Many of my experiences working in mental health care have been shocking. Interestingly, it is not the patients that have been shocking, so much as those who get paid to work with the patients, as well as the “system” that “cares” for the patients (aka consumers, aka clients, aka individuals with mental illness….I say patient because it is easier and because those outside the industry may not be familiar with the politically correct trends within health care. Please know that I do not use the term “patient” with any derogatory intent whatsoever. I am an supporter of those with mental illness and have expended much energy through the years to advocate for this population).
Here are snippets from some of my more horrifying observations:
- A mental health tech who gave drugs to a patient on a substance abuse unit
- A psych nurse who slapped a patient across the face for not staying in her room
- A delusional patient who was scared to go onto the unit upon admission was rushed and slammed onto the ground, and then put in a headlock and dragged onto the unit, even when he had not shown any signs of being dangerous, but had simply verbally protested to going onto the unit
- A van driver for an adolescent residential treatment facility who spent most of his work hours sipping vodka mixed with Gatorade
- A psychiatrist who spent an hour shaming a woman into tears in front of all of the other patients on the ward
- A psych nurse who withheld a patient’s methadone for several hours simply because he asked if he could have it right away, and then when he protested she called the “team” to physically drag him into the seclusion room
- A mental health tech who taunted and made faces at an adolescent in locked seclusion
- A patient with acute psychosis left naked in a puddle of his own urine on a tile floor for several hours, when he attempted to leave the room he was physically blocked by large mental health techs
- A patient who was involuntarily sedated with medications fell asleep outside during a cigarette break, but was not noticed to be off the unit for several hours and suffered severe sunburns (this was a patient who was supposed to be checked every 15 minutes due to risk of suicide)
- A patient, also supposidly on 15 minute suicide checks, who died in their room and was not found for 7 hours
Those are just a few incidents. Sadly, this population is among the most vulnerable. Because of the negative stigma in our culture, these type of scandalous occurrences do not receive the media hype that more socially acceptable populations receive (e.g. the elderly, children, abused wives, etc). There is little consequence to those who abuse or neglect this population. Typically, the worst that happens is that they lose their job, but even that is rare. This population is largely reliant on others to advocate on their behalf, because many of them are not able to self-advocate, and many of them have lost family support. One place that every person can start is by doing their part to reverse the stigma. More on this in another post…
