommates bed and relieved himself on his roommate. Roommate was not happy at all.

I think the way P "came down" with mental illness was probably the most random of anyone I had seen and that is what fascinated me msot about him.

[kipin]

This is a really interesting thread.

Any chance you could elaborate more on some of the schizophrenics? For some reason I am in utter awe and absolute fear of how it just seemingly strikes anyone at random.

I've heard psychotic drugs (LSD, shrooms, etc.) can trigger it to develop in people sooner in life, but if you are going to get schizophrenia, you are going to get it, even if you never did the drugs. Any chance if you know if this is true/false/just pure speculation?

Thanks.

[J.A.Sucker]

I'm sure this will be a very interesting thread, but I'm even more sure this will also be the most depressing one ever. Outside of being a quad, nothing bothers me more than the prospect of me or a loved one falling severely mentally ill, or, worse yet, having a Girl Interrupted moment where you are held in a mental hospital when you really don't want to be.

I'll try to read this thread when I'm better prepared, though.