Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital

[bluesbassman]

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

[GTL]

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.

[jackflashdrive]

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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.

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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).

[jackflashdrive]

[ 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.

[jackflashdrive]

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

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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.

[jackflashdrive]

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?

[daveT]

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

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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.

[wdcbooks]

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.

[Ron Burgundy]

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More stories about crazy people doing crazy things plz.

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[DeuceKicker]

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?