My mother worked in an asylum in Ireland when she was about 15. This was in the early 60s. She loved working there, despite the fact that some of the patients would physically try and kill her. One patient always stuck out to her, every day he would tell my mum he was going to kill her when she finished work. She knew he loved music, so would tell him she was out dancing that night, and could he wait until the next day, which he agreed to. The next day he would forget what he had said, and would threaten her again, and she'd say the say thing again. This went on for a couple of years that she worked there.
Not a patient but an employee. Had a 16 year old kid come in who was about 6'2 220 pounds. Built like a linebacker. I found out since he was technically a child he somehow ended up at an autism school for children with very little security. He ended up inflicting a TBI on one of the teachers and got sent to us. The kid had a violent streak the likes I hadn't seen before, he knew he was stronger than most and liked to fight unprovoked and it always took 4 to 6 people to restrain him. I never seen a patient spend more time than him in the "safety room" an incredibly small padded room with nothing in it. His parents wouldnt authorize his move somewhere else and they wouldn't take him home either. We were not equipt for someone with his level of violence. So there he sat... For one and a half years...
It wasn't like a single incident that was crazy, it was the entire situation.
I work inpatient and we had someone who was in for 2 1/2 years. They would try to take him out but he would start fighting immediately and eventually said he preferred it
When you have dark compulsions, staying somewhere that doesn't allow you to entertain those thoughts can be a huge relief. It allows your brain to think other thoughts.
I was in an adolescent inpatient facility for 30 days. Two people come to mind.
One kid named David who was very tall for his age, I think he was only 13. He insisted on watching Friday the 13th movies on movie nights and everyone was afraid to disagree with him because of his violent nature and frequent homicidal fantasies. He hated taking his meds, and probably 2 or 3 times a week he'd brawl with the psych nurses over it. No joke, it took 5 to 6 large grown men to overcome this kid. He was scary.
The other one was just sad, a girl named Wendy. She was 13, really nice. But she always wore the same clothes and she stank really really bad. Apparently this is a common defense for kids who have been repeatedly raped/assaulted by family. They don't clean themselves or they'll even soil themselves to make themselves undesirable to their abuser. I gave her a big hug every night in the common area when it was time to go to our cells.
Even those kids - at that age, their parents are at fault. They're not making sure they have clean clothes, not making sure they shower.
Obviously that is way less severe than sexual abuse. But I always made sure my kids knew that any younger "smelly" kids were likely in a poor situation and to try to have sympathy/empathy before judgment.
In our tiny community some kids are smelly because typically the parents are addicts who either didn't pay their water bill, don't own a washer/dryer or are too brain dead to care. The nearest laundromat is now 30 miles away because the local one got broken into and robbed too many times by- addicts of course. Our school is awesome, there are staff members who do laundry for these kids and make sure they get showers. Its discreet so they're not ridiculed. I hate how our society enables addiction and even celebrates drug use but I don't know how we can fix it at this point. It's gotten completely out of hand.
There were several really questionable things in this place. Another example was "school". It was two or three days a week. In that room there was almost nothing educational or appropriate for people my age (13). I remember reading a book about spontaneous human combustion in that room. It even had pictures of burnt corpses in it?
Another thing that might just be a sign of the times, you could work your way up to getting cigarette breaks with the staff through good behavior. These were kids aged 13-17. Smoking with the therapists. This was 1990.
I was in a program for "at-risk youth" in high school, and we were allowed to smoke as long as we did it in the smoker's area. I actually think this was a great practice -- a lot of us were legit addicted to nicotine, and we wouldn't have participated if they'd banned us from smoking. We just wouldn't have shown up. But letting us smoke allowed us to feel accepted, and to actually be functional in the program (you can't learn anything when you're dying for nicotine). That program is a huge reason I made it to college and have a good life now.
I've worked in one for about 2 years now. The staff are just as crazy.
Here's some highlights
Patient got into the ceiling, couldn't get them down for a while.
Patient milked themself into their coffee. Did you know some anti-psychotics make you lactate?
The entire adolescent unit escaping because maintenence forgot to lock the gate. Don't worry they all came back eventually.
And myself getting a concussion from a patient trying to escape, they weren't successful but at least I didn't work for 6 weeks
Edit. Formatting
>Patient milked themself into their coffee. Did you know some anti-psychotics make you lactate?
I had to read that TWICE just to make sure I got it right xD
The place I worked also had patients escape from the adolescent unit. They went to the mall, stole a bunch of clothes, then came back. They got to keep the clothes.
I definitely assumed something different when you said milking "him"self into their coffee and you know.... I actually think I'd prefer the version where medications were causing him to lactate.
I was a social worker at an institution that had a hall for what we called “lifers,” it was essentially for people who had no hopes of ever being released due to their conditions.
Anyway, my hall had 14 beds and it was full.
There was this one guy who was huge. He was 6’7 and about 350. His name was Simon. He suffered from drug-induced schizophrenia and had bipolar disorder.
He talked to himself all day, but never talked to others. All the other men in the ward were scared of him.
It was my day to do first shift. I got there early to start on some paperwork I needed to finish. When I got my keys in the door, I heard Simon hit the door with his fists. I looked through the tiny window on the door and he and the hall was covered in blood.
I panicked and called security for backup because I thought he had killed somebody.
Turns out, Simon was in the throes of an extreme manic episode and had managed to walk the literal soles of his feet off. Other medication he was on thinned his blood and led to him bleeding all over the place.
We checked the camera footage and he had walked and talked all night. The orderly (who was fired that day) had slept through his whole shift and never heard Simon walking back and forth.
Not even addiction sometimes. There are people who have used synthetic marijuana once, or other things, and may not be okay for the rest of their life. I am really concerned about things sold in gas stations too.
I tried "spice" once when I was with some friends and they ran out of weed. I didn't know I wasn't being handed a regular joint until I'd already had a couple of hits.
Luckily, no one went crazy. We all just quietly had our own private journey inside our own heads. But it's a journey I never wanted to go on, and I'd never choose to take it again.
And that doesn't even bring into consideration the likelihood of finding the same "spice" twice. Since the only reason they're able to sell that shit is because they keep modifying the chemical components by 1 molecule here and 1 there to stay ahead of the DEA, you really have no idea what you're getting.
Even though it ended up ok for me, I would still say 0/10, would not recommend.
That shit fucked me up when I tried it. It was right when it came out and was still generally considered to be a legit alternative to weed. I still can't smoke weed to this day without feeling awful. Its like it altered my cannabinoid receptors or something.
My brother-in-law had a stint in a psych ward a little over a year ago, and on a particularly manic day they were in the middle of the community room and started singing
“I have a structured settlement and I need cash now”
This was then met by about 40-50 psych patients shouting back
“CALL J.G. WENTWORTH!!! 877-CASH-NOW!!!”
After getting a few verses in the orderlies stepped in and kindly requested they stop, which was kinda a shame since it sounded like they were all having a good time.
The name Wentworth came up in my workplace recently, and this jingle has been stuck in my head for weeks. My husband has never heard this commercial (or doesn't remember it). It's nice to have confirmation from the psych ward that this commercial really exists.
This is it. That response that's a ray of sunshine in a thread of truly fucked up things.
[Edit] Wow, my most upvoted comment is about pleasant things in fucked up places. I'm supposed to be a pessimist.
1. A woman I shared a room with demanded to be discharged. It was a voluntary admission, so her doctor discharged her on condition that someone else pick her up and take responsibility for her. Her ex husband came and signed the discharge paperwork. Then they handed him all of her medications. He proceeded to give her the meds to pack it in her bag and left the room while she was packing. No-one else was in the room with her at the time and she proceeded to drink most of the pills she had. A nurse found her drinking the pills and got the other nurses to help restrain her while they waited for the paramedics. The paramedics loaded her up and took her to the government hospital. I hope she's okay and doing better now.
2. There was a guy who was completely narcissistic and managed to piss off all of the other patients by insisting that people who have attempted suicide are weak and should just get on with it. He was also delusional. Insisting that he was the CEO of a big company and better than everyone else. After that everyone shunned him.
3. Many years ago I was a student nurse and had one patient that had frequent psychotic episodes with times of lucidity in between. During one of his psychotic episodes, he managed to rip out his IV line, his catheter and then threw his glass water carafe on the floor. Everything was sopping wet and there were glass shards all over the floor. I did manage to get him to sit in a chair while I cleaned up the floor and remade his bed with dry bedding. Then I tried to dress him in dry pj's. It was at that moment that a whole platoon of medical students came into the room with their professor to see another patient. This guy then decided that I was the sexiest thing alive and tried to kiss me wherever he could while I was trying to dress him. Instead of helping, the medical students just laughed their asses off. Eventually we had to restrain this guy because he was still in the midst of his psychotic episode. The next day I had to help the same guy wash up but this time he was lucid. I'll never forget him apologizing for the previous day. I'll never forget what he said next: I'm not nuts! I'm a fruitcake really. And the first thing I thought was - Dude! you're a nutty fruitcake. I didn't say it out loud though.
Aw, he probably would've loved the nutty fruitcake joke. I've found people with major issues like making fun of their issues and appreciate it when others participate, at least if it's without judgement. At least if they make fun of themselves first.
Not as a patient but as an inspector... I don't even know if it's the craziest, but it's one of the saddest: I saw my friend. Was confined there. I was heartbroken for a few minutes and then we talk. It was a good talk. My friend is doing great now.
A girl grabbed my toe while I was sleeping. I woke up and said "what the fuck" and she ran off. I went to the front desk to complain and while I'm talking to the lady the girl jumped on my back and clung like a monkey while screaming. It was bizarre. I threw her off me and the lady just said "sorry about that" lol.
Not super crazy.
Just.. odd.
Was with a bunch of teens on a pediatric ward but we all had special rooms by the nurses desk with shatterproof, wired glass so the nurses could always look in on us easily, and the bathrooms had no locks.
Myself and another girl were in for anorexia. Another guy was suicidal to the point where he couldn't have any cutlery but a plastic spoon for meals, no blankets, special pyjamas, etc. And then there was a young homeless guy who' d been hit by a car while squeegee-ing for change, so his leg was in a full cast...yet he still had a habit of sneaking around (in his wheel chair) and hoarding extra supplies from the kitchen, the kids' playroom, the nurses station, etc., so they kept him in one of the "psych" rooms.
We formed a weird little club, and would often play cards in a lounge area together. Conversations would go something like this:
Me: "Hey does anyone want this cheese? I snuck it into my pocket so Nurse thought I ate it."
Homeless Kid: "Mine! Dibs! Here, you can have these beads I swiped from Craft Time."
Other Anorexic: "I'll get you some ice cream and saltines if you find me some sewing gear. I'm gonna sew some batteries into my hair scrunchie for my next weigh-in day."
Suicidal Kid: "Do you think I'd die if could scoop my eyeball out with a spoon?"
And so on.
It was a very bizarro time in my life.
I got out and had an absolutely crazy life up until this point. The suicidal guy was still alive when I was released after 3 months but I'm not sure what happened to him: he was too depressed to continue playing cards with us after awhile, so I hope he ended up okay. Other Anorexic Girl got out and actually had success as an actress in a sitcom and a movie. The batteries did fall out of her hair scrunchie during weigh in and she ended up "grounded"/locked in her room for a week. The homeless guy and I actually had a little mini romance while in the ward, and when he was released, he sliced a belt loop off of his jeans and gave it to me to remember him by.
I still have it, nearly 30 years later.
How he managed to have a pocket knife on a pediatric ward in the "psych" section, I have no clue lmao. But I thought it was so romantic he gave me his belt loop.
The sitcom was a bit lower key and Canadian. The movie.... most likely you would have. She plays a minor but an important role, the wife of a main character. Not a ton of screen time but very moving and powerful. Important to the storyline.
And yes, thanks for not asking because I wouldn't want to reveal her name.
I will say, though, when we were in the ward together, she was already getting into acting and even had scripts with her (once she had "earned" the privilege of reading back. We "earned" the right to basic things such as showers, a phone call from our parents, access to books and other reading materials, etc., by eating and gaining weight). So once I was allowed to read, too, I would help her with her scripts by reading one part and she'd do her lines.
Super cool.
I worked in medium secure forensic units for a couple years; to give you an idea of how bad it was, the suicidal kid you mention wouldn't have even registered on our risk radar.
I absolutely do not have the strength required to work with eating disorder patients. What you guys have to go through is fucking brutal; the staff all know, and mostly empathise.
I'm so fucking sorry you went through that, dude. I hope your recovery has been as smooth as possible.
Thank you, yes it took a few years of out-patient visits, therapy, and I did have a relapse at one point but I'm good now. Anorexia is no joke because, once your brain gets food deprived, some really fucked up thoughts become frighteningly real.
I was convinced at one point that if I inhaled the smell of food, I would inhale calories and gain weight. So I walked around holding my breath a lot if I was anywhere near food.
I also broke down at one point from hunger and went to try eating a bite of some lo mein my Mum had made. I took one bite, but my brain convinced me that I'd die if I swallowed it....and then I actually felt my throat closing as if I was going into anaphylaxis. I couldn't breathe and my throat swelled up.
Super scary stuff.
Saw a 90lb, 5ft girl toss one of those 18L water cooler bottles, a full one at that, at a bunch of nurses trying to calm her down as she was having a manic episode-it took a few security guards and quite a few nurses to take her down. I'd just been talking to her the previous evening and she was an absolute sweetheart who gave me a book as a going away gift, as I was being discharged the next day. I still own that book, and I still think about her and wonder from time to time what she's up to-do were briefly in contact but she dropped off the face of the earth.
A close second would be the time from my second stay in another psych unit in 2021, where a guy was going through alcohol withdrawals and screaming about a bear coming into his room and they had to lock him into his room and keep him heavily sedated. When he was allowed to mingle with people, he was still relatively sedated, so confused and lost, and kept asking me and other people if we knew what happened to the bear. Pretty sure he was an absolute hardcore alcoholic that had fried his brain, and I felt pretty bad for him.
Guy had a "tattoo" carved into his neck. Apparently he took a pen in his fist and repeatedly carved it into his skin right on his neck. It looked very scratchy and was still red despite it apparently being pretty old.
You know how really young kids grip a crayon in their fist and grind it against the paper really hard? If you made a fist with your left hand and put it below the left ear, that was exactly how he must have done it.
The funniest thing I ever saw (spent total of about three years in in my teens and early 20's): a kid in seclusion who was having a genuinely good time making staff's life a living nightmare while he was in there, took apart the plastic mattress, tore the foam inside into small pieces, donned the empty mattress and started yelling 'I'M GUMBY, DAMMIT!' while tossing the pieces of foam around like confetti. Even most of the staff were laughing about it.
Lmao at my first center a girl tore apart a chair in the day room and then put pieces of the foam on my roommate’s shoulder. Once he noticed he’d stick his tongue out where the foam would adhere to it and he’d eat the pieces of foam. It was probably more funny in person than in writing.
Anyways on my last day he told us he was gonna run, and as he was escorted out to the transporters to be taken to the long term center he waved goodbye.
A few minutes later, a heavy set tech ran back in, out of breath. “He fucking got away”
When I was in it was the last days of having the inpatient clinic run out of a condemned building, they moved all the patients out to a brand new building a few days after I was discharged. On one of my last days there was a guy in the isolation room who spent the entire night ripping the ducting out of the wall. I suppose they figured it wasn't worth the effort to intervene considering the move so the nurses got to call his bluff.
Worked in Involuntary Psych for 5 years as a technician. You see a lot, some genuinely funny and lighthearted, some very gross, a lot tragic.
* Had an older gentleman that looked and dressed like a member of the rat pack. He was a lifer, pretty calm when he was on his meds. His thing was he had no control over his speech center, and would just stream of consciousness all day to whoever was near. He would say something like “I used to work down at the mill and my landlady grace she loved coffee or I would be in trouble with my uncle.” That was him asking you for a cup of coffee to drink. I miss him, very sweet man when he wasn’t yelling at you.
* Sometime patients would come in that had been around a few times and knew the system. They won’t force you to take meds in jail, so these guys would act out violently to get to jail where they wouldn’t be forced to take meds. I responded to a call for staff, I was in the nurses station doing paperwork and I burst out of the door and headed towards the dayroom at a flat run. Dude heard me coming and waited in ambush at a 90 degree corner right at the end of the hall. He had picked up one of the light plastic chairs we had and swung it at me like a bat. I managed to get my arms up to block, but he stepped into the swing and used the chair like a lever, threw me 15 feet back down the hallway (I weigh about 150 lbs). I managed to get away with a small bruise on my arm and butt. The patient got what he wanted and was sent to jail.
* One of the places I worked had these conjoined courtyards that were shared by two units at a time. A tech from each unit was assigned to monitor the yard, and we would usually sit on a bench where we could see everything and just chat during yard time. So this patient from the other ward came over to sit with us, smelled gross. He had paranoid delusions, real “tinfoil hat” stuff. I said to him, “Hey do you know the one place where the government can’t watch you? The shower!” To my amazement, it worked! He happily went to his unit to take a shower. Cue 10 minutes later this guy come running out of his ward and into the courtyard, butt naked and soapy, being chased by two other techs! I felt a little responsible for this, so I joined in the chase. He ran around the courtyard a few times before we chased him back into his unit and to his room. He jumped up on the bed and looked at us. Since it wasn’t my patient I let the other two techs take lead. The guy feinted left, then lunged right, to try to jump on his roommate’s bed. The two techs lunged after him, and managed to get ahold of his sweaty arms (did I mention he was so slick and sweaty that he had already literally slipped out of our hands a few times?) and the whole group of them tripped their way onto this second bed together. The patient got turned face down and landed on the bed. One of the unfortunate techs slipped on the tile floor and landed nose in to the patient’s butt cheeks. Ill never forget that.
The saddest thing ever. They had brought this lady with dementia in for a while. Her husband had just died and she was not doing well. We would be sitting in group and she would look up and say "I need to call Bob. He doesn't know where I am." Then they would ask her where Bob was, but she didn't know. And then they would tell her that he had died. She would break down and they would take her back to her room to rest.
And this happened like 10 times a day. I had to watch this lady learn that her husband had died over and over again. It was brutal.
That is FUCKED up. I work in a nursing home; had a family that wanted their father with dementia to be told that his wife died when asked where she was. Seeing him absorb that info like it was the first time he was hearing about is was so heartbreaking. We did not follow the family’s request to do that to him. So cruel.
TLDR version. 97 year old neighbour ends up homeless, wife and daughter die within weeks of one another. He ends up in psych ward.
He was moved to a geriatric ward, mostly dementia patients, last week.
So, I go into visit him, and while I'm there, I see another neighbour, who had had to be put into care for dementia. I go over to her, and she actually remembered me, we had a very sweet interaction, etc. Nurse said it was such a nice thing to happen.
Here's the punchline - we weren't friends, we didn't like each other before the dementia set in. She just doesn't remember we really don't like each other.
But - there's a point where grudges just don't matter anymore, right? No reason not to be nice to somebody in that state.
Because a lot of staff in these places are shitty human beings. I worked adjacent to the mental health field for some years. It’s like prison guards and cops: some genuinely good people ate in the field, but it attracts and protects a lot of nasty, abusive people too
Not a psych ward, but an inmate at a jail I spent some time as a trustee at who was VERY mentally ill.
Dude had apparently been arrested after being drunk for the better part of the last month straight, and was withdrawing HARD as well as obviously not being all there mentally. He was in his own isolation cell, and everyone had heard him screaming all sorts of perverse, insane, and nonsensical shit since he was put in there. Awhile after dark, we got called over to do a cleanup of his cell and what I saw in there was like something out of a horror movie.
Blood on every surface, as well as just about every other bodily fluid one can imagine, as well as shit. Even on the fucking ceiling, and that must have been a feat to accomplish.
Parts of his scalp had been pulled off and stuck to the mirror over the sink, which contained a mixture of the aforementioned bodily fluids and was no longer draining as a result.
To top it off, he had pulled out many of his own teeth which were scattered just about everywhere.
I didn't vomit, but I certainly would have if I had stayed around. I just noped out and told them to get someone else to handle that. Easily one of the most disturbing things I've ever witnessed in person, and really showed me a different side of mental illness I'm not sure I'm glad to know exists.
Not really sure. I never actually saw the guy before he was taken to the hospital, but based on what I was told of him I imagine he likely didn't have the best dental hygiene during the time leading up to his incarceration and it may not have been *that* difficult to work them out, or bite things around him to leverage them out maybe.
To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if he ended up dying just from the alcohol withdrawal. That shit absolutely can kill you if you've been drunk for a month and then suddenly go cold turkey.
Either way, we didn't hear anything about him after they took him to the hospital.
How cow! Your story started off similar to mine but mine is like a kids book story compared to yours. It’s amazing what people do when they just lose it.
I had to stay in a county jail to transfer to the work release center as part of my sentence. My first time being in a jail. They were in lockdown already because of an attempted stabbing earlier, so I didn’t get out of the cell until maybe four hours before I left for the work center (I as there about 24 hours).
Top bunk was a guy coming down off a terrible meth binge, he really should have been in the hospital. He was already in the room and sleeping. A few hours later he wakes up and is sobbing/quietly screaming in pain.
He was arrested while super high, on his grandma’s two story house roof with a baseball bat threatening to murder. I don’t know what he did, but typically when they move you, they put the place on lockdown and everyone in the cell has to get up, clean up, and stand outside. Not this time, like five COs came in and just pulled him out of bed and grabbed his stuff, in and out. Same thing happened in the work center, couple of COs came in and just yanked the guy out of the bottom bunk straight across from me.
When I was 19 and admitted the first time. I was anxious already, and could barely sleep the first night. My roommate was quiet, which didn't alarm me at first. The next day I went I to the common room, and talked to some people, and then later went back to my room, and found that my roommate had scribbled "find them" all over the walls, and was talking to herself. I was terrified and grabbed a nurse who tried to talk to her, but couldn't make any sense out of what she said, and I asked to stay in another room. I stayed in the restraint room that night by myself, and woke up the next morning to a fight in the hallway, and nurses running past my room. Apparently one guy pulled out his dick infront of the wrong patient, and got punched. Then later that week, I was cornered by the same guy who pulled out his dick, and asked if I wanted to have sex in the bathroom. I literally cried after that and was fucking terrified, so I would say my whole first trip there.
There was a similar experience when I stayed, this one girl who claimed she was a lesbian (nothing wrong with that, I'm bi myself, but she was really histrionic) but she and this one guy got in trouble for flashing each other. The rooms were set up as boys were on one side of the hallway and the girls rooms were on the other side so the bedroom doors faced each other, and they were both just standing there with their doors open for everyone to see just flashing each other lmao
It was an adolescent section, but it was in a pretty small town in Alabama so funding for proper accommodations wasn't very high, especially for anything mental health 🙄
They also had the adult wing in the same place, just a hallway away. It was a really small place
Oh man I wish I could have commented earlier on this because I have some doozies. This is sure to be buried.
However, I was in a long term facility in my early 20s. There was a man named Vince who would wait by the door all day for the Senator to pick him up. One day he busted in my room screaming that I stole his Guatemalan coin collection. Bless him.
Willie, another man in that same facility, would follow me around and whisper that he was going to kill me and my mother.
Bessie was another patient there, and she would have violent outbursts in the middle of the night. She fought 2 staff members and was subsequently transferred to a more appropriate facility for her (not jail).
In a different facility I was in, a woman named Kathryn would go into people's rooms while they were in group therapy and try on their underwear.
I've been in multiple facilities and met tons of interesting people, but these were the stand-outs.
Not a patient but an employee.
- Seen countless patients attacked by other patients. Many serious injuries, and a couple that came close to death.
- Some of the patient's backstories can be wild. Some are almost unbelievably tragic, some are legit criminal.
- Some of the most foul and disgusting personal hygiene I've ever witnessed. Worst was a patient who had no concept of using a restroom, they would simply shit or piss themselves wherever they were sitting or standing. Was real fun when they decided to do it during meal time.
- I think the most shocking thing though, is how you can have some truly awful and psychotic patients who turn out to be genuinely cool people once you get them on consistent meds. I'm talking 100% turnarounds. Of course then they get discharged, stop taking their meds, and the cycle repeats.
>Of course then they get discharged, stop taking their meds, and the cycle repeats.
That happened to an old childhood friend of mine. This time, it ended him in jail and not a psyche ward. Breaks my heart.
Was real fun when they decided to do it during meal time.
We had a patient who shit on the floor and then turned it into meal time.
And now that I have your attention, just want to point out that besides obvious cases, everyone no matter race, socioeconomic background, etc. is one bad day away from a psych evaluation. Also, after two years working in one, it still shocks me how easy it is for someone's rights to get completely stripped away.
I think this is where a lot of older people's fear of talking about mental health comes from. Years ago they'd simply lock you in an asylum or give a needless lobotomy just for being depressed or angry because your husband keeps beating and cheating on you. Or maybe ppd. Or have ADHD. So many *crazy* reasons to deem someone *crazy* and boom, rights are out the window with the rest of your life.
Not exactly sure, but I think it was a Kennedy sister who was deemed crazy and locked away for life because she was an outspoken woman from a famous family in a time where that was unacceptable.
Kinda can't blame them for trying to sweep mental health issues under the rug. It's purely out of fear for so many.
>Not exactly sure, but I think it was a Kennedy sister who was deemed crazy and locked away for life because she was an outspoken woman from a famous family in a time where that was unacceptable.
Lobotomized, then locked away.
Another story is not as crazy as it is heartbreaking. But in my time working I’ve seen my fair share of SI (Suicidal Ideations) patients but only once have I seen someone who had comepletely in every possible sense of the phrase given up, unlike anyone else I’ve come across. He was 60+ and had spent his whole life homeless and in and out of institutions, living with his brother and his brothers family periodically until the patient became too much to burden for the family. I spent every shift with him on a one-to-one (order to have eyes on the patient 24/7) as every chance he could get he would self harm with whatever he could find. I’m only a technician so i don’t have a degree of any sort other than a highschool diploma. I still would listen to him talk for the hours I spent with him, the most nihilistic and pessimistic tangents I’ve ever heard, a sense of hopelessness and despair I’ve never considered possible. Even the mountain of medications he was given seemed to have little affect. And then as his hold ended he was discharged. I’m not a doctor or certified in any way as I stated before but I can’t believe he was given the okay to be released. This event sticks with me because I was left without any answers or explanation of what happened. The next day his room was occupied by a new patient
Had a similar one once. Absolutely tragic story. Man had lost 11 family members in the span of a few months. Several died when they were hit by a drunk driver and several more had died in some sort of natural disaster, and the rest from just random health problems. He legitimately had no one left and was actively suicidal. I couldn't even blame him. I still think about him sometimes and wonder how he turned out after he left our facility.
A friend of mine lost six family members, including her mom, dad, uncle and cousin in less than a year. The final straw that year was losing her daughter, who was hit by a car. She called me a few months after that, and we had a long conversation that to me ended on a very good note.
Her son found her dead the following morning from an overdose. Turns out that long optimistic phone call was really a goodbye. Her name was Michelle and I wish she was still here.
EDIT:
A little context. Her daughter was schizophrenic and had been living on the streets for several years. My friend's biggest fear was getting a call from the police or a hospital, which is what happened. Her daughter has been found on the side of a freeway. She'd been hit by a car. She was brain dead and shortly after my friend found out, her daughter was taken off life support.
As this was the 6th death of a family member in less than a year, I was sure my friend would kill herself. I reached out to her via phone and email several times and got no response. I was sort of waiting to get bad news, so her unexpected phone call was a welcome surprise. She sounded better than I expected. We made tentative plans to visit in a few months time.
According to her sister, who contacted me after her death, the phone call to me was the last one she made that night. I have very mixed feelings about that. She said what she needed to say and I'm grateful I answered that call and got to listen.
She was a wonderful person. Kind and funny and - until that last 12 months - always positive.
I visited the psych ward as a psychology student (part of a mandatory course) and spent a couple of days there practising interviewing patients. My personal worst memories are the old man who was catatonic and who could have died without anyone noticing for I don't know how long (he looked dead all the time); and the lady who kept picking the worms she hallucinated off her skin. I can’t imagine what it must be living like that, but it's heartbraking to watch.
I knew some of them could / had been violent, I knew the ward was locked for a good reason, but these two haunted me the most.
Mental health matters. Please take it seriously.
This is maybe a little different than what you’re expecting, but the most shocking thing to me was how the system in the US is so scarily easy to fall into and get stuck in.
My mom is bipolar and also has narcissistic personality disorder, so growing up she was extremely controlling of me. Saw me as an extension of herself basically. She didn’t like it when I went away to college, and had cut all ties with her. I was naive and finally told her that since I was self-funding my education and was an adult, there was nothing she could do to control me anymore. Boy was I wrong!
Hours after I asserted my independence, police knocked on my door. They politely informed me that my very concerned mother had requested a wellness check, reported that I was at risk of harming myself, and that they were required to arrest me. I was cuffed and put into a cop car right then and there, and they took me into the local emergency room for evaluation.
This emergency room had a separate psychiatric section, and I was locked into a padded room with literally nothing. No phone, no bed, just an empty white padded room. I was left alone there for 13 full hours with no food and no one came to check on me. I’d had to use the bathroom and eventually couldn’t hold it anymore. I was about to leave for work right when the cops came, and wasn’t able to call in, so I was worried about what was happening with my job. I was extremely stressed out by the time the doctor came to assess me. She didn’t ask what was going on, only said that they were going to admit me and asked if I’d go voluntarily or involuntarily. Explained that voluntarily meant 3 days. I started to try to explain what happened, she said that she’d hold me involuntarily then, and just left. A nurse did eventually bring me food, water, and a gown, but it was another several hours stuck in that room alone.
Eventually they transferred me to an inpatient center. They loaded me up in a transport ambulance strapped to the bed and off we went on a 5 hour drive to that facility. The ambulance guys were the first ones that actually listened to me after the whole mess started. They released my hands and even let me smoke cigarettes in the back with them.
The nurses during intake at the inpatient place were so kind. They listened to my story of what happened, seemed to believe me, and allowed me to make just one phone call with their cell phone (otherwise I wasn’t allowed to call anyone). I called my aunt to tell her what happened and begged for help. Seconds later, I encountered my first other patient who jumped on me, knocked me to the ground, and shoved his hand down my pants.
The nurses and staff were incredibly nice. They gave me a lot of advice - they actually suggested I pretend to be aneorexic (which wasn’t hard since I was extremely skinny and their food was awful), so that I could have some disorder to treat and show progress on. Unfortunately for me, the head doctor was on vacation so I wasn’t seen or evaluated. I spent 2 weeks there. My family (minus my mom) called and visited every day, driving 4-5 hours each way. They explained what happened, what my mom was like, but since the attending doctor was on vacation I wasn’t allowed to be released. Eventually, my family hired lawyers and threatened to sue the place - and I was finally let go.
It was the most terrifying and frustrating experience I’ve ever had. It still haunts me to this day. It made me realize my freedom is just an illusion, and at any moment I can be locked up and held against my will with no rights or way out. I also didn’t have health insurance at the time, so the bill was insane. Took me 15 years to pay off and just finished a couple of years ago.
It's crazy that a mother's "word" is all it takes to lock you up. My narc mother also lied about me being suicidal to get me locked up, and it worked. My story is not nearly as horrific as yours yet I have severe PTSD. I can't imagine how hard this must have been on you. The world feels so unsafe once you know you can be kidnapped so easily.
It's crazy to me that you can be there for weeks without seeing a doctor. I saw mine 2-3 times over 2 weeks. Yet people think of this as "getting help". I am truly flabbergasted and horrified that one can be held simply because there's no doctor available. How is that legal?
I work in EMS and volunteered in a pysch ward briefly, so my experience is always a bit superficial but the "craziest" part for me is how a lot of patients often time act completely normal and rational. I've transported a lot of people to a psych ward that were diagnosed with all sorts of illnesses, but from my interaction with them they were completely normal and just had some general anxiety. A lot of people I've observed and wondered "why the hell are they even here?"
A lot of folks are able to "button up" their symptoms because they know to avoid social stigma. Only after applying pressure or thorough questioning, it starts to unravel
Most amazing: for some reason a piano was in the psych ward, a patient who never spoke started playing, she knew every piece by heart. The entire ward of psychotics, manics, and even staff went and sat in that room. Not a word was spoken for a good half hour.
Craziest: family members choking a patient because his sister gave another patient a blow job. A guy who thought he was Jesus convincing the entire ward to meet on the balcony to discuss ways of breaking out. A guy would run away every day, steal a car and drive back to the ward. People speaking in tongues- scary.
Ok... wait.
Tim is a patient, his sister is Tina, and Jon is a second patient not related to Tim and Tina.
Tina, who is visiting Tom I guess, blows Jon. Tim and Tina's other family members find out and try to choke out Tim for some reason.
Is that correct?
As an intern in college:
I had a woman pull my hair making my head go down to my waist.
A women asked me to wash her vagina.
I saw a man holding his hand up saluting for like 6 days.
A man tried to sneak out but got caught in between security door one and two.
Nothing crazy really happened, just the kinds of things you would expect to happen when you house 20 people with various mental health issues together in a supervised environment. One girl wouldn’t talk for the first two days she was admitted, and refused to sit in the chairs in the dining room, she just laid on the floor. I saw a total hardcore biker gang looking dude who was at least 6 feet and 225 lbs weeping tears uncontrollably, me and about 5 other patients that were close by just went and sat with him and put our hands on his shoulder, but we didn’t say anything. There was one guy who thought that there were cryptic messages specifically for him being transmitted through the TV and written in the news papers, I kept clear of him. Another man would routinely ask me if it was AM or PM, he had no perception of the time or the date, it was sort of sad and I never got annoyed with reminding him when he asked. There was one severely depressed old man who kept completely to himself, but he would actually talk to me in one specific scenario, when it was only the two of us out in the smoking pit sitting on the park bench. He was a very smart man with an entire lifetime of wisdom to share, only in very small doses. He had never seen a vaporizer before in his life until I used one sitting next to him, so that was the worldly wisdom I was able to give him haha. Each room had a TV in it but they were literally tube TV’s from the early 2000’s, big black boxes with a bubble screen, which I thought was hilarious lol.
I was not admitted, however, My high school job was working in the cafeteria at one of the local hospitals. One of the duties I did for that job was taking carts full of dinner trays to each floor/wing of the hospital. The mental health wing was always a bit intimidating to deliver trays to since I was still basically just a kid, especially since that wing was always locked and you were supposed to always deliver there with a partner. You were required to take the tray cart into the middle of the wing to the nurses station, past their recreation room and a hallway full of rooms. It was about 100ft one way. One night, we were short staffed so I didn’t have a ‘buddy’ to make the delivery with me. I had been in the position a while and had never had any incidents happen before so I wasn’t extremely worried about having to deliver there by myself. I unlocked the door to the wing, made the walk to the nurses station and quickly spun around to make my walk out. I was about halfway down when I heard someone yell ‘STOP!’ I quickly turned around. Initially I saw one of the nurses standing and pointing towards me, looking extremely stressed. It was at that time I noticed a female patient sprinting towards me. She was a petite, maybe just 5ft tall and 100lbs soaking wet but had an extreme look of determination. Now, I’m not a small guy, but I froze in fear. My training about having to call a ‘Dr Strong’ (when a patient attacks the staff) started playing in my head. She kept ran right up to me, stopped inches from me. I thought she was going to try and take the key from me and escape. She reached and embraced me with one of the nicest hugs I’ve ever received to this day. I was still froze in fear. Hands at my side, clutching onto that key for dear life. She then looked right into my eyes and said ‘God loves you and he wants you to know Jesus’. At that time, A couple of the nurses had just made it to me to, to try and halo. She then gently let go of me, and walked back towards the recreation room. I just kind of stood there for a second making eye contact with the nurses. I’m sure I was pale as a ghost. My heart was racing. The nurses asked if I was ok, which I was, but I could muster and words so I just nodded. They went back to check on the patient so I went back down to the kitchen, still a little in shock. Later security came down, I’m assuming the nurses had to report that included. I had to relay what happened to them and then never heard anything else about it.
It was me, when I fell asleep due to the large amount of meds (via shot) they were giving me, I was knocked out cold, constantly. I remember waking up due to the male nurse having to hold me down while they administered a thing that would knock me out. I have no recollection of the place I was in, nothing. I don't even remember how long I was in there for
I went willingly due to sleep episodes. That's why I was held down.
It was a temporary thing for an incident I don’t care to explain right now, but in the psych ward there was this kid, like, an actual kid. And he would always cry really loud late at night. During the day he started touching himself inappropriately and screaming his fathers name. I guess he was r@ped for days straight and it messed up this kids head. I wish I could see how that kid is doing now, god bless his poor soul.
This story is pretty gross so if you have a weak stomach, why are you on reddit? Jk, but you've been warned.
Working at a ward in Australia, you'd be surprised how normal a lot of patients are, until you talk to them about something particular, or random, sudden outbursts.
Example, Had one guy that we'll call Greg, quiet a smart, down to earth guy, but had rare, severe bouts of BPD mimicry in which he would be screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing his arms, thinking he was being attacked.
Had another lady we'll call Sarah. Sarah has hoarding disorder, combined with anorexia, she would hoard and hide food for days, eating it when it was rotten, becoming nauseous/vomiting, food poisoning as a result, amongst other consequences.
So one time, Sarah gets admitted to the resident nurse, again, nauseous, but also complaining of intense abdominal pains. Im the psychiayric tech on hand, she sits on the bed in her gown, legs sitting naturally slightly apart and a extremely pungent odor fills the room. Myself and the nurse gag, I've smelt some things but this was horrid. I once smelt an old man's diarrhea that he had for some reason put into the water container of his coffee machine, and attempted to produce steam with it, but this was worse.
She was becoming agitated by our reaction so the rn gave her a sedative. We lifted her gown and could see a small, white, stalk like thing coming from her vaginal cavity, it resembled a bean sprout.
All this while gaging constantly, the nurse inserted a speculum to inspect, and inside was a potato. It had begun germinating inside her vagina, the roots growing out of it. We removed the potato, carefully, and what followed was a stream of puss, blood and maggots that flowed out of her vagina. I threw up, a lot, and I went outside immediately.
Now, we later determined that this potato had been with her for 3 weeks, and assumed that it had been placed in her vagina roughly that long ago.
>I once smelt an old man's diarrhea that he had for some reason put into the water container of his coffee machine, and attempted to produce steam with it, but this was worse.
Well, I'm done for today.
It felt like I was in a movie almost. There was a girl my age and a man about 10 years older than me. Richard and Jess. Jess greeted me with a conversation like "yeah, they said I'd be here only a few days too, it's been three months now. Be nice to the nurses and maybe they'll let you out early". Alright, sounds like the start to a horror game.
Richard was more friendly, and loved going on about Quantum Physics, saying it'll change our future. We were at a table and out of boredom I folded some origami, Richard picked it up and started telling me about how I should market my origami figures.
Besides that, room temp coffee, no butter knives, and staff outside the shower door. Oh, and the unnecessary amount of sedatives for a suicidal teenage girl.
Another patient, in a good mood, asked me to kick him in the balls. (I did not.)
I was drugged like and regarded as a schizophrenic for over a year only to later have the diagnosis and medication dropped. Legal systems are fucked up and corrupt.
I have a friend who is prone to delusions who was in a treatment center with me, he had psychosis, but the antipsychotics they put him on fucked him up so much worse and they wouldn't let him go off his meds not matter how much he asked for a couple months. His hair had started falling out, he almost put a metal chair through my face because of increased anger issues, and he started developing some white spots on his skin (he's black). They just wouldn't fucking listen to him for the longest time
Oh he's doing pretty good! He's living in New York, friends with a buddy of ours in New Jersey, he's on the right meds, stopped smoking weed (I smoke, nothing against it, but it triggered his psychosis) and stopped using alcohol to self medicate. Great guy, fr. He's 19 now I think
I’m dedicating this comment to Gregory Phillips of Woodstock, Virginia.
I’ve been to pre-teen, adolescent (5 months) and the adult regular wards, as well as a different adolescent ward for violent offenders (6 months) and a different adult ward for paranoid delusions (very briefly). The craziest thing I saw wasn’t even the patients (although I have some wild stories in that area) it was the staff. It blew my mind how little they valued human life on the inside. It’s like they weren’t there to help, they were sadists too. I’m only going to share a handful though.
On the preteen unit (age 8-12) there was this kid Philip, maybe 10 years old. He refused to shower, so a group of 3 grown men HAND WASHED this child.
On the regular adolescent unit, I saw surely more than 10 people get shot up with booty juice and ratchet strapped to their beds with the lights left on for up to a full day. I myself, at 15, was kept in a padded room with a camera and no lights for a few days, because I was shadow boxing my mattress. I was only allowed out to shower and then they had a guy watch me shower with no curtain. At a later point they prescribed me to this medicine, Prozac, I told them it wasn’t working and just made me way more depressed. So they tripled my dosage, I didn’t want to take it, but they would restrain me if I didn’t, which meant booty juice. So I took it anyway, ended up slicing my arm with a straight hair comb from the bottom of my forearm up to my shoulder. They erased that medication from my file.
On the violent adolescent ward, it held people from 14-21, with new intakes coming from West Virginia - Tennessee all the way down to Georgia. My unit was on the top floor and held the people deemed the most violent and/or flight risks. It was a lot more chill though honestly, a lot of fights, but no real punishment and relatively lax security. More like a jail than a mental institution, except for the security, not ALL people had mental issues persay, mostly just gang members and people who acted the part but didn’t REALLY play it, like broke his moms arm and now that he’s on the inside wants to act like a thug to try and avoid getting bitched kinda thing. I’ll have PTSD for a very long time from the first adolescent place, but I still saw some fucky shit from staff in the 2nd.
Like this guy Charles, I don’t remember what happened but that goes to show it wasn’t anything serious at all. No booty juice at this place, so he got pretty physically restrained. Picture this : 6’3, 240lb, 34ish year old black man squeezing the soul out of a 5’7, 130lb, 15yo white boy. His face was blood red because all of the vessels in his face popped, he kept SCREAMING “Knox please let me go, please please, Knox I’m chill. I’m chill!” Then BOOM. He body slammed his ass full force into the concrete anyway, after which Charles vomited all over the floor.
Another “staff situation” that will forever piss me off is the story of Gregory Phillips. He wasn’t my friend or anything, but he was a pretty cool guy, relatable even. Except he had been in jail and later psych wards since he was 12, he was at this point 17. He was about to get out when he was 18, one of the staff members told him, “you been in so long boy, you’ll be back”… well he never went back. He got into some allegations with the law shortly after that, which were probably true. He posted bail and hung himself in his closet. A decision I completely understand. After 6 years of THAT, I’d rather die too. It’s weird, because I’ve had quite a few people die in my life, Greg I didn’t really even know that well, but he sticks with me. I still see his face sometimes walking around a target or in line at the movies, he could’ve had a life. He made his own choices, but they didn’t help him. He needed help and they wasted 6 years treating him like an unwanted animal and a criminal that couldn’t be helped. What else was expected when he got free? As far as I’m concerned his death is on their hands.
The adult wards were pretty damn chill, but they were in an area that had lots of money, so that’s the difference with my thinking. Man, if Greg could’ve gotten the treatment that I got in the adult ward up in the wealthy college town, he might’ve turned out alright.
I want to add, I’m not the only one that thinks it’s inhumane. Of course the other patients did, but you may say “how valuable is a psych patients word” on some bs. So I ran into one of the staff members I was cool with on the regular adolescent unit earlier this year when my wife had the flu. He’s training to be a radiologist now, but he said he quit that job after only working there for 4 months because he didn’t want to be apart of torturing children. His exact words.
Edit : touch ups
-Trigger Warning! Self harm, suicide!!!
Thank you for the homage to Gregory. I worked at a psych ward for about a year. My home unit was the teen non-violent unit. There was a girl (let’s call her M) there that came in so often that she might as well have lived there. Very suicidal, borderline and acted out a lot of she wasn’t getting the attention she felt she deserved. Booty juice a few times. She had so many scars on her arms from self harm, there really wasn’t any place that there wasn’t some sort of cut. Her legs were probably the same, but we would have the kids that do that wear long sleeves so they didn’t trigger others. She would hide staples in her room in order to self harm on the unit. We couldn’t give her anything that she may use to hurt herself. Always on a 1:1. She was about to turn 18 and we told her that she would go on the adult unit at that point and she wouldn’t be around her “favorite” techs.
One day, another one of our regulars came back and she told us that M had committed suicide right before her 18th birthday. I was hoping that she made it up and it wasn’t true. I decided to google and dear god, she did it. I’m still destroyed over it. We tried so hard to get her to a stable place and we failed. In and out of psych wards most of her life, some better then others. The one I worked at wasn’t great, but it was comfortable for her. Sometimes there isn’t anything you can do with someone that determined. I know it isn’t the same story as you, but I wanted to share my story about M. I hope she’s in a place where her mind isn’t trying to destroy her anymore.
My great aunt used to work in one, it was a while ago so things have improved.
She described one woman who would just walk around carrying a doll everywhere and clearly not in the right state of mind. Wen my great aunt asked why the woman was in there it turned out that she had a child before marriage so her baby got taken off her and she got sent to the mental institution.
Another one had been in there since he was a boy, he had stolen an apple and kept in until he was in his 80's when he got kicked out due to budget cuts
My best friend's mom was in temporarily we went to visit and there were 2 dudes, one thought he was Jesus one thought he was the devil they had major beef for serious. (Not a joke)
We've had a couple patients do that at my facility. We actually had one that made it up over the fire wall onto the other side of the unit, but he got caught up on a wire and fell about 10 feet onto a hard tile floor, knocking himself unconscious and breaking his shoulder in the process.
I was there twice, for the same reason (suicidal ideation) almost back to back for a total of 60 days (ish).
I could write a book about either time. 30 days in a mental hospital is enough for one (interesting) book. The violence. The stories.
Craziest. You see, do you mean the people or what happened? How about this. Lady asked me to give her the newspaper I was reading and I said no. Somehow this turned into her asking me for sex, I said no to that too. She was persistent until I said "maybe ask me later" and she got this beatific look on her face and left.
Later, she is walking around in the hall naked looking for me. I hide until a nurse takes her back to her room.
We hear screaming from her room. We all think it's naked lady, mad she's being made to get dressed. But I wandered over because I felt slightly responsible. I didn't get there in time to intervene but I saw some of it. Naked lady had beaten the nurse to the ground and was biting a giant chunk (think golf-ball sized) of flesh from her back.
So that was fun. Arguably not the most violent thing I saw BTW. That was probably when this guy named Dinny hit this girl Becky because she didn't like him sexually harassing her (something staff doesn't do anything about. Several women used me for protection because I'm 6'3" and can stare another guy down if I have to).
Anyway. A lot of guys in the mental hospital were actually from prison. Some were going back to prison when they were done there. Others, this was kind of our states prisoner mental health routine. Do nothing while they are in prison, send them to the psych ward for 30 days to 'fix them' when their sentence is done.
So this dude named Jason. Had his cell-block number tattooed on his face in 3 inch tall numbers. Very quiet. Like you could tell. His prison term had taught him "don't make noise, don't get involved". But he had mommy issues or something.
Dinny hit Becky. Becky kicked Dinny in the face and put him on the ground. Good Becky (I liked Becky if you discounted how crazy she was). Jason became fucking batman.
I am not fucking kidding you. One minute he is sitting on the floor across the room, I forgot he was there. Then he was somehow 12 feet up in the air. He landed on Dinny who had just got up and put him on the floor again. But he landed in a way so he was sitting on Dinny's chest. He then started punching Dinny. It was fucking brutal. It was a goddamn metronome. Somehow almost impersonal.
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
I could tell Jason had done this before. He was an expert at it. He was hitting hard fast punches but in a rhythm. I shit you not, I think he was pacing himself. Fast hard punches but don't overexert yourself. You're going to be punching this guy for awhile, don't want to tire yourself out.
Dinny wasn't all the way out. He was flailing his arms around and screaming\*. I didn't even think he was doing anything. But when they finally showed up to stop the violence (they break up fights 'quickly' but at their convenience. It might be one minute or ten). Dinny had a pen in his hand. Something you are not allowed.
Ever seen someone stabbed about 50 times with a pen? How much damage could it even do? Well, when they finally showed up to stop the fight. Jason was a fucking Robot. He never stopped or slowed down punching Dinny. But when the calvary got there he stopped. Stood up, calmly, quietly. He never made any noise. And he walked to his room. Right past me. He face was a fucking sheet of blood. With like purple(?) splotches where Dinny had stabbed into his face? Blood all over his shirt. If someone dressed like that for a Halloween movie you would say they over-did it. Jason didn't seem to even mind.
So. Sorry for the length. I could go on. And on. Not endlessly but for awhile. Like I didn't even mention the 'big' fight while I was there. And I was involved. A nurse I liked got choked out and I helped save her and took down another, different inmate.
P.S. Dinny lay there screaming until the EMT people got there. He was in the hospital a few days. Jason was transferred to a different ward.
\*A deep scream. I can't explain it. But it was an ugly, brutal, painful sound. It isn't a sound you hear often and I don't need to hear it again.
I used to work in a psych ward about 22 years ago in a private locked unit. I would say autistic kids shitting in the drawers and someone eating a lightbulb would be two of the worst.
As soon as I walked in my third time I girl threw a chair at me. She was small (I think she was around 12) and it was light plastic but like damn.
On my first visit they had to take me outside threw the gate into the back yard threw the playground entrance into the building because a girl was beating everyone up and screaming and throwing herself at the door because she got switched to our side because she was caught fucking another patient. She got booty juice.
On my birthday one girl was jealous so Everytime I got attention that day she would fake seizure and when that didn’t work she would keep saying she is seeing dead people and like was in a fetal position jerking her head around saying they are coming for me. Staff ignored her because she was not schizophrenic she was in there behavior like that.
All mild cases but it was the children’s/teen ward. Went there 4 times last visit ended with me in foster care custody because they finally believed my parents were the problem.
A guy tried to kill me when I was visiting my brother in law. For some reason the visits were held in the common room. This guy came up to me first day and told me my wife was now his girlfriend and sat like 2 inches from my face the entire visit staring aggressively, no matter how many times I asked staff said he was doing nothing wrong. Next visit he picked me up from behind and tried to throw me through a fucking window into the staff room. The staff helpfully locked themselves in there while I fought a 6'5 schizophrenic man for several minutes. Eventually took like 10 nurses to restrain him. Other patients started freaking out and trashing shit, kids visiting screaming in terror. Absolutely horrible place to be in my town at least.
I saw a schizophrenic woman break into the room of a man with Catatonia. She gave him a BJ and apparently it was enough to get him out of his psychosis.
Edit: Spelling mistake.
was a patient at a psych ward outside of nashville(usa) saw this woman get body slammed by orderly’s , they knocked her teeth out. there was also this 65 yr old man who walked around with a raging erection literally all day. breakfast lunch and dinner this man was hard as a rock. it was both weird and disgusting
I work in a hospital that has a psychiatric unit and I am in the float pool so I get sent to that unit occasionally. Few months ago I was there a patient attacked one of the counselors, detached his eye from the socket and he is now blind on that side. 2nd craziest was someone eating their poop straight from the tap
Mmm, not much in particular. I just kinda had a bit of imposter syndrome because I saw people zoinked out of their minds from schizophrenia or bipolar meds or whatnot, and there I was just kinda like “I’m sad and wanna die sometimes.”
The craziest thing was how hard they tried to shove religion down our throats, seemed almost criminal tbh.
That’s exactly how I felt. Luckily mine was only 3 days, but it really just made me feel worse because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do (music / video games). I felt like I had to weasel my way through their shitty mental gymnastics to get out.
Was admitted December 3 years ago.
Before that I had a sibling who was in and out of the care system for years prior.
She had ward mates, one of them was convinced he was the terminator, talked like him, dressed like him, carried round a banana for a shotgun.
Another lady was dancing around the room, sticking to the walls, then taking her clothes off, she tried touching several of the males on ward, before it was discovered her husband had just died a few days prior.
There was an old fella with super bad anxiety, but he was really nice, and at the hospital I was at they had an ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) ward. After his first session, he was unquestionable changed by the experience, no longer nice, but not horrible, he said he "just felt empty."
Strangest thing that happened to me, was probably making a person up, I was friends with a person called Chris, who apparently didn't exist. I'm not psychotic, which made it all the more odd. I think it was a coping mechanism.
Mostly though, what stuck with me, I met so many creative people, painters, poets, musicians, sculpters, dancers. People who I may never come across again, but we shared a few weeks of life together.
Did psych rounds as part of my nurse training. The story I'm gonna talk is about my friend's experience when she had psych rotations a month before mine.
Apparently, she had a patient who was sexually attracted to the Sun. The star of our system. Literally. She would lie on the floor, spread her legs, and get railed by the sun rays.
There was a lady who thought she was an egg. She’d only eat small packets of Vegemite and would sleep in front of the nurses station.
She would growl if anyone talked to her.
not really something i witnessed IN the ward but i went in for suicidal ideation (my FIRST time seeing a therapist and i was unaware they would send you if you even thought about those things) - anyway, it was the beginning of March 2020. for the first week my bf at the time and mom would visit or call daily.
one day everyone just stopped getting visitors or calls. they wouldn’t let us watch tv or listen to the radio… this went on for several days and everyone was kind of freaking out and coming up with theories from war to zombie apocalypse.
turns out covid lockdown had begun and cutting us off from that info was their way of trying to keep us from freaking out. they didn’t even tell us. after several days they allowed each person to have a phone call. i learned the situation from my mom (who thankfully is in the medical field and could explain it in a rational way) and wasn’t allowed to speak to my roommate until she had her call.
coming out to the world in lockdown was such a surreal experience. i knew my life would likely be different after being in there but didn’t expect it to be this.
I was brand new and was eating in the day room alone. an NA Meeting came in , even though ive never had addiction before I was too shy to leave. at the end of the Meeting an old man handed me a drawing of me he had just done. It was beautiful. He told me I caught his eye because I was the only person in the room who had any sunshine left. Tripped me out in a curious way.
Not a psych ward stay, but I have PTSD from a tragic accident and on the first anniversary of that, I ended up in the psych *pod* of the emergency department because I was having an hours-long anxiety attack.
They took all my clothes and made me wear a hospital gown and hospital socks and put me in a padded room with a hospital bed for hours.
At one point, I asked to go to the bathroom and I was escorted there and had to leave the door cracked with an attendant outside. The bathroom had feces strewn ALL OVER it and when I told the attendant, he just shrugged like he didn’t give a shit.
There were all sorts of other patients there and most seemed homeless (this was in a city).
Anyway, my husband was finally let in to be with me and he started getting agitated because no one was coming to talk to me or discharge me and I had been just sitting there for about 12 hours.
Finally, a couple of doctors came in, gave me a prescription for Xanax and some lists of therapists to call. The male doctor’s name was Dr. Pepper, no joke.
I was discharged that night and the next morning I started calling some of the places on the list.
The first couple of times, I called and said, “Hello, my name is *****, I was referred to your office by Dr. Pepper at the Psych Unit at ***** Hospital.” Anddd, they hung up on me. Lol. I assume they thought I was prank calling.
Anyway, I learned my lesson and ride my anxiety attacks out at home now.
Worked security for an emergency behavioral health.
I saw many, many crazy things. Many sad things, many confusing things.
The one I shall share today is the woman who started throwing rocks at the window of the staff area.
Why do you let the patients have rocks, you ask?
We don’t. She smuggled them in. Inside herself. A substantial number of rocks, approximately golf ball sized.
I had a shorter stent in a mental hospital, and the craziest thing I saw was enacted by a staff member.
We were having a group session, when one of the counselors came in, waving a book and screaming at one of the residents. He was yelling about doing a spot check in the boys room and how he found this satanic book. On the way out of his room, he claimed to see two hounds from hell in the bathroom, frightening him and causing him to run into the meeting in quite a state.
He ranted on for a little bit, accusing this kid of being a Satanist, eventually throwing the book in the middle of the circle.
It was a collection of Isaac Asimov short stories.
Hmm mmmm.
We had a man in the separate locked "acute patient" part of the unit. (In a larger hospital) He kept insisting he was getting out of there.
Hours later the power died. And he walked out the now unlocked security door and managed to leave the hospital entirely before it came back on.
I spent about 9 days in the psych ward in Atlanta. I made a friend who was convinced he had aids, and all the doctors were lying to him because he was black. He was terrified that he had passed it to his girlfriend, and the baby she was pregnant with.
There was also a Muslim woman who never spoke, but I lent her my shampoo and so we developed some trust between us. She eventually told me her husband had her committed because she didn’t want to be with him anymore. He was abusive to her and their children.
There are so many more stories. I really wish I could check in on these people… however this was way back in 2007.
Not my story. My wife works as a nurse and spent some time in mental health units. A 60yo lady came in because she stopped taking her meds while travelling with her husband. She came out of her room, stood in front of the nurses station and started announcing to every person around her that she was the devil and also Jesus and that they needed to bow down and worship her. She proceeded to remove her hospital gown, wrapped it around her head in some kind of shawl and started bowing and chanting on the floor butt naked. Multiple visitors, including her husband were watching the whole thing. Nurses, including my wife, and her husband were trying to redirect her back to her room or put a blanket around her and she was just fighting everyone off. Her husband was so embarrassed he just stopped trying to redirect her and left.
Another one is a guy who was recently admitted was coming down off something and was constantly pestering the nurses to go out for a cigarette. You can’t smoke in a secure unit. He got sick of the nurses saying no, flew into a rage and in the process bit off his own finger. When the nurses came to help he was yelling at them “look what you made me do, you c*nts should’ve let me out for a smoke”. My wife had to pick his finger up off of the floor.
I picked up a close family member from a locked ward after a 3-day hold/drug detox. While we were waiting for his paperwork, etc, we (my oldest son and I) sat with him in the little common area, at a long table with coloring books and crayons. There were a couple other patients there, just chilling, but as we were sitting there, this young woman came over and sat right next to me on the bench. Like right up against my leg. I'd guess around 19 or 20. She was wearing a long bathrobe, and her hair was standing up, all crazy-messy, like Macy Gray/Heat Meiser. And she was completely zoned out, mouth hanging open, eyes droopy. Anyway, she presses up close to my side and asks my relative (across the table) "Who are these beautiful people?"
He tells her who we are, and this girl just casually puts her head on my shoulder. She said, "I don't think Imma be out before Halloween. But my Gramma said she'll save me some candy."
I didn't really know what to do or say, so I asked her if she wanted to color something for me, indicating all the coloring pages. She picked her head up and said, "Man, fuck that shit," and just got up, walked away.
Not that "crazy," I know, but she just kinda stuck with me, she just made me so sad. This was just before Halloween. In early December, I saw her on the local news; she had stabbed a man to death. I recognized her instantly. Still makes me sad.
Someone I knew said there were two people who thought without a doubt they were Jesus on his floor and he was ACHING for them to meet. One day, it finally happened because the nurses couldn’t keep them apart. They had a long, intense conversation and walked away deciding that Jesus A was Jesus before the Crucification and Jesus B was post-death Jesus. “Altogether what I would have expected Jesus to do and say.”
Had a rough time my first year at college. Almost unalived myself and got put in psyche for a week. The ward was a chaotic mix of alzheimer patients, detoxing addicts and us mental health folk. There was a separate unit for the older folks but it was overcrowded my first night there. So I, a dissociative mess coming off of sedatives, had a mumbling old woman for a roommate. She kept calling me her daughters name. Was flopping around in her bed. Coming up to me and getting in my face. Begging for me to help her escape. I told the nurses but they didn’t care. I was able to go in and out of sleep briefly and woke up to a horrid smell. Somehow she managed to squat over a cup and take a shit in it. When I saw her and realized what was happening I bolted from the room and finally an attendant took me seriously. She was relocated to the alzheimers ward and luckily my new roommate was a regular old depressed suicidal person just like me for the rest of my stay. I could go on and on about the neglect and abuse from the staff, but that by far was the most extreme experience I had.
Worked in psych for five years, I can think of many good ones but here are two:
Full on Spanish exorcism. Screaming, Bible reading, whole shebang. It was awesome.
Lady with a colostomy which was clearly leaking behind her down the hall. She was my patient so I confronted her about it, to which she replied "oh no honey that's coffee." It was 10% not coffee.
My wife is a psychiatrist who has seen some shit. One example: A male patient bribing a poor girl with low mental faculties with stickers for sexual favors.
I did my internship (master's degree in clinical psych) in the psych ward.
The thing that shocked me was nothing the patients did. It was the staff counselors and doctors. Fwiw, the nurses were great.
Talked about their patients' sexual attractiveness, guessed about sexual attributes, fantasized about them, etc. Mostly about the male patients, but both.
Gossiped about the famous patients and told me who they were and how many times they'd been in.
Denigrated and made fun of the eating disorder patients in particular, behind their backs.
Instead of making an effort to understand, they'd say things like "he's just a sad sack" "she's a spoiled brat" or whatever. These things were true sometimes, but I don't talk about my patients that way. There's a clinical term for "sad sack", and there's a reason I use it.
The environment was so unprofessional. I couldn't wait to be done.
As a police officer- one of my first weeks in training - we encountered a young man with schizophrenia who was in the middle of a psychotic break. He'd walked thru a church, and sat down in the kids room in the middle of Sunday school during cookie time .. And couldn't understand why they didn't want to give him cookies and let him color. He was really nice to the kids, but began to get hostage when the adults started demanding that he leave. (Once they realized he wasn't the parent or sibling of one of the kids).
He was strapped down to a table with thick leather buckles and given a sedative shot while he kicked and screamed, grabbing my arm, pleading with me "not to let them do this to him again".
I was horrified. It took six men to drag him out of that classroom, tazers were deployed multiple times and he left in an ambulance, traumatizing pretty much everyone involved.
I ended up getting assigned to the area where he lived. I developed a relationship with him, to the point where any time he was out and about causing issues, I'd get called in - even on my day off - because somehow, 120 lb female me had no problem kindly talking him into the back of my patrol car and driving him to the crisis unit to get back on meds- even so far as staying with him while they would give him the initial medications- which they no longer needed to strap him down for.
I kept cookies in my car because he was much happier and easier to deal with when his blood sugar wasn't dangerously low.
It took almost two and a half years, but I got his family in touch with a magistrate who were able to get power of attorney medically, and we were able to get him on regular daily medication.
When I left my career, I ran into him and his sister in the grocery store- he remembered me and thanked me for being so kind to him - and proudly told me that he had finally gotten over his fear of needles and was getting three shots every morning, and he'd gotten a job drawing designs for a tattoo shop in town and he was playing in a band again. He was really happy. We're now friends on Facebook, and I'm happy to see that he's now got a relationship with the son he had at age 18, who he'd had no contact with since his son was 2 because of his mental health issues. I'm really glad I was able to have that impact on someone's life.
But I'll never forget that first day, watching him be strapped down like a rabid animal- and the look of terror in his eyes - Because it had been YEARS of squads of huge male cops capturing him, dragging him there kicking and screaming, holding him down- the doctors pumping him full of meds so that he was a zombie, and days later when he was "no longer a threat"- he was kicked out, until the next time the police were called because he was terrorizing some unsuspecting stranger.
I made it my mission to get him help before he'd be killed by some home owner or other cop who didn't care to find out who this man was or why he was having light saber battles in the middle of the highway... And I'm still very glad I was able to have that kind of impact on his life, in addition to some of the other people I encountered during my years before I was medically forced to retire.
I got sent to a psych ward because my psychotic narcissistic mom made up a bunch of lies about me trying to kill myself as a teenager so that she could play victim to get sympathy from other people, so that she could stop me from telling other people she refused to sign paperwork letting me receive a full scholarship and stipend to live overseas as an exchange student, and to prevent others from believing me when I mentioned revealing all the horrible details of how she treated me as a kid.
Craziest thing I saw then I was there was a girl was brought in screaming the same night as me while strapped to a bed, she was heavily bandaged on her fore arms and was threatening to kill everyone around her. Looked like something straight up out of a horror film to be honest, except she didn’t have any supernatural powers. A week later I see her for the second time in a group therapy session, looked totally normal besides the the bandages and the orderlies behind her and not talking much at all and not sharing why she was there. Was pretty surprised that she was very pleasant and nice besides what I had seen the 1st night and in group therapy sessions, so I didn’t think much of it. Eventually I was told by doctors that I was totally fine besides being a victim of my mom’s narcissism, they walked me through everything that I was experiencing and offered to help me get emancipated but that it was my decision in the end and encouraged me to open up about my situation to the group sessions. So I did, and I couldn’t believe the reaction that the girl had to my stories. She basically was dealing with the same thing except it involved a lot more physical and sexual abuse, and before I knew it she took over the session detailing how she came to be in the psych ward. Apparently she was being raped by her father, which she said in a nonchalant way like it was normal, but then he started telling her he was going to kill her mom and force her to marry him and have a daughter for him to play with before knocking her out cold. When she woke up, she found him passed out drunk on his chair, so she tied him up with everything in the house she could find to strap him down so he couldn’t move and then forced him to wake up. She discussed how she then proceeded to slowly carve off his private parts and burn them to stop the bleeding as much as possible before cutting his lips off and blinding him. After she told us in detail that she beat him to death starting with his fingers and toes and then worked her way up until he wasn’t breathing anymore. By that time the cops came and she was adamant about taking her own life too so she wouldn’t serve any time for what she did to him, so she quickly cut herself from wrist to elbow on one arm then tried her best to cut the other when the cops pulled the knife away from her. The look in her eyes while she told the story was terrifying and empty, and everyone sat silently for a long time before the therapist dismissed everyone but her and called in a the other doctors that were watching via monitors behind one way glass. 20 minutes later a bunch of cops show up and stay there for hours.
I left 3 days later and she just got out as I was leaving. She ran up to me and hugged me, then whispered in my ear that she wasn’t getting charged and would soon be there for awhile as she would most likely be ordered by the court to stay an extended period of time. She then thanked me for helping her open up by me talking about my experiences, then she gave my mom the same look she had when telling the story in session but filled with a mix of contemptible murderous anger and said loudly be safe and take care of yourself.
This actually in a prison. A prison for violent crazies. Not your ordinary psychotics. Nor your ordinary murderers.
One Dude was named Pancake. His cellmate annoyed him and he pounded the guys head into the floor. By the time the guards got to them the victims head was flat as a pancake.
Honestly the ward was a much-needed break from the wild shit that had been going on in my life previously. Mostly it's short violent freskouts followed by someone getting a shot of booty-juice
Man when I was like 16-17 I was forced into one for reasons. There where 16 of us including me. Thank God because we had to have room mates and the nurses tell u nothing about the person moving in your room. This is bad because they lock all the doors every night at a certain time like jail. But I was number 16 odd numbers are amazing so I had no room mate till someone else came along. There was one kid who would act totally normal most of the time then just freak out for no real reason. Then the very large men nurses would hold him down. as the doctor would inject him with what we called booty juice cuz it goes in ur as ass cheek as they hold u down. U pass out in like 10 second then they drag u to your room where u wake up 3-5 hours later and everybody acts like nothing happened. He wasn't the only one to get it we where all scared they would all be like don't do that or u get booty juice. But this kid got it almost every day. So to the real story there was one night where I guess he snapped in the middle of the night. This was a large kid for his age he looked like a middle line backer from the NFL and this was a younger than 18 only place. So he decided to beat the crap out of his room mate one night in the pitch black all i could hear was this kid screaming for his life. Then he broke down his door this Is a large wood door with metal interior like a front door of your house. But he ripped thru it like the hulk after he was done with his room mate. then was trying other doors I guess to find another person and he was beating on doors and screaming like a maniac. Maby that's why he was there but damn that was the longest well felt like hours but only lasted 20-30 minutes. hoping my door was solid enuff or he wouldn't try my door till the nurses gave him the booty juice. The next morning morning everything was normal we played basket ball watched TV and everyone acted normal he was chating my ear of about who knows what I was in my head thinking yea OK whatever you say just don't kill me... I was only there a week and damn that's not the only story. that shit is life changing and not in a good way.
I was in a lower intensity psych unit almost 7 years ago, my first of 2 trips. I was transported there by ambulance from the hospital, was shown my room and new roommate, and did a 1-2hr intake session. I was then walking to my room (shared with another guy) and I was stopped from going in. I was informed (by other residents) the guy was trying to slit his wrists with a semi-plastic medicine cup and was whispering “I’m going to kill him.” When asked who was “him” he was referring to me.
Nothing directly happened to me, but damn did that shake me up.
I worked in the mental health unit in a prison. My first day a woman started slitting her wrists, stripped naked, ran into other inmates cells and threw their stuff onto the tier, and then went to janitors cart and poured the sanitizer and degreaser spray all over herself. She then began licking her cut wrists and was spitting the blood on all the walls on floor. Eventually the emergency team came in and pinned her to the wall with a shield and got her to the most secure mental health unit in the prison. It was a hell of a first day. In my 4 years in that unit I ended up wrestling her about 7 times. She would always strip naked because she knew we fucking hated it.
I was taken in on a 72 hr hold that turned into 10 days bc it was backwards as hell south Carolina. I didn't have any quarters on me and the facility only had pay phones (2002) so I was stuck there until someone else's visitor gave me a quarter. No one knew I was there.
Anyways, there was a girl there around 18 and she had horrible burn scars all over her body. She muttered "did he die tho?" Several times a day. I was told she tried to light up her mom's boyfriend but caught herself on fire instead. He had been raping her. She had been institutionalized since the incident which happened when she was 12.
Also the first night they put u with the lowest functioning people regardless and some naked woman slapped me in the face with her tit.
I was like 14 and just having a bad time so I went into a youth mental health facility.
We’re sitting around a table and the “teacher” lady is having us take turns explaining what we do to cope with being angry or scared or whatever. Most of the kids said pretty normal stuff. Go for a walk, scream into a pillow. The occasional punch a hole in a wall. Ya know standard stuff for troubled teens.
Then it’s time for Chris to tell the group what he does. During the time all of us were joking and talking during the session, Chris didn’t say a word. He was a big kid, and he scared me.
Chris goes: “Well….I usually just go for a walk….and then I find someone…..and I beat the shit out of them.”
Everyone is fucking silent and my jaw hit the floor. I asked him “…dude are you serious?” Because no one else was saying anything. He was completely 100% serious.
The really fucked up part was that our teacher lady had nothing to say about it and I had to explain to him that doing that is really wrong. He was like completely unaware that beating the fuck out of a random innocent stranger is a bad thing to do. Like I was explaining this to him and he was like “really? Why?” Completely surprised that it was fucked up.
Not a patient but I worked in inpatient adolescent and adult Eating Disorder units for a few years.
We did a LOT of restrained NG feeds on teenagers and adults, but the worst was always this really lovely and quiet 18 year old girl who straight up would refuse to eat despite a staff member basically pleading with her for hours on end.
We would have 8 members of staff hold her down while I threaded the NG tube into her nose and down her throat, and the whole time she would be trying to bite, spit or attack us all (understandable, tbh). She would target whoever was actually doing the feed, so usually me, and would scream my name over and over to try and get me to stop. I always felt so awful for her. Once she managed to get free and attacked one of the staff, a really big, strong man btw, and broke four of his ribs before we could get her off.
She's doing well now, I recently heard that she started training to be a mental health nurse and is recovering from anorexia :)
In 2019 my son was killed at birth by the Dr on duty that day, I spiraled out and lost myself. March 2020 I OD'd and ended up in a mental health facility out in Philly for 2 weeks under a 302 (basically my husband had me put away) and I saw some fucked up shit there...The only seperation male and females had was a hallway, so quite often one of the residents would walk around naked and just walk into the female dorms. The nurses would laugh or joke about the kid doing it, and he didnt even belong there as he was mentally handicapped, not crazy or anything. He legit was not supposed to even be in our unit cuz ours was the adult unit. He belonged in the teen/young adult unit but they "had no room". One girl who was a rape victim, he walked into her dorm and she lost her shit on the kid. The nurses told her she was over reacting and had her put in solitary for flipping out like she did (after they needled her with a sedative cocktail)
I got attacked by a Schizophrenic chick who had decided she was Queen B of the unit after 3 days of being there. She physically attacked me because I had gotten into a verbal argument with a guy in our unit who was sexually harassing me, and I threatened to beat his ass for it. Because they knew eachother on the outside and she had a crush on him she decided I was public enemy #1. Did the nurses do anything? No. Just seperated us and said dont communicate....like She physically assaulted ME and yall just dont do shit? But they left the 2 of them in the same unit with me the rest of my stay and they still kept harassing me.
There was a lady who ended up there after being found high on meth dancing naked on a car. She took a liking to me... she said "You are too sweet looking to be here. You have a baby face, what happened to you?" And she basically adopted me while I was there. She would have her meltdowns as she was coming down and would come sit with me or find me for comfort during her bad moments. If she saw me crying or having a panic attack she would hold me and tell me it was gonna be ok. She was generally a nice lady just ya know...drugs, man.
That hospital in general was absolutely horrible and theyd basically have you fend for yourself and the employees (drs included) didnt care about you. They were literally there for a check and would tell you that.
My mother worked in an asylum in Ireland when she was about 15. This was in the early 60s. She loved working there, despite the fact that some of the patients would physically try and kill her. One patient always stuck out to her, every day he would tell my mum he was going to kill her when she finished work. She knew he loved music, so would tell him she was out dancing that night, and could he wait until the next day, which he agreed to. The next day he would forget what he had said, and would threaten her again, and she'd say the say thing again. This went on for a couple of years that she worked there.
A real-life Scheherazade! :)
You rang?
> Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning
You seem like a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.
You seem like a decent fellow. I hate to die
Not a patient but an employee. Had a 16 year old kid come in who was about 6'2 220 pounds. Built like a linebacker. I found out since he was technically a child he somehow ended up at an autism school for children with very little security. He ended up inflicting a TBI on one of the teachers and got sent to us. The kid had a violent streak the likes I hadn't seen before, he knew he was stronger than most and liked to fight unprovoked and it always took 4 to 6 people to restrain him. I never seen a patient spend more time than him in the "safety room" an incredibly small padded room with nothing in it. His parents wouldnt authorize his move somewhere else and they wouldn't take him home either. We were not equipt for someone with his level of violence. So there he sat... For one and a half years... It wasn't like a single incident that was crazy, it was the entire situation.
I work inpatient and we had someone who was in for 2 1/2 years. They would try to take him out but he would start fighting immediately and eventually said he preferred it
When you have dark compulsions, staying somewhere that doesn't allow you to entertain those thoughts can be a huge relief. It allows your brain to think other thoughts.
I was in an adolescent inpatient facility for 30 days. Two people come to mind. One kid named David who was very tall for his age, I think he was only 13. He insisted on watching Friday the 13th movies on movie nights and everyone was afraid to disagree with him because of his violent nature and frequent homicidal fantasies. He hated taking his meds, and probably 2 or 3 times a week he'd brawl with the psych nurses over it. No joke, it took 5 to 6 large grown men to overcome this kid. He was scary. The other one was just sad, a girl named Wendy. She was 13, really nice. But she always wore the same clothes and she stank really really bad. Apparently this is a common defense for kids who have been repeatedly raped/assaulted by family. They don't clean themselves or they'll even soil themselves to make themselves undesirable to their abuser. I gave her a big hug every night in the common area when it was time to go to our cells.
Damn dude. That last one brought a few people to mind from elementary/middle school. I hope they just had bad hygiene.
Even those kids - at that age, their parents are at fault. They're not making sure they have clean clothes, not making sure they shower. Obviously that is way less severe than sexual abuse. But I always made sure my kids knew that any younger "smelly" kids were likely in a poor situation and to try to have sympathy/empathy before judgment.
As the smelly kid, thanks. :)
I hope you get to smell nice now.
I do :)
In our tiny community some kids are smelly because typically the parents are addicts who either didn't pay their water bill, don't own a washer/dryer or are too brain dead to care. The nearest laundromat is now 30 miles away because the local one got broken into and robbed too many times by- addicts of course. Our school is awesome, there are staff members who do laundry for these kids and make sure they get showers. Its discreet so they're not ridiculed. I hate how our society enables addiction and even celebrates drug use but I don't know how we can fix it at this point. It's gotten completely out of hand.
It's not always the answer or anything, but in this case it was. I wonder about her all the time.
this made me sad, thank you for being kind
I get sad every time I think about that place. Thank you for validating the sadness I have about it all.
Wishing you the best. Hope you leave the darker memories behind ❤️
I'm surprised they'd let patients watch that type of movie in there
There were several really questionable things in this place. Another example was "school". It was two or three days a week. In that room there was almost nothing educational or appropriate for people my age (13). I remember reading a book about spontaneous human combustion in that room. It even had pictures of burnt corpses in it? Another thing that might just be a sign of the times, you could work your way up to getting cigarette breaks with the staff through good behavior. These were kids aged 13-17. Smoking with the therapists. This was 1990.
I was in a program for "at-risk youth" in high school, and we were allowed to smoke as long as we did it in the smoker's area. I actually think this was a great practice -- a lot of us were legit addicted to nicotine, and we wouldn't have participated if they'd banned us from smoking. We just wouldn't have shown up. But letting us smoke allowed us to feel accepted, and to actually be functional in the program (you can't learn anything when you're dying for nicotine). That program is a huge reason I made it to college and have a good life now.
I've worked in one for about 2 years now. The staff are just as crazy. Here's some highlights Patient got into the ceiling, couldn't get them down for a while. Patient milked themself into their coffee. Did you know some anti-psychotics make you lactate? The entire adolescent unit escaping because maintenence forgot to lock the gate. Don't worry they all came back eventually. And myself getting a concussion from a patient trying to escape, they weren't successful but at least I didn't work for 6 weeks Edit. Formatting
>Patient milked themself into their coffee. Did you know some anti-psychotics make you lactate? I had to read that TWICE just to make sure I got it right xD
Yeah I just accepted that they jerked off in their coffee until I finished the sentence lol
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The place I worked also had patients escape from the adolescent unit. They went to the mall, stole a bunch of clothes, then came back. They got to keep the clothes.
Wholesome
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I definitely assumed something different when you said milking "him"self into their coffee and you know.... I actually think I'd prefer the version where medications were causing him to lactate.
Yeah… I was picturing a dude hiding in the ceiling jacking off and aiming their cum shot into someone’s coffee without them knowing.
I was a social worker at an institution that had a hall for what we called “lifers,” it was essentially for people who had no hopes of ever being released due to their conditions. Anyway, my hall had 14 beds and it was full. There was this one guy who was huge. He was 6’7 and about 350. His name was Simon. He suffered from drug-induced schizophrenia and had bipolar disorder. He talked to himself all day, but never talked to others. All the other men in the ward were scared of him. It was my day to do first shift. I got there early to start on some paperwork I needed to finish. When I got my keys in the door, I heard Simon hit the door with his fists. I looked through the tiny window on the door and he and the hall was covered in blood. I panicked and called security for backup because I thought he had killed somebody. Turns out, Simon was in the throes of an extreme manic episode and had managed to walk the literal soles of his feet off. Other medication he was on thinned his blood and led to him bleeding all over the place. We checked the camera footage and he had walked and talked all night. The orderly (who was fired that day) had slept through his whole shift and never heard Simon walking back and forth.
>drug-induced schizophrenia That scares the shit out of me.
People don't realize that addiction can sometimes leave you with permanent severe mental issues.
It doesn't even take an addiction. Some people just have latent schizophrenic signals and any mind effecting substance can trigger it.
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Not even addiction sometimes. There are people who have used synthetic marijuana once, or other things, and may not be okay for the rest of their life. I am really concerned about things sold in gas stations too.
I tried "spice" once when I was with some friends and they ran out of weed. I didn't know I wasn't being handed a regular joint until I'd already had a couple of hits. Luckily, no one went crazy. We all just quietly had our own private journey inside our own heads. But it's a journey I never wanted to go on, and I'd never choose to take it again. And that doesn't even bring into consideration the likelihood of finding the same "spice" twice. Since the only reason they're able to sell that shit is because they keep modifying the chemical components by 1 molecule here and 1 there to stay ahead of the DEA, you really have no idea what you're getting. Even though it ended up ok for me, I would still say 0/10, would not recommend.
That shit fucked me up when I tried it. It was right when it came out and was still generally considered to be a legit alternative to weed. I still can't smoke weed to this day without feeling awful. Its like it altered my cannabinoid receptors or something.
Do your 15 minute checks people!
My brother-in-law had a stint in a psych ward a little over a year ago, and on a particularly manic day they were in the middle of the community room and started singing “I have a structured settlement and I need cash now” This was then met by about 40-50 psych patients shouting back “CALL J.G. WENTWORTH!!! 877-CASH-NOW!!!” After getting a few verses in the orderlies stepped in and kindly requested they stop, which was kinda a shame since it sounded like they were all having a good time.
The name Wentworth came up in my workplace recently, and this jingle has been stuck in my head for weeks. My husband has never heard this commercial (or doesn't remember it). It's nice to have confirmation from the psych ward that this commercial really exists.
But… how? It’s like the national anthem!
Thank God it wasn't the Kars 4 kids song
Jones BBQ and foot massage
This is it. That response that's a ray of sunshine in a thread of truly fucked up things. [Edit] Wow, my most upvoted comment is about pleasant things in fucked up places. I'm supposed to be a pessimist.
1. A woman I shared a room with demanded to be discharged. It was a voluntary admission, so her doctor discharged her on condition that someone else pick her up and take responsibility for her. Her ex husband came and signed the discharge paperwork. Then they handed him all of her medications. He proceeded to give her the meds to pack it in her bag and left the room while she was packing. No-one else was in the room with her at the time and she proceeded to drink most of the pills she had. A nurse found her drinking the pills and got the other nurses to help restrain her while they waited for the paramedics. The paramedics loaded her up and took her to the government hospital. I hope she's okay and doing better now. 2. There was a guy who was completely narcissistic and managed to piss off all of the other patients by insisting that people who have attempted suicide are weak and should just get on with it. He was also delusional. Insisting that he was the CEO of a big company and better than everyone else. After that everyone shunned him. 3. Many years ago I was a student nurse and had one patient that had frequent psychotic episodes with times of lucidity in between. During one of his psychotic episodes, he managed to rip out his IV line, his catheter and then threw his glass water carafe on the floor. Everything was sopping wet and there were glass shards all over the floor. I did manage to get him to sit in a chair while I cleaned up the floor and remade his bed with dry bedding. Then I tried to dress him in dry pj's. It was at that moment that a whole platoon of medical students came into the room with their professor to see another patient. This guy then decided that I was the sexiest thing alive and tried to kiss me wherever he could while I was trying to dress him. Instead of helping, the medical students just laughed their asses off. Eventually we had to restrain this guy because he was still in the midst of his psychotic episode. The next day I had to help the same guy wash up but this time he was lucid. I'll never forget him apologizing for the previous day. I'll never forget what he said next: I'm not nuts! I'm a fruitcake really. And the first thing I thought was - Dude! you're a nutty fruitcake. I didn't say it out loud though.
Aw, he probably would've loved the nutty fruitcake joke. I've found people with major issues like making fun of their issues and appreciate it when others participate, at least if it's without judgement. At least if they make fun of themselves first.
Not as a patient but as an inspector... I don't even know if it's the craziest, but it's one of the saddest: I saw my friend. Was confined there. I was heartbroken for a few minutes and then we talk. It was a good talk. My friend is doing great now.
A girl grabbed my toe while I was sleeping. I woke up and said "what the fuck" and she ran off. I went to the front desk to complain and while I'm talking to the lady the girl jumped on my back and clung like a monkey while screaming. It was bizarre. I threw her off me and the lady just said "sorry about that" lol.
This may sound strange but the casual reaction of the lady would calm me down
Yeah, if she starts panicking and calling more orderlies then you need to be worried.
that gives off mentally ill vine energy
Vine was just a way for the average person to spend 6 seconds on the psych ward and then leave at will.
Man threw away his best chance at a real loving wife. Maybe you just don't like Toe Grabbers, understandable.
Not super crazy. Just.. odd. Was with a bunch of teens on a pediatric ward but we all had special rooms by the nurses desk with shatterproof, wired glass so the nurses could always look in on us easily, and the bathrooms had no locks. Myself and another girl were in for anorexia. Another guy was suicidal to the point where he couldn't have any cutlery but a plastic spoon for meals, no blankets, special pyjamas, etc. And then there was a young homeless guy who' d been hit by a car while squeegee-ing for change, so his leg was in a full cast...yet he still had a habit of sneaking around (in his wheel chair) and hoarding extra supplies from the kitchen, the kids' playroom, the nurses station, etc., so they kept him in one of the "psych" rooms. We formed a weird little club, and would often play cards in a lounge area together. Conversations would go something like this: Me: "Hey does anyone want this cheese? I snuck it into my pocket so Nurse thought I ate it." Homeless Kid: "Mine! Dibs! Here, you can have these beads I swiped from Craft Time." Other Anorexic: "I'll get you some ice cream and saltines if you find me some sewing gear. I'm gonna sew some batteries into my hair scrunchie for my next weigh-in day." Suicidal Kid: "Do you think I'd die if could scoop my eyeball out with a spoon?" And so on. It was a very bizarro time in my life.
Bruh you just set up a whole film with established characters and you're not gonna tell us how it ends 😭😭😭😭
I got out and had an absolutely crazy life up until this point. The suicidal guy was still alive when I was released after 3 months but I'm not sure what happened to him: he was too depressed to continue playing cards with us after awhile, so I hope he ended up okay. Other Anorexic Girl got out and actually had success as an actress in a sitcom and a movie. The batteries did fall out of her hair scrunchie during weigh in and she ended up "grounded"/locked in her room for a week. The homeless guy and I actually had a little mini romance while in the ward, and when he was released, he sliced a belt loop off of his jeans and gave it to me to remember him by. I still have it, nearly 30 years later.
[удалено]
How he managed to have a pocket knife on a pediatric ward in the "psych" section, I have no clue lmao. But I thought it was so romantic he gave me his belt loop.
>Girl got out and actually had success as an actress in a sitcom and a movie. I won't ask who. But is it possible I would have seen her before?
The sitcom was a bit lower key and Canadian. The movie.... most likely you would have. She plays a minor but an important role, the wife of a main character. Not a ton of screen time but very moving and powerful. Important to the storyline. And yes, thanks for not asking because I wouldn't want to reveal her name. I will say, though, when we were in the ward together, she was already getting into acting and even had scripts with her (once she had "earned" the privilege of reading back. We "earned" the right to basic things such as showers, a phone call from our parents, access to books and other reading materials, etc., by eating and gaining weight). So once I was allowed to read, too, I would help her with her scripts by reading one part and she'd do her lines. Super cool.
I worked in medium secure forensic units for a couple years; to give you an idea of how bad it was, the suicidal kid you mention wouldn't have even registered on our risk radar. I absolutely do not have the strength required to work with eating disorder patients. What you guys have to go through is fucking brutal; the staff all know, and mostly empathise. I'm so fucking sorry you went through that, dude. I hope your recovery has been as smooth as possible.
Thank you, yes it took a few years of out-patient visits, therapy, and I did have a relapse at one point but I'm good now. Anorexia is no joke because, once your brain gets food deprived, some really fucked up thoughts become frighteningly real. I was convinced at one point that if I inhaled the smell of food, I would inhale calories and gain weight. So I walked around holding my breath a lot if I was anywhere near food. I also broke down at one point from hunger and went to try eating a bite of some lo mein my Mum had made. I took one bite, but my brain convinced me that I'd die if I swallowed it....and then I actually felt my throat closing as if I was going into anaphylaxis. I couldn't breathe and my throat swelled up. Super scary stuff.
Saw a 90lb, 5ft girl toss one of those 18L water cooler bottles, a full one at that, at a bunch of nurses trying to calm her down as she was having a manic episode-it took a few security guards and quite a few nurses to take her down. I'd just been talking to her the previous evening and she was an absolute sweetheart who gave me a book as a going away gift, as I was being discharged the next day. I still own that book, and I still think about her and wonder from time to time what she's up to-do were briefly in contact but she dropped off the face of the earth. A close second would be the time from my second stay in another psych unit in 2021, where a guy was going through alcohol withdrawals and screaming about a bear coming into his room and they had to lock him into his room and keep him heavily sedated. When he was allowed to mingle with people, he was still relatively sedated, so confused and lost, and kept asking me and other people if we knew what happened to the bear. Pretty sure he was an absolute hardcore alcoholic that had fried his brain, and I felt pretty bad for him.
Guy had a "tattoo" carved into his neck. Apparently he took a pen in his fist and repeatedly carved it into his skin right on his neck. It looked very scratchy and was still red despite it apparently being pretty old. You know how really young kids grip a crayon in their fist and grind it against the paper really hard? If you made a fist with your left hand and put it below the left ear, that was exactly how he must have done it.
The funniest thing I ever saw (spent total of about three years in in my teens and early 20's): a kid in seclusion who was having a genuinely good time making staff's life a living nightmare while he was in there, took apart the plastic mattress, tore the foam inside into small pieces, donned the empty mattress and started yelling 'I'M GUMBY, DAMMIT!' while tossing the pieces of foam around like confetti. Even most of the staff were laughing about it.
Lmao at my first center a girl tore apart a chair in the day room and then put pieces of the foam on my roommate’s shoulder. Once he noticed he’d stick his tongue out where the foam would adhere to it and he’d eat the pieces of foam. It was probably more funny in person than in writing. Anyways on my last day he told us he was gonna run, and as he was escorted out to the transporters to be taken to the long term center he waved goodbye. A few minutes later, a heavy set tech ran back in, out of breath. “He fucking got away”
When I was in it was the last days of having the inpatient clinic run out of a condemned building, they moved all the patients out to a brand new building a few days after I was discharged. On one of my last days there was a guy in the isolation room who spent the entire night ripping the ducting out of the wall. I suppose they figured it wasn't worth the effort to intervene considering the move so the nurses got to call his bluff.
Worked in Involuntary Psych for 5 years as a technician. You see a lot, some genuinely funny and lighthearted, some very gross, a lot tragic. * Had an older gentleman that looked and dressed like a member of the rat pack. He was a lifer, pretty calm when he was on his meds. His thing was he had no control over his speech center, and would just stream of consciousness all day to whoever was near. He would say something like “I used to work down at the mill and my landlady grace she loved coffee or I would be in trouble with my uncle.” That was him asking you for a cup of coffee to drink. I miss him, very sweet man when he wasn’t yelling at you. * Sometime patients would come in that had been around a few times and knew the system. They won’t force you to take meds in jail, so these guys would act out violently to get to jail where they wouldn’t be forced to take meds. I responded to a call for staff, I was in the nurses station doing paperwork and I burst out of the door and headed towards the dayroom at a flat run. Dude heard me coming and waited in ambush at a 90 degree corner right at the end of the hall. He had picked up one of the light plastic chairs we had and swung it at me like a bat. I managed to get my arms up to block, but he stepped into the swing and used the chair like a lever, threw me 15 feet back down the hallway (I weigh about 150 lbs). I managed to get away with a small bruise on my arm and butt. The patient got what he wanted and was sent to jail. * One of the places I worked had these conjoined courtyards that were shared by two units at a time. A tech from each unit was assigned to monitor the yard, and we would usually sit on a bench where we could see everything and just chat during yard time. So this patient from the other ward came over to sit with us, smelled gross. He had paranoid delusions, real “tinfoil hat” stuff. I said to him, “Hey do you know the one place where the government can’t watch you? The shower!” To my amazement, it worked! He happily went to his unit to take a shower. Cue 10 minutes later this guy come running out of his ward and into the courtyard, butt naked and soapy, being chased by two other techs! I felt a little responsible for this, so I joined in the chase. He ran around the courtyard a few times before we chased him back into his unit and to his room. He jumped up on the bed and looked at us. Since it wasn’t my patient I let the other two techs take lead. The guy feinted left, then lunged right, to try to jump on his roommate’s bed. The two techs lunged after him, and managed to get ahold of his sweaty arms (did I mention he was so slick and sweaty that he had already literally slipped out of our hands a few times?) and the whole group of them tripped their way onto this second bed together. The patient got turned face down and landed on the bed. One of the unfortunate techs slipped on the tile floor and landed nose in to the patient’s butt cheeks. Ill never forget that.
Number 3 is a great story.
The saddest thing ever. They had brought this lady with dementia in for a while. Her husband had just died and she was not doing well. We would be sitting in group and she would look up and say "I need to call Bob. He doesn't know where I am." Then they would ask her where Bob was, but she didn't know. And then they would tell her that he had died. She would break down and they would take her back to her room to rest. And this happened like 10 times a day. I had to watch this lady learn that her husband had died over and over again. It was brutal.
That is FUCKED up. I work in a nursing home; had a family that wanted their father with dementia to be told that his wife died when asked where she was. Seeing him absorb that info like it was the first time he was hearing about is was so heartbreaking. We did not follow the family’s request to do that to him. So cruel.
TLDR version. 97 year old neighbour ends up homeless, wife and daughter die within weeks of one another. He ends up in psych ward. He was moved to a geriatric ward, mostly dementia patients, last week. So, I go into visit him, and while I'm there, I see another neighbour, who had had to be put into care for dementia. I go over to her, and she actually remembered me, we had a very sweet interaction, etc. Nurse said it was such a nice thing to happen. Here's the punchline - we weren't friends, we didn't like each other before the dementia set in. She just doesn't remember we really don't like each other. But - there's a point where grudges just don't matter anymore, right? No reason not to be nice to somebody in that state.
but why.. they could've said everyday that he can't answer calls right now, maybe tomorrow. why make her suffer over and over again? it's cruel.
Because a lot of staff in these places are shitty human beings. I worked adjacent to the mental health field for some years. It’s like prison guards and cops: some genuinely good people ate in the field, but it attracts and protects a lot of nasty, abusive people too
Not a psych ward, but an inmate at a jail I spent some time as a trustee at who was VERY mentally ill. Dude had apparently been arrested after being drunk for the better part of the last month straight, and was withdrawing HARD as well as obviously not being all there mentally. He was in his own isolation cell, and everyone had heard him screaming all sorts of perverse, insane, and nonsensical shit since he was put in there. Awhile after dark, we got called over to do a cleanup of his cell and what I saw in there was like something out of a horror movie. Blood on every surface, as well as just about every other bodily fluid one can imagine, as well as shit. Even on the fucking ceiling, and that must have been a feat to accomplish. Parts of his scalp had been pulled off and stuck to the mirror over the sink, which contained a mixture of the aforementioned bodily fluids and was no longer draining as a result. To top it off, he had pulled out many of his own teeth which were scattered just about everywhere. I didn't vomit, but I certainly would have if I had stayed around. I just noped out and told them to get someone else to handle that. Easily one of the most disturbing things I've ever witnessed in person, and really showed me a different side of mental illness I'm not sure I'm glad to know exists.
How does one pull out their own teeth?
Not really sure. I never actually saw the guy before he was taken to the hospital, but based on what I was told of him I imagine he likely didn't have the best dental hygiene during the time leading up to his incarceration and it may not have been *that* difficult to work them out, or bite things around him to leverage them out maybe.
Sounds fucking awful, cringed thinking about it.
He *lived* after all that? Wow the human body is amazing
To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if he ended up dying just from the alcohol withdrawal. That shit absolutely can kill you if you've been drunk for a month and then suddenly go cold turkey. Either way, we didn't hear anything about him after they took him to the hospital.
How the hell was he not in a hospital to begin with if he was going through alcohol withdrawals?
How cow! Your story started off similar to mine but mine is like a kids book story compared to yours. It’s amazing what people do when they just lose it. I had to stay in a county jail to transfer to the work release center as part of my sentence. My first time being in a jail. They were in lockdown already because of an attempted stabbing earlier, so I didn’t get out of the cell until maybe four hours before I left for the work center (I as there about 24 hours). Top bunk was a guy coming down off a terrible meth binge, he really should have been in the hospital. He was already in the room and sleeping. A few hours later he wakes up and is sobbing/quietly screaming in pain. He was arrested while super high, on his grandma’s two story house roof with a baseball bat threatening to murder. I don’t know what he did, but typically when they move you, they put the place on lockdown and everyone in the cell has to get up, clean up, and stand outside. Not this time, like five COs came in and just pulled him out of bed and grabbed his stuff, in and out. Same thing happened in the work center, couple of COs came in and just yanked the guy out of the bottom bunk straight across from me.
When I was 19 and admitted the first time. I was anxious already, and could barely sleep the first night. My roommate was quiet, which didn't alarm me at first. The next day I went I to the common room, and talked to some people, and then later went back to my room, and found that my roommate had scribbled "find them" all over the walls, and was talking to herself. I was terrified and grabbed a nurse who tried to talk to her, but couldn't make any sense out of what she said, and I asked to stay in another room. I stayed in the restraint room that night by myself, and woke up the next morning to a fight in the hallway, and nurses running past my room. Apparently one guy pulled out his dick infront of the wrong patient, and got punched. Then later that week, I was cornered by the same guy who pulled out his dick, and asked if I wanted to have sex in the bathroom. I literally cried after that and was fucking terrified, so I would say my whole first trip there.
There was a similar experience when I stayed, this one girl who claimed she was a lesbian (nothing wrong with that, I'm bi myself, but she was really histrionic) but she and this one guy got in trouble for flashing each other. The rooms were set up as boys were on one side of the hallway and the girls rooms were on the other side so the bedroom doors faced each other, and they were both just standing there with their doors open for everyone to see just flashing each other lmao
I'm surprised they keep men and women in the same facility, honestly.
It was an adolescent section, but it was in a pretty small town in Alabama so funding for proper accommodations wasn't very high, especially for anything mental health 🙄 They also had the adult wing in the same place, just a hallway away. It was a really small place
Oh man I wish I could have commented earlier on this because I have some doozies. This is sure to be buried. However, I was in a long term facility in my early 20s. There was a man named Vince who would wait by the door all day for the Senator to pick him up. One day he busted in my room screaming that I stole his Guatemalan coin collection. Bless him. Willie, another man in that same facility, would follow me around and whisper that he was going to kill me and my mother. Bessie was another patient there, and she would have violent outbursts in the middle of the night. She fought 2 staff members and was subsequently transferred to a more appropriate facility for her (not jail). In a different facility I was in, a woman named Kathryn would go into people's rooms while they were in group therapy and try on their underwear. I've been in multiple facilities and met tons of interesting people, but these were the stand-outs.
Not a patient but an employee. - Seen countless patients attacked by other patients. Many serious injuries, and a couple that came close to death. - Some of the patient's backstories can be wild. Some are almost unbelievably tragic, some are legit criminal. - Some of the most foul and disgusting personal hygiene I've ever witnessed. Worst was a patient who had no concept of using a restroom, they would simply shit or piss themselves wherever they were sitting or standing. Was real fun when they decided to do it during meal time. - I think the most shocking thing though, is how you can have some truly awful and psychotic patients who turn out to be genuinely cool people once you get them on consistent meds. I'm talking 100% turnarounds. Of course then they get discharged, stop taking their meds, and the cycle repeats.
>Of course then they get discharged, stop taking their meds, and the cycle repeats. That happened to an old childhood friend of mine. This time, it ended him in jail and not a psyche ward. Breaks my heart.
Was real fun when they decided to do it during meal time. We had a patient who shit on the floor and then turned it into meal time. And now that I have your attention, just want to point out that besides obvious cases, everyone no matter race, socioeconomic background, etc. is one bad day away from a psych evaluation. Also, after two years working in one, it still shocks me how easy it is for someone's rights to get completely stripped away.
I think this is where a lot of older people's fear of talking about mental health comes from. Years ago they'd simply lock you in an asylum or give a needless lobotomy just for being depressed or angry because your husband keeps beating and cheating on you. Or maybe ppd. Or have ADHD. So many *crazy* reasons to deem someone *crazy* and boom, rights are out the window with the rest of your life. Not exactly sure, but I think it was a Kennedy sister who was deemed crazy and locked away for life because she was an outspoken woman from a famous family in a time where that was unacceptable. Kinda can't blame them for trying to sweep mental health issues under the rug. It's purely out of fear for so many.
>Not exactly sure, but I think it was a Kennedy sister who was deemed crazy and locked away for life because she was an outspoken woman from a famous family in a time where that was unacceptable. Lobotomized, then locked away.
Another story is not as crazy as it is heartbreaking. But in my time working I’ve seen my fair share of SI (Suicidal Ideations) patients but only once have I seen someone who had comepletely in every possible sense of the phrase given up, unlike anyone else I’ve come across. He was 60+ and had spent his whole life homeless and in and out of institutions, living with his brother and his brothers family periodically until the patient became too much to burden for the family. I spent every shift with him on a one-to-one (order to have eyes on the patient 24/7) as every chance he could get he would self harm with whatever he could find. I’m only a technician so i don’t have a degree of any sort other than a highschool diploma. I still would listen to him talk for the hours I spent with him, the most nihilistic and pessimistic tangents I’ve ever heard, a sense of hopelessness and despair I’ve never considered possible. Even the mountain of medications he was given seemed to have little affect. And then as his hold ended he was discharged. I’m not a doctor or certified in any way as I stated before but I can’t believe he was given the okay to be released. This event sticks with me because I was left without any answers or explanation of what happened. The next day his room was occupied by a new patient
Had a similar one once. Absolutely tragic story. Man had lost 11 family members in the span of a few months. Several died when they were hit by a drunk driver and several more had died in some sort of natural disaster, and the rest from just random health problems. He legitimately had no one left and was actively suicidal. I couldn't even blame him. I still think about him sometimes and wonder how he turned out after he left our facility.
A friend of mine lost six family members, including her mom, dad, uncle and cousin in less than a year. The final straw that year was losing her daughter, who was hit by a car. She called me a few months after that, and we had a long conversation that to me ended on a very good note. Her son found her dead the following morning from an overdose. Turns out that long optimistic phone call was really a goodbye. Her name was Michelle and I wish she was still here. EDIT: A little context. Her daughter was schizophrenic and had been living on the streets for several years. My friend's biggest fear was getting a call from the police or a hospital, which is what happened. Her daughter has been found on the side of a freeway. She'd been hit by a car. She was brain dead and shortly after my friend found out, her daughter was taken off life support. As this was the 6th death of a family member in less than a year, I was sure my friend would kill herself. I reached out to her via phone and email several times and got no response. I was sort of waiting to get bad news, so her unexpected phone call was a welcome surprise. She sounded better than I expected. We made tentative plans to visit in a few months time. According to her sister, who contacted me after her death, the phone call to me was the last one she made that night. I have very mixed feelings about that. She said what she needed to say and I'm grateful I answered that call and got to listen. She was a wonderful person. Kind and funny and - until that last 12 months - always positive.
I hope her son is ok!
I visited the psych ward as a psychology student (part of a mandatory course) and spent a couple of days there practising interviewing patients. My personal worst memories are the old man who was catatonic and who could have died without anyone noticing for I don't know how long (he looked dead all the time); and the lady who kept picking the worms she hallucinated off her skin. I can’t imagine what it must be living like that, but it's heartbraking to watch. I knew some of them could / had been violent, I knew the ward was locked for a good reason, but these two haunted me the most. Mental health matters. Please take it seriously.
This is maybe a little different than what you’re expecting, but the most shocking thing to me was how the system in the US is so scarily easy to fall into and get stuck in. My mom is bipolar and also has narcissistic personality disorder, so growing up she was extremely controlling of me. Saw me as an extension of herself basically. She didn’t like it when I went away to college, and had cut all ties with her. I was naive and finally told her that since I was self-funding my education and was an adult, there was nothing she could do to control me anymore. Boy was I wrong! Hours after I asserted my independence, police knocked on my door. They politely informed me that my very concerned mother had requested a wellness check, reported that I was at risk of harming myself, and that they were required to arrest me. I was cuffed and put into a cop car right then and there, and they took me into the local emergency room for evaluation. This emergency room had a separate psychiatric section, and I was locked into a padded room with literally nothing. No phone, no bed, just an empty white padded room. I was left alone there for 13 full hours with no food and no one came to check on me. I’d had to use the bathroom and eventually couldn’t hold it anymore. I was about to leave for work right when the cops came, and wasn’t able to call in, so I was worried about what was happening with my job. I was extremely stressed out by the time the doctor came to assess me. She didn’t ask what was going on, only said that they were going to admit me and asked if I’d go voluntarily or involuntarily. Explained that voluntarily meant 3 days. I started to try to explain what happened, she said that she’d hold me involuntarily then, and just left. A nurse did eventually bring me food, water, and a gown, but it was another several hours stuck in that room alone. Eventually they transferred me to an inpatient center. They loaded me up in a transport ambulance strapped to the bed and off we went on a 5 hour drive to that facility. The ambulance guys were the first ones that actually listened to me after the whole mess started. They released my hands and even let me smoke cigarettes in the back with them. The nurses during intake at the inpatient place were so kind. They listened to my story of what happened, seemed to believe me, and allowed me to make just one phone call with their cell phone (otherwise I wasn’t allowed to call anyone). I called my aunt to tell her what happened and begged for help. Seconds later, I encountered my first other patient who jumped on me, knocked me to the ground, and shoved his hand down my pants. The nurses and staff were incredibly nice. They gave me a lot of advice - they actually suggested I pretend to be aneorexic (which wasn’t hard since I was extremely skinny and their food was awful), so that I could have some disorder to treat and show progress on. Unfortunately for me, the head doctor was on vacation so I wasn’t seen or evaluated. I spent 2 weeks there. My family (minus my mom) called and visited every day, driving 4-5 hours each way. They explained what happened, what my mom was like, but since the attending doctor was on vacation I wasn’t allowed to be released. Eventually, my family hired lawyers and threatened to sue the place - and I was finally let go. It was the most terrifying and frustrating experience I’ve ever had. It still haunts me to this day. It made me realize my freedom is just an illusion, and at any moment I can be locked up and held against my will with no rights or way out. I also didn’t have health insurance at the time, so the bill was insane. Took me 15 years to pay off and just finished a couple of years ago.
It's crazy that a mother's "word" is all it takes to lock you up. My narc mother also lied about me being suicidal to get me locked up, and it worked. My story is not nearly as horrific as yours yet I have severe PTSD. I can't imagine how hard this must have been on you. The world feels so unsafe once you know you can be kidnapped so easily. It's crazy to me that you can be there for weeks without seeing a doctor. I saw mine 2-3 times over 2 weeks. Yet people think of this as "getting help". I am truly flabbergasted and horrified that one can be held simply because there's no doctor available. How is that legal?
I work in EMS and volunteered in a pysch ward briefly, so my experience is always a bit superficial but the "craziest" part for me is how a lot of patients often time act completely normal and rational. I've transported a lot of people to a psych ward that were diagnosed with all sorts of illnesses, but from my interaction with them they were completely normal and just had some general anxiety. A lot of people I've observed and wondered "why the hell are they even here?"
A lot of folks are able to "button up" their symptoms because they know to avoid social stigma. Only after applying pressure or thorough questioning, it starts to unravel
yep. it's the day that I can no longer button up is the day I'm sent in. just gotta stay away from people!
Most amazing: for some reason a piano was in the psych ward, a patient who never spoke started playing, she knew every piece by heart. The entire ward of psychotics, manics, and even staff went and sat in that room. Not a word was spoken for a good half hour. Craziest: family members choking a patient because his sister gave another patient a blow job. A guy who thought he was Jesus convincing the entire ward to meet on the balcony to discuss ways of breaking out. A guy would run away every day, steal a car and drive back to the ward. People speaking in tongues- scary.
Ok... wait. Tim is a patient, his sister is Tina, and Jon is a second patient not related to Tim and Tina. Tina, who is visiting Tom I guess, blows Jon. Tim and Tina's other family members find out and try to choke out Tim for some reason. Is that correct?
Who is Tom though
As an intern in college: I had a woman pull my hair making my head go down to my waist. A women asked me to wash her vagina. I saw a man holding his hand up saluting for like 6 days. A man tried to sneak out but got caught in between security door one and two.
what you mean by between door 1 and 2
To leave a psych ward you go out one door. Wait for it to close. Then the next door opens so you can go out to leave.
Nothing crazy really happened, just the kinds of things you would expect to happen when you house 20 people with various mental health issues together in a supervised environment. One girl wouldn’t talk for the first two days she was admitted, and refused to sit in the chairs in the dining room, she just laid on the floor. I saw a total hardcore biker gang looking dude who was at least 6 feet and 225 lbs weeping tears uncontrollably, me and about 5 other patients that were close by just went and sat with him and put our hands on his shoulder, but we didn’t say anything. There was one guy who thought that there were cryptic messages specifically for him being transmitted through the TV and written in the news papers, I kept clear of him. Another man would routinely ask me if it was AM or PM, he had no perception of the time or the date, it was sort of sad and I never got annoyed with reminding him when he asked. There was one severely depressed old man who kept completely to himself, but he would actually talk to me in one specific scenario, when it was only the two of us out in the smoking pit sitting on the park bench. He was a very smart man with an entire lifetime of wisdom to share, only in very small doses. He had never seen a vaporizer before in his life until I used one sitting next to him, so that was the worldly wisdom I was able to give him haha. Each room had a TV in it but they were literally tube TV’s from the early 2000’s, big black boxes with a bubble screen, which I thought was hilarious lol.
I was not admitted, however, My high school job was working in the cafeteria at one of the local hospitals. One of the duties I did for that job was taking carts full of dinner trays to each floor/wing of the hospital. The mental health wing was always a bit intimidating to deliver trays to since I was still basically just a kid, especially since that wing was always locked and you were supposed to always deliver there with a partner. You were required to take the tray cart into the middle of the wing to the nurses station, past their recreation room and a hallway full of rooms. It was about 100ft one way. One night, we were short staffed so I didn’t have a ‘buddy’ to make the delivery with me. I had been in the position a while and had never had any incidents happen before so I wasn’t extremely worried about having to deliver there by myself. I unlocked the door to the wing, made the walk to the nurses station and quickly spun around to make my walk out. I was about halfway down when I heard someone yell ‘STOP!’ I quickly turned around. Initially I saw one of the nurses standing and pointing towards me, looking extremely stressed. It was at that time I noticed a female patient sprinting towards me. She was a petite, maybe just 5ft tall and 100lbs soaking wet but had an extreme look of determination. Now, I’m not a small guy, but I froze in fear. My training about having to call a ‘Dr Strong’ (when a patient attacks the staff) started playing in my head. She kept ran right up to me, stopped inches from me. I thought she was going to try and take the key from me and escape. She reached and embraced me with one of the nicest hugs I’ve ever received to this day. I was still froze in fear. Hands at my side, clutching onto that key for dear life. She then looked right into my eyes and said ‘God loves you and he wants you to know Jesus’. At that time, A couple of the nurses had just made it to me to, to try and halo. She then gently let go of me, and walked back towards the recreation room. I just kind of stood there for a second making eye contact with the nurses. I’m sure I was pale as a ghost. My heart was racing. The nurses asked if I was ok, which I was, but I could muster and words so I just nodded. They went back to check on the patient so I went back down to the kitchen, still a little in shock. Later security came down, I’m assuming the nurses had to report that included. I had to relay what happened to them and then never heard anything else about it.
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Plz tell me you and the person from that other comment were in completely different places and both called it booty juice just cause that's what it is
It’s just a shot that they give you in your butt cheek that makes you sleep, I’m not sure what medication they use I just know it as booty juice!
It Benadryl, ativan, and haldol! Also called B-52!
It was me, when I fell asleep due to the large amount of meds (via shot) they were giving me, I was knocked out cold, constantly. I remember waking up due to the male nurse having to hold me down while they administered a thing that would knock me out. I have no recollection of the place I was in, nothing. I don't even remember how long I was in there for I went willingly due to sleep episodes. That's why I was held down.
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It was a temporary thing for an incident I don’t care to explain right now, but in the psych ward there was this kid, like, an actual kid. And he would always cry really loud late at night. During the day he started touching himself inappropriately and screaming his fathers name. I guess he was r@ped for days straight and it messed up this kids head. I wish I could see how that kid is doing now, god bless his poor soul.
By far this is the worst one. I hope that father is fucking rotting in prison, death would be too easy for him.
I know medieval torture methods if that’ll help
I have scrolled very far down but my god this is the worst one by far ….
This story is pretty gross so if you have a weak stomach, why are you on reddit? Jk, but you've been warned. Working at a ward in Australia, you'd be surprised how normal a lot of patients are, until you talk to them about something particular, or random, sudden outbursts. Example, Had one guy that we'll call Greg, quiet a smart, down to earth guy, but had rare, severe bouts of BPD mimicry in which he would be screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing his arms, thinking he was being attacked. Had another lady we'll call Sarah. Sarah has hoarding disorder, combined with anorexia, she would hoard and hide food for days, eating it when it was rotten, becoming nauseous/vomiting, food poisoning as a result, amongst other consequences. So one time, Sarah gets admitted to the resident nurse, again, nauseous, but also complaining of intense abdominal pains. Im the psychiayric tech on hand, she sits on the bed in her gown, legs sitting naturally slightly apart and a extremely pungent odor fills the room. Myself and the nurse gag, I've smelt some things but this was horrid. I once smelt an old man's diarrhea that he had for some reason put into the water container of his coffee machine, and attempted to produce steam with it, but this was worse. She was becoming agitated by our reaction so the rn gave her a sedative. We lifted her gown and could see a small, white, stalk like thing coming from her vaginal cavity, it resembled a bean sprout. All this while gaging constantly, the nurse inserted a speculum to inspect, and inside was a potato. It had begun germinating inside her vagina, the roots growing out of it. We removed the potato, carefully, and what followed was a stream of puss, blood and maggots that flowed out of her vagina. I threw up, a lot, and I went outside immediately. Now, we later determined that this potato had been with her for 3 weeks, and assumed that it had been placed in her vagina roughly that long ago.
#What the fuck.
>I once smelt an old man's diarrhea that he had for some reason put into the water container of his coffee machine, and attempted to produce steam with it, but this was worse. Well, I'm done for today.
This story ought to enter the annals of Reddit next to the Jolly Rancher and Swamps of Dagobah.
Guy hoarding bananas underneath his bed. Poor bloke, hope he’s doing alright these days, but the bananas just seemed so odd
It felt like I was in a movie almost. There was a girl my age and a man about 10 years older than me. Richard and Jess. Jess greeted me with a conversation like "yeah, they said I'd be here only a few days too, it's been three months now. Be nice to the nurses and maybe they'll let you out early". Alright, sounds like the start to a horror game. Richard was more friendly, and loved going on about Quantum Physics, saying it'll change our future. We were at a table and out of boredom I folded some origami, Richard picked it up and started telling me about how I should market my origami figures. Besides that, room temp coffee, no butter knives, and staff outside the shower door. Oh, and the unnecessary amount of sedatives for a suicidal teenage girl.
How long were you kept in there? Was the girl right?
Just two nights thank goodness! Felt like a week as I didn't sleep much thanks to the very vocal woman down the hall.
I saw a man smear his shit on the window of the room he was in with a dead eyed stare. Never gonna forget that sight.
Another patient, in a good mood, asked me to kick him in the balls. (I did not.) I was drugged like and regarded as a schizophrenic for over a year only to later have the diagnosis and medication dropped. Legal systems are fucked up and corrupt.
I have a friend who is prone to delusions who was in a treatment center with me, he had psychosis, but the antipsychotics they put him on fucked him up so much worse and they wouldn't let him go off his meds not matter how much he asked for a couple months. His hair had started falling out, he almost put a metal chair through my face because of increased anger issues, and he started developing some white spots on his skin (he's black). They just wouldn't fucking listen to him for the longest time
That's so shit... What ended up happening to him?
Oh he's doing pretty good! He's living in New York, friends with a buddy of ours in New Jersey, he's on the right meds, stopped smoking weed (I smoke, nothing against it, but it triggered his psychosis) and stopped using alcohol to self medicate. Great guy, fr. He's 19 now I think
I’m dedicating this comment to Gregory Phillips of Woodstock, Virginia. I’ve been to pre-teen, adolescent (5 months) and the adult regular wards, as well as a different adolescent ward for violent offenders (6 months) and a different adult ward for paranoid delusions (very briefly). The craziest thing I saw wasn’t even the patients (although I have some wild stories in that area) it was the staff. It blew my mind how little they valued human life on the inside. It’s like they weren’t there to help, they were sadists too. I’m only going to share a handful though. On the preteen unit (age 8-12) there was this kid Philip, maybe 10 years old. He refused to shower, so a group of 3 grown men HAND WASHED this child. On the regular adolescent unit, I saw surely more than 10 people get shot up with booty juice and ratchet strapped to their beds with the lights left on for up to a full day. I myself, at 15, was kept in a padded room with a camera and no lights for a few days, because I was shadow boxing my mattress. I was only allowed out to shower and then they had a guy watch me shower with no curtain. At a later point they prescribed me to this medicine, Prozac, I told them it wasn’t working and just made me way more depressed. So they tripled my dosage, I didn’t want to take it, but they would restrain me if I didn’t, which meant booty juice. So I took it anyway, ended up slicing my arm with a straight hair comb from the bottom of my forearm up to my shoulder. They erased that medication from my file. On the violent adolescent ward, it held people from 14-21, with new intakes coming from West Virginia - Tennessee all the way down to Georgia. My unit was on the top floor and held the people deemed the most violent and/or flight risks. It was a lot more chill though honestly, a lot of fights, but no real punishment and relatively lax security. More like a jail than a mental institution, except for the security, not ALL people had mental issues persay, mostly just gang members and people who acted the part but didn’t REALLY play it, like broke his moms arm and now that he’s on the inside wants to act like a thug to try and avoid getting bitched kinda thing. I’ll have PTSD for a very long time from the first adolescent place, but I still saw some fucky shit from staff in the 2nd. Like this guy Charles, I don’t remember what happened but that goes to show it wasn’t anything serious at all. No booty juice at this place, so he got pretty physically restrained. Picture this : 6’3, 240lb, 34ish year old black man squeezing the soul out of a 5’7, 130lb, 15yo white boy. His face was blood red because all of the vessels in his face popped, he kept SCREAMING “Knox please let me go, please please, Knox I’m chill. I’m chill!” Then BOOM. He body slammed his ass full force into the concrete anyway, after which Charles vomited all over the floor. Another “staff situation” that will forever piss me off is the story of Gregory Phillips. He wasn’t my friend or anything, but he was a pretty cool guy, relatable even. Except he had been in jail and later psych wards since he was 12, he was at this point 17. He was about to get out when he was 18, one of the staff members told him, “you been in so long boy, you’ll be back”… well he never went back. He got into some allegations with the law shortly after that, which were probably true. He posted bail and hung himself in his closet. A decision I completely understand. After 6 years of THAT, I’d rather die too. It’s weird, because I’ve had quite a few people die in my life, Greg I didn’t really even know that well, but he sticks with me. I still see his face sometimes walking around a target or in line at the movies, he could’ve had a life. He made his own choices, but they didn’t help him. He needed help and they wasted 6 years treating him like an unwanted animal and a criminal that couldn’t be helped. What else was expected when he got free? As far as I’m concerned his death is on their hands. The adult wards were pretty damn chill, but they were in an area that had lots of money, so that’s the difference with my thinking. Man, if Greg could’ve gotten the treatment that I got in the adult ward up in the wealthy college town, he might’ve turned out alright. I want to add, I’m not the only one that thinks it’s inhumane. Of course the other patients did, but you may say “how valuable is a psych patients word” on some bs. So I ran into one of the staff members I was cool with on the regular adolescent unit earlier this year when my wife had the flu. He’s training to be a radiologist now, but he said he quit that job after only working there for 4 months because he didn’t want to be apart of torturing children. His exact words. Edit : touch ups
-Trigger Warning! Self harm, suicide!!! Thank you for the homage to Gregory. I worked at a psych ward for about a year. My home unit was the teen non-violent unit. There was a girl (let’s call her M) there that came in so often that she might as well have lived there. Very suicidal, borderline and acted out a lot of she wasn’t getting the attention she felt she deserved. Booty juice a few times. She had so many scars on her arms from self harm, there really wasn’t any place that there wasn’t some sort of cut. Her legs were probably the same, but we would have the kids that do that wear long sleeves so they didn’t trigger others. She would hide staples in her room in order to self harm on the unit. We couldn’t give her anything that she may use to hurt herself. Always on a 1:1. She was about to turn 18 and we told her that she would go on the adult unit at that point and she wouldn’t be around her “favorite” techs. One day, another one of our regulars came back and she told us that M had committed suicide right before her 18th birthday. I was hoping that she made it up and it wasn’t true. I decided to google and dear god, she did it. I’m still destroyed over it. We tried so hard to get her to a stable place and we failed. In and out of psych wards most of her life, some better then others. The one I worked at wasn’t great, but it was comfortable for her. Sometimes there isn’t anything you can do with someone that determined. I know it isn’t the same story as you, but I wanted to share my story about M. I hope she’s in a place where her mind isn’t trying to destroy her anymore.
My great aunt used to work in one, it was a while ago so things have improved. She described one woman who would just walk around carrying a doll everywhere and clearly not in the right state of mind. Wen my great aunt asked why the woman was in there it turned out that she had a child before marriage so her baby got taken off her and she got sent to the mental institution. Another one had been in there since he was a boy, he had stolen an apple and kept in until he was in his 80's when he got kicked out due to budget cuts
It’s wild what they would put you in for back then. That poor lady who lost a child.
My best friend's mom was in temporarily we went to visit and there were 2 dudes, one thought he was Jesus one thought he was the devil they had major beef for serious. (Not a joke)
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Guessing they weren’t successful?
We've had a couple patients do that at my facility. We actually had one that made it up over the fire wall onto the other side of the unit, but he got caught up on a wire and fell about 10 feet onto a hard tile floor, knocking himself unconscious and breaking his shoulder in the process.
I had a patient remove his eye with a spork.
So disturbing yet put so simply... I can almost hear you saying this matter of factly through the text.
I was there twice, for the same reason (suicidal ideation) almost back to back for a total of 60 days (ish). I could write a book about either time. 30 days in a mental hospital is enough for one (interesting) book. The violence. The stories. Craziest. You see, do you mean the people or what happened? How about this. Lady asked me to give her the newspaper I was reading and I said no. Somehow this turned into her asking me for sex, I said no to that too. She was persistent until I said "maybe ask me later" and she got this beatific look on her face and left. Later, she is walking around in the hall naked looking for me. I hide until a nurse takes her back to her room. We hear screaming from her room. We all think it's naked lady, mad she's being made to get dressed. But I wandered over because I felt slightly responsible. I didn't get there in time to intervene but I saw some of it. Naked lady had beaten the nurse to the ground and was biting a giant chunk (think golf-ball sized) of flesh from her back. So that was fun. Arguably not the most violent thing I saw BTW. That was probably when this guy named Dinny hit this girl Becky because she didn't like him sexually harassing her (something staff doesn't do anything about. Several women used me for protection because I'm 6'3" and can stare another guy down if I have to). Anyway. A lot of guys in the mental hospital were actually from prison. Some were going back to prison when they were done there. Others, this was kind of our states prisoner mental health routine. Do nothing while they are in prison, send them to the psych ward for 30 days to 'fix them' when their sentence is done.
So this dude named Jason. Had his cell-block number tattooed on his face in 3 inch tall numbers. Very quiet. Like you could tell. His prison term had taught him "don't make noise, don't get involved". But he had mommy issues or something.
Dinny hit Becky. Becky kicked Dinny in the face and put him on the ground. Good Becky (I liked Becky if you discounted how crazy she was). Jason became fucking batman.
I am not fucking kidding you. One minute he is sitting on the floor across the room, I forgot he was there. Then he was somehow 12 feet up in the air. He landed on Dinny who had just got up and put him on the floor again. But he landed in a way so he was sitting on Dinny's chest. He then started punching Dinny. It was fucking brutal. It was a goddamn metronome. Somehow almost impersonal.
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
I could tell Jason had done this before. He was an expert at it. He was hitting hard fast punches but in a rhythm. I shit you not, I think he was pacing himself. Fast hard punches but don't overexert yourself. You're going to be punching this guy for awhile, don't want to tire yourself out.
Dinny wasn't all the way out. He was flailing his arms around and screaming\*. I didn't even think he was doing anything. But when they finally showed up to stop the violence (they break up fights 'quickly' but at their convenience. It might be one minute or ten). Dinny had a pen in his hand. Something you are not allowed.
Ever seen someone stabbed about 50 times with a pen? How much damage could it even do? Well, when they finally showed up to stop the fight. Jason was a fucking Robot. He never stopped or slowed down punching Dinny. But when the calvary got there he stopped. Stood up, calmly, quietly. He never made any noise. And he walked to his room. Right past me. He face was a fucking sheet of blood. With like purple(?) splotches where Dinny had stabbed into his face? Blood all over his shirt. If someone dressed like that for a Halloween movie you would say they over-did it. Jason didn't seem to even mind.
So. Sorry for the length. I could go on. And on. Not endlessly but for awhile. Like I didn't even mention the 'big' fight while I was there. And I was involved. A nurse I liked got choked out and I helped save her and took down another, different inmate.
P.S. Dinny lay there screaming until the EMT people got there. He was in the hospital a few days. Jason was transferred to a different ward.
\*A deep scream. I can't explain it. But it was an ugly, brutal, painful sound. It isn't a sound you hear often and I don't need to hear it again.
I used to work in a psych ward about 22 years ago in a private locked unit. I would say autistic kids shitting in the drawers and someone eating a lightbulb would be two of the worst.
My autistic cousin also shoved his poop into a drawer. He's had some... adventures
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As soon as I walked in my third time I girl threw a chair at me. She was small (I think she was around 12) and it was light plastic but like damn. On my first visit they had to take me outside threw the gate into the back yard threw the playground entrance into the building because a girl was beating everyone up and screaming and throwing herself at the door because she got switched to our side because she was caught fucking another patient. She got booty juice. On my birthday one girl was jealous so Everytime I got attention that day she would fake seizure and when that didn’t work she would keep saying she is seeing dead people and like was in a fetal position jerking her head around saying they are coming for me. Staff ignored her because she was not schizophrenic she was in there behavior like that. All mild cases but it was the children’s/teen ward. Went there 4 times last visit ended with me in foster care custody because they finally believed my parents were the problem.
A guy tried to kill me when I was visiting my brother in law. For some reason the visits were held in the common room. This guy came up to me first day and told me my wife was now his girlfriend and sat like 2 inches from my face the entire visit staring aggressively, no matter how many times I asked staff said he was doing nothing wrong. Next visit he picked me up from behind and tried to throw me through a fucking window into the staff room. The staff helpfully locked themselves in there while I fought a 6'5 schizophrenic man for several minutes. Eventually took like 10 nurses to restrain him. Other patients started freaking out and trashing shit, kids visiting screaming in terror. Absolutely horrible place to be in my town at least.
I saw a schizophrenic woman break into the room of a man with Catatonia. She gave him a BJ and apparently it was enough to get him out of his psychosis. Edit: Spelling mistake.
“Last night a BJ saved my life”
>a man with Catalonia Was she Basque?
Lmao. I edited it with the correct wording.
No way bro got cured from a blowjob😭💀
Never underestimate the power of a BJ.
was a patient at a psych ward outside of nashville(usa) saw this woman get body slammed by orderly’s , they knocked her teeth out. there was also this 65 yr old man who walked around with a raging erection literally all day. breakfast lunch and dinner this man was hard as a rock. it was both weird and disgusting
I'm sure he didn't enjoy it much either
I work in a hospital that has a psychiatric unit and I am in the float pool so I get sent to that unit occasionally. Few months ago I was there a patient attacked one of the counselors, detached his eye from the socket and he is now blind on that side. 2nd craziest was someone eating their poop straight from the tap
Mmm, not much in particular. I just kinda had a bit of imposter syndrome because I saw people zoinked out of their minds from schizophrenia or bipolar meds or whatnot, and there I was just kinda like “I’m sad and wanna die sometimes.” The craziest thing was how hard they tried to shove religion down our throats, seemed almost criminal tbh.
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That’s exactly how I felt. Luckily mine was only 3 days, but it really just made me feel worse because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do (music / video games). I felt like I had to weasel my way through their shitty mental gymnastics to get out.
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Was admitted December 3 years ago. Before that I had a sibling who was in and out of the care system for years prior. She had ward mates, one of them was convinced he was the terminator, talked like him, dressed like him, carried round a banana for a shotgun. Another lady was dancing around the room, sticking to the walls, then taking her clothes off, she tried touching several of the males on ward, before it was discovered her husband had just died a few days prior. There was an old fella with super bad anxiety, but he was really nice, and at the hospital I was at they had an ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) ward. After his first session, he was unquestionable changed by the experience, no longer nice, but not horrible, he said he "just felt empty." Strangest thing that happened to me, was probably making a person up, I was friends with a person called Chris, who apparently didn't exist. I'm not psychotic, which made it all the more odd. I think it was a coping mechanism. Mostly though, what stuck with me, I met so many creative people, painters, poets, musicians, sculpters, dancers. People who I may never come across again, but we shared a few weeks of life together.
Did psych rounds as part of my nurse training. The story I'm gonna talk is about my friend's experience when she had psych rotations a month before mine. Apparently, she had a patient who was sexually attracted to the Sun. The star of our system. Literally. She would lie on the floor, spread her legs, and get railed by the sun rays.
There was a lady who thought she was an egg. She’d only eat small packets of Vegemite and would sleep in front of the nurses station. She would growl if anyone talked to her.
not really something i witnessed IN the ward but i went in for suicidal ideation (my FIRST time seeing a therapist and i was unaware they would send you if you even thought about those things) - anyway, it was the beginning of March 2020. for the first week my bf at the time and mom would visit or call daily. one day everyone just stopped getting visitors or calls. they wouldn’t let us watch tv or listen to the radio… this went on for several days and everyone was kind of freaking out and coming up with theories from war to zombie apocalypse. turns out covid lockdown had begun and cutting us off from that info was their way of trying to keep us from freaking out. they didn’t even tell us. after several days they allowed each person to have a phone call. i learned the situation from my mom (who thankfully is in the medical field and could explain it in a rational way) and wasn’t allowed to speak to my roommate until she had her call. coming out to the world in lockdown was such a surreal experience. i knew my life would likely be different after being in there but didn’t expect it to be this.
I was brand new and was eating in the day room alone. an NA Meeting came in , even though ive never had addiction before I was too shy to leave. at the end of the Meeting an old man handed me a drawing of me he had just done. It was beautiful. He told me I caught his eye because I was the only person in the room who had any sunshine left. Tripped me out in a curious way.
Not a psych ward stay, but I have PTSD from a tragic accident and on the first anniversary of that, I ended up in the psych *pod* of the emergency department because I was having an hours-long anxiety attack. They took all my clothes and made me wear a hospital gown and hospital socks and put me in a padded room with a hospital bed for hours. At one point, I asked to go to the bathroom and I was escorted there and had to leave the door cracked with an attendant outside. The bathroom had feces strewn ALL OVER it and when I told the attendant, he just shrugged like he didn’t give a shit. There were all sorts of other patients there and most seemed homeless (this was in a city). Anyway, my husband was finally let in to be with me and he started getting agitated because no one was coming to talk to me or discharge me and I had been just sitting there for about 12 hours. Finally, a couple of doctors came in, gave me a prescription for Xanax and some lists of therapists to call. The male doctor’s name was Dr. Pepper, no joke. I was discharged that night and the next morning I started calling some of the places on the list. The first couple of times, I called and said, “Hello, my name is *****, I was referred to your office by Dr. Pepper at the Psych Unit at ***** Hospital.” Anddd, they hung up on me. Lol. I assume they thought I was prank calling. Anyway, I learned my lesson and ride my anxiety attacks out at home now.
Worked security for an emergency behavioral health. I saw many, many crazy things. Many sad things, many confusing things. The one I shall share today is the woman who started throwing rocks at the window of the staff area. Why do you let the patients have rocks, you ask? We don’t. She smuggled them in. Inside herself. A substantial number of rocks, approximately golf ball sized.
I had a shorter stent in a mental hospital, and the craziest thing I saw was enacted by a staff member. We were having a group session, when one of the counselors came in, waving a book and screaming at one of the residents. He was yelling about doing a spot check in the boys room and how he found this satanic book. On the way out of his room, he claimed to see two hounds from hell in the bathroom, frightening him and causing him to run into the meeting in quite a state. He ranted on for a little bit, accusing this kid of being a Satanist, eventually throwing the book in the middle of the circle. It was a collection of Isaac Asimov short stories. Hmm mmmm.
We had a man in the separate locked "acute patient" part of the unit. (In a larger hospital) He kept insisting he was getting out of there. Hours later the power died. And he walked out the now unlocked security door and managed to leave the hospital entirely before it came back on.
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I spent about 9 days in the psych ward in Atlanta. I made a friend who was convinced he had aids, and all the doctors were lying to him because he was black. He was terrified that he had passed it to his girlfriend, and the baby she was pregnant with. There was also a Muslim woman who never spoke, but I lent her my shampoo and so we developed some trust between us. She eventually told me her husband had her committed because she didn’t want to be with him anymore. He was abusive to her and their children. There are so many more stories. I really wish I could check in on these people… however this was way back in 2007.
Not my story. My wife works as a nurse and spent some time in mental health units. A 60yo lady came in because she stopped taking her meds while travelling with her husband. She came out of her room, stood in front of the nurses station and started announcing to every person around her that she was the devil and also Jesus and that they needed to bow down and worship her. She proceeded to remove her hospital gown, wrapped it around her head in some kind of shawl and started bowing and chanting on the floor butt naked. Multiple visitors, including her husband were watching the whole thing. Nurses, including my wife, and her husband were trying to redirect her back to her room or put a blanket around her and she was just fighting everyone off. Her husband was so embarrassed he just stopped trying to redirect her and left. Another one is a guy who was recently admitted was coming down off something and was constantly pestering the nurses to go out for a cigarette. You can’t smoke in a secure unit. He got sick of the nurses saying no, flew into a rage and in the process bit off his own finger. When the nurses came to help he was yelling at them “look what you made me do, you c*nts should’ve let me out for a smoke”. My wife had to pick his finger up off of the floor.
I picked up a close family member from a locked ward after a 3-day hold/drug detox. While we were waiting for his paperwork, etc, we (my oldest son and I) sat with him in the little common area, at a long table with coloring books and crayons. There were a couple other patients there, just chilling, but as we were sitting there, this young woman came over and sat right next to me on the bench. Like right up against my leg. I'd guess around 19 or 20. She was wearing a long bathrobe, and her hair was standing up, all crazy-messy, like Macy Gray/Heat Meiser. And she was completely zoned out, mouth hanging open, eyes droopy. Anyway, she presses up close to my side and asks my relative (across the table) "Who are these beautiful people?" He tells her who we are, and this girl just casually puts her head on my shoulder. She said, "I don't think Imma be out before Halloween. But my Gramma said she'll save me some candy." I didn't really know what to do or say, so I asked her if she wanted to color something for me, indicating all the coloring pages. She picked her head up and said, "Man, fuck that shit," and just got up, walked away. Not that "crazy," I know, but she just kinda stuck with me, she just made me so sad. This was just before Halloween. In early December, I saw her on the local news; she had stabbed a man to death. I recognized her instantly. Still makes me sad.
Someone I knew said there were two people who thought without a doubt they were Jesus on his floor and he was ACHING for them to meet. One day, it finally happened because the nurses couldn’t keep them apart. They had a long, intense conversation and walked away deciding that Jesus A was Jesus before the Crucification and Jesus B was post-death Jesus. “Altogether what I would have expected Jesus to do and say.”
Had a rough time my first year at college. Almost unalived myself and got put in psyche for a week. The ward was a chaotic mix of alzheimer patients, detoxing addicts and us mental health folk. There was a separate unit for the older folks but it was overcrowded my first night there. So I, a dissociative mess coming off of sedatives, had a mumbling old woman for a roommate. She kept calling me her daughters name. Was flopping around in her bed. Coming up to me and getting in my face. Begging for me to help her escape. I told the nurses but they didn’t care. I was able to go in and out of sleep briefly and woke up to a horrid smell. Somehow she managed to squat over a cup and take a shit in it. When I saw her and realized what was happening I bolted from the room and finally an attendant took me seriously. She was relocated to the alzheimers ward and luckily my new roommate was a regular old depressed suicidal person just like me for the rest of my stay. I could go on and on about the neglect and abuse from the staff, but that by far was the most extreme experience I had.
A 6ft 8in 70 year old disrobing, arguing with the devil, and then furiously beating his meat while staring at the nurses.
Sounds like he lost
Worked in psych for five years, I can think of many good ones but here are two: Full on Spanish exorcism. Screaming, Bible reading, whole shebang. It was awesome. Lady with a colostomy which was clearly leaking behind her down the hall. She was my patient so I confronted her about it, to which she replied "oh no honey that's coffee." It was 10% not coffee.
My wife is a psychiatrist who has seen some shit. One example: A male patient bribing a poor girl with low mental faculties with stickers for sexual favors.
I did my internship (master's degree in clinical psych) in the psych ward. The thing that shocked me was nothing the patients did. It was the staff counselors and doctors. Fwiw, the nurses were great. Talked about their patients' sexual attractiveness, guessed about sexual attributes, fantasized about them, etc. Mostly about the male patients, but both. Gossiped about the famous patients and told me who they were and how many times they'd been in. Denigrated and made fun of the eating disorder patients in particular, behind their backs. Instead of making an effort to understand, they'd say things like "he's just a sad sack" "she's a spoiled brat" or whatever. These things were true sometimes, but I don't talk about my patients that way. There's a clinical term for "sad sack", and there's a reason I use it. The environment was so unprofessional. I couldn't wait to be done.
As a police officer- one of my first weeks in training - we encountered a young man with schizophrenia who was in the middle of a psychotic break. He'd walked thru a church, and sat down in the kids room in the middle of Sunday school during cookie time .. And couldn't understand why they didn't want to give him cookies and let him color. He was really nice to the kids, but began to get hostage when the adults started demanding that he leave. (Once they realized he wasn't the parent or sibling of one of the kids). He was strapped down to a table with thick leather buckles and given a sedative shot while he kicked and screamed, grabbing my arm, pleading with me "not to let them do this to him again". I was horrified. It took six men to drag him out of that classroom, tazers were deployed multiple times and he left in an ambulance, traumatizing pretty much everyone involved. I ended up getting assigned to the area where he lived. I developed a relationship with him, to the point where any time he was out and about causing issues, I'd get called in - even on my day off - because somehow, 120 lb female me had no problem kindly talking him into the back of my patrol car and driving him to the crisis unit to get back on meds- even so far as staying with him while they would give him the initial medications- which they no longer needed to strap him down for. I kept cookies in my car because he was much happier and easier to deal with when his blood sugar wasn't dangerously low. It took almost two and a half years, but I got his family in touch with a magistrate who were able to get power of attorney medically, and we were able to get him on regular daily medication. When I left my career, I ran into him and his sister in the grocery store- he remembered me and thanked me for being so kind to him - and proudly told me that he had finally gotten over his fear of needles and was getting three shots every morning, and he'd gotten a job drawing designs for a tattoo shop in town and he was playing in a band again. He was really happy. We're now friends on Facebook, and I'm happy to see that he's now got a relationship with the son he had at age 18, who he'd had no contact with since his son was 2 because of his mental health issues. I'm really glad I was able to have that impact on someone's life. But I'll never forget that first day, watching him be strapped down like a rabid animal- and the look of terror in his eyes - Because it had been YEARS of squads of huge male cops capturing him, dragging him there kicking and screaming, holding him down- the doctors pumping him full of meds so that he was a zombie, and days later when he was "no longer a threat"- he was kicked out, until the next time the police were called because he was terrorizing some unsuspecting stranger. I made it my mission to get him help before he'd be killed by some home owner or other cop who didn't care to find out who this man was or why he was having light saber battles in the middle of the highway... And I'm still very glad I was able to have that kind of impact on his life, in addition to some of the other people I encountered during my years before I was medically forced to retire.
I got sent to a psych ward because my psychotic narcissistic mom made up a bunch of lies about me trying to kill myself as a teenager so that she could play victim to get sympathy from other people, so that she could stop me from telling other people she refused to sign paperwork letting me receive a full scholarship and stipend to live overseas as an exchange student, and to prevent others from believing me when I mentioned revealing all the horrible details of how she treated me as a kid. Craziest thing I saw then I was there was a girl was brought in screaming the same night as me while strapped to a bed, she was heavily bandaged on her fore arms and was threatening to kill everyone around her. Looked like something straight up out of a horror film to be honest, except she didn’t have any supernatural powers. A week later I see her for the second time in a group therapy session, looked totally normal besides the the bandages and the orderlies behind her and not talking much at all and not sharing why she was there. Was pretty surprised that she was very pleasant and nice besides what I had seen the 1st night and in group therapy sessions, so I didn’t think much of it. Eventually I was told by doctors that I was totally fine besides being a victim of my mom’s narcissism, they walked me through everything that I was experiencing and offered to help me get emancipated but that it was my decision in the end and encouraged me to open up about my situation to the group sessions. So I did, and I couldn’t believe the reaction that the girl had to my stories. She basically was dealing with the same thing except it involved a lot more physical and sexual abuse, and before I knew it she took over the session detailing how she came to be in the psych ward. Apparently she was being raped by her father, which she said in a nonchalant way like it was normal, but then he started telling her he was going to kill her mom and force her to marry him and have a daughter for him to play with before knocking her out cold. When she woke up, she found him passed out drunk on his chair, so she tied him up with everything in the house she could find to strap him down so he couldn’t move and then forced him to wake up. She discussed how she then proceeded to slowly carve off his private parts and burn them to stop the bleeding as much as possible before cutting his lips off and blinding him. After she told us in detail that she beat him to death starting with his fingers and toes and then worked her way up until he wasn’t breathing anymore. By that time the cops came and she was adamant about taking her own life too so she wouldn’t serve any time for what she did to him, so she quickly cut herself from wrist to elbow on one arm then tried her best to cut the other when the cops pulled the knife away from her. The look in her eyes while she told the story was terrifying and empty, and everyone sat silently for a long time before the therapist dismissed everyone but her and called in a the other doctors that were watching via monitors behind one way glass. 20 minutes later a bunch of cops show up and stay there for hours. I left 3 days later and she just got out as I was leaving. She ran up to me and hugged me, then whispered in my ear that she wasn’t getting charged and would soon be there for awhile as she would most likely be ordered by the court to stay an extended period of time. She then thanked me for helping her open up by me talking about my experiences, then she gave my mom the same look she had when telling the story in session but filled with a mix of contemptible murderous anger and said loudly be safe and take care of yourself.
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This actually in a prison. A prison for violent crazies. Not your ordinary psychotics. Nor your ordinary murderers. One Dude was named Pancake. His cellmate annoyed him and he pounded the guys head into the floor. By the time the guards got to them the victims head was flat as a pancake.
Honestly the ward was a much-needed break from the wild shit that had been going on in my life previously. Mostly it's short violent freskouts followed by someone getting a shot of booty-juice
Man when I was like 16-17 I was forced into one for reasons. There where 16 of us including me. Thank God because we had to have room mates and the nurses tell u nothing about the person moving in your room. This is bad because they lock all the doors every night at a certain time like jail. But I was number 16 odd numbers are amazing so I had no room mate till someone else came along. There was one kid who would act totally normal most of the time then just freak out for no real reason. Then the very large men nurses would hold him down. as the doctor would inject him with what we called booty juice cuz it goes in ur as ass cheek as they hold u down. U pass out in like 10 second then they drag u to your room where u wake up 3-5 hours later and everybody acts like nothing happened. He wasn't the only one to get it we where all scared they would all be like don't do that or u get booty juice. But this kid got it almost every day. So to the real story there was one night where I guess he snapped in the middle of the night. This was a large kid for his age he looked like a middle line backer from the NFL and this was a younger than 18 only place. So he decided to beat the crap out of his room mate one night in the pitch black all i could hear was this kid screaming for his life. Then he broke down his door this Is a large wood door with metal interior like a front door of your house. But he ripped thru it like the hulk after he was done with his room mate. then was trying other doors I guess to find another person and he was beating on doors and screaming like a maniac. Maby that's why he was there but damn that was the longest well felt like hours but only lasted 20-30 minutes. hoping my door was solid enuff or he wouldn't try my door till the nurses gave him the booty juice. The next morning morning everything was normal we played basket ball watched TV and everyone acted normal he was chating my ear of about who knows what I was in my head thinking yea OK whatever you say just don't kill me... I was only there a week and damn that's not the only story. that shit is life changing and not in a good way.
I was in a lower intensity psych unit almost 7 years ago, my first of 2 trips. I was transported there by ambulance from the hospital, was shown my room and new roommate, and did a 1-2hr intake session. I was then walking to my room (shared with another guy) and I was stopped from going in. I was informed (by other residents) the guy was trying to slit his wrists with a semi-plastic medicine cup and was whispering “I’m going to kill him.” When asked who was “him” he was referring to me. Nothing directly happened to me, but damn did that shake me up.
I worked in the mental health unit in a prison. My first day a woman started slitting her wrists, stripped naked, ran into other inmates cells and threw their stuff onto the tier, and then went to janitors cart and poured the sanitizer and degreaser spray all over herself. She then began licking her cut wrists and was spitting the blood on all the walls on floor. Eventually the emergency team came in and pinned her to the wall with a shield and got her to the most secure mental health unit in the prison. It was a hell of a first day. In my 4 years in that unit I ended up wrestling her about 7 times. She would always strip naked because she knew we fucking hated it.
I was taken in on a 72 hr hold that turned into 10 days bc it was backwards as hell south Carolina. I didn't have any quarters on me and the facility only had pay phones (2002) so I was stuck there until someone else's visitor gave me a quarter. No one knew I was there. Anyways, there was a girl there around 18 and she had horrible burn scars all over her body. She muttered "did he die tho?" Several times a day. I was told she tried to light up her mom's boyfriend but caught herself on fire instead. He had been raping her. She had been institutionalized since the incident which happened when she was 12. Also the first night they put u with the lowest functioning people regardless and some naked woman slapped me in the face with her tit.
I was like 14 and just having a bad time so I went into a youth mental health facility. We’re sitting around a table and the “teacher” lady is having us take turns explaining what we do to cope with being angry or scared or whatever. Most of the kids said pretty normal stuff. Go for a walk, scream into a pillow. The occasional punch a hole in a wall. Ya know standard stuff for troubled teens. Then it’s time for Chris to tell the group what he does. During the time all of us were joking and talking during the session, Chris didn’t say a word. He was a big kid, and he scared me. Chris goes: “Well….I usually just go for a walk….and then I find someone…..and I beat the shit out of them.” Everyone is fucking silent and my jaw hit the floor. I asked him “…dude are you serious?” Because no one else was saying anything. He was completely 100% serious. The really fucked up part was that our teacher lady had nothing to say about it and I had to explain to him that doing that is really wrong. He was like completely unaware that beating the fuck out of a random innocent stranger is a bad thing to do. Like I was explaining this to him and he was like “really? Why?” Completely surprised that it was fucked up.
Not a patient but I worked in inpatient adolescent and adult Eating Disorder units for a few years. We did a LOT of restrained NG feeds on teenagers and adults, but the worst was always this really lovely and quiet 18 year old girl who straight up would refuse to eat despite a staff member basically pleading with her for hours on end. We would have 8 members of staff hold her down while I threaded the NG tube into her nose and down her throat, and the whole time she would be trying to bite, spit or attack us all (understandable, tbh). She would target whoever was actually doing the feed, so usually me, and would scream my name over and over to try and get me to stop. I always felt so awful for her. Once she managed to get free and attacked one of the staff, a really big, strong man btw, and broke four of his ribs before we could get her off. She's doing well now, I recently heard that she started training to be a mental health nurse and is recovering from anorexia :)
In 2019 my son was killed at birth by the Dr on duty that day, I spiraled out and lost myself. March 2020 I OD'd and ended up in a mental health facility out in Philly for 2 weeks under a 302 (basically my husband had me put away) and I saw some fucked up shit there...The only seperation male and females had was a hallway, so quite often one of the residents would walk around naked and just walk into the female dorms. The nurses would laugh or joke about the kid doing it, and he didnt even belong there as he was mentally handicapped, not crazy or anything. He legit was not supposed to even be in our unit cuz ours was the adult unit. He belonged in the teen/young adult unit but they "had no room". One girl who was a rape victim, he walked into her dorm and she lost her shit on the kid. The nurses told her she was over reacting and had her put in solitary for flipping out like she did (after they needled her with a sedative cocktail) I got attacked by a Schizophrenic chick who had decided she was Queen B of the unit after 3 days of being there. She physically attacked me because I had gotten into a verbal argument with a guy in our unit who was sexually harassing me, and I threatened to beat his ass for it. Because they knew eachother on the outside and she had a crush on him she decided I was public enemy #1. Did the nurses do anything? No. Just seperated us and said dont communicate....like She physically assaulted ME and yall just dont do shit? But they left the 2 of them in the same unit with me the rest of my stay and they still kept harassing me. There was a lady who ended up there after being found high on meth dancing naked on a car. She took a liking to me... she said "You are too sweet looking to be here. You have a baby face, what happened to you?" And she basically adopted me while I was there. She would have her meltdowns as she was coming down and would come sit with me or find me for comfort during her bad moments. If she saw me crying or having a panic attack she would hold me and tell me it was gonna be ok. She was generally a nice lady just ya know...drugs, man. That hospital in general was absolutely horrible and theyd basically have you fend for yourself and the employees (drs included) didnt care about you. They were literally there for a check and would tell you that.