Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital

[prk]

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!

[eviljeff]

[ 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.

[Thug Bubbles]

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

[Thug Bubbles]

[ 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.

[jackflashdrive]

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.

[jackflashdrive]

[ 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.

[jackflashdrive]

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.

[bmxicle]

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]

[NL Hustler]

what are the qualifications to become a psychiatric tech>?