Stomping out mental illness has been quite the trip. The past week on the psych ward has been a lot more work than I imagined, but at least it's engaging and I actually feel like I'm part of the team. The patients keep things interesting...the guy who collects dead squirrels (and carries their rotting corpses around with him) because he thinks they're talking to him), the guy who thinks he's Satan, the lady who stabbed herself with a kitchen knife when her boyfriend said he was leaving her (she was actually the normal one of the bunch). I actually enjoy talking to them, trying to figure out how they ended up in this position, trying to get them back on track.
Of course that raises the question of what is crazy anyway. I mean, in some of the patients you instantly know they're out of whack, but in the majority they actually seem pretty normal until you ask them if they've heard any voices recently. I got to go to court to watch a commitment hearing and our patient really came across as totally sane on the stand, it was only testimony from her mom about her hoarding tendencies that got her committed. Then there's the idealistic kid who recently dropped out of college, smokes pot, and thinks that there's a government conspiracy supporting the corn industry resulting in high fructose corn syrup in all of our food products. Not wanting to participate in a dysfunctional society is not necessarily crazy. Plus, most of his views are pretty much identical to those of some of my friends. Go figure.
I've always been leery of psych meds...but they definitely get results. If you've got mild depression a little psychotherapy might go a long way, but for bipolar mania or schizophrenia it's hard to argue that just talking about it will make everything better. Still just talking about things can be incredibly beneficial and perhaps it doesn't happen enough. What about Mind Over Meds?
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