Mental Health Care - Have you ever or would you ever see a therapist?

Lynn, I think we could show compassion towards those who could not afford our expertise, and treat them pro bono, otherwise we split our fees fifty-fifty.
 

As for "Crazy"... that term is used too casually IMO. I remember doing a many years ago doing a 16 week rotation in a State mental facility. I was assigned to a long term male schizophrenic ward.... It that case... "CRAZY" was actually an understatement. I remember one social worker who gave the orientation talk.. he said, Many times people ask me the difference between a nervous breakdown and an actual inpatient schizophrenic. I always compare it to a car. A nervous breakdown is like needing a tune up and an oil change... Schizophrenia is like blowing a rod."
 
I used to work in the disability department of a major insurance provider - we dealt with some serious cases including severe depression, psychoses, PTSD and mood disorders to name but a few. There were several psychiatrists on staff to review claims. I found it very educational and I learned something about DSM IV diagnoses as well as medications. It was a real eye opener. There are so many people everywhere who are disabled due to long term mental illness as well as others who are going through a short term difficult time in their lives and need some time to recover. It could happen to anyone at any time in their lives. Its part of living in these bodies in this world with these minds. Thank goodness there are many highly trained professionals to help. Crazy is not a word to be bandied about anymore when it comes to mental health, as it reflects an outdated and prejudiced attitude that needs to be revised IMO.
 
Cookie said:
I used to work in the disability department of a major insurance provider - we dealt with some serious cases including severe depression, psychoses, PTSD and mood disorders to name but a few. There were several psychiatrists on staff to review claims. I found it very educational and I learned something about DSM IV diagnoses as well as medications. It was a real eye opener. There are so many people everywhere who are disabled due to long term mental illness as well as others who are going through a short term difficult time in their lives and need some time to recover. It could happen to anyone at any time in their lives. Its part of living in these bodies in this world with these minds. Thank goodness there are many highly trained professionals to help. Crazy is not a word to be bandied about anymore when it comes to mental health, as it reflects an outdated and prejudiced attitude that needs to be revised IMO.
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Actually I loved psych nursing and would have made it my specialty.. I found it fascinating... However, for a woman, much to dangerous.

Unless you have spent weeks locked in a ward with 40 schizophrenics... you would realize Crazy is simply gallows humor...
 
Shalimar said:
QS, sadly, you are right. Psych. nurses are at risk both physically and mentally/emotionally. I have treated several of them, primarily women, but one man also.
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For sure.. when I was there one nurse had her arm broken..... because she wore a red scrub top and it set someone off..
 
I have some beauts too... and I was only there 4 months..The human mind is a miraculous thing, and when it derails, it's utterly fascinating.. AND terrifying.
 
I was referred to a shrink for depression (long story), after I became aware of his fee structure, I decided I wasn't really able to be depressed. I felt better.
 
Yes Lynn,it is very sad. I know of one individual, a brilliant creative mind held prisoner by a devastating mental illness. Without it, I am certain he would be CEO of a premier company. As it is, eventually it will cost him his life, far too soon.
 
My nephew is a psychiatric nurse who works in 'the field' in east end Vancouver. So far he has had no incidents. Is it possible that many more psychiatric nurses are now male?

Just for the record, under our Ontario health care system (OHIP) and probably all other provinces in Canada as well, psychiatric care is covered, although waiting lists have become quite long in recent years. Psychologists are only covered under a company medical insurance or private insurance. Alternative practitioners are not covered either, neither are counselors who usually work on a sliding scale.
 
For those wondering, schizophrenia is hallmarked by auditory, visual and tactile halucinations.. These are the people that are acutally seeing people that are not there, hearing voices, most times telling them to do things or denegrating them endlessly, and feeling sensations on and in their bodies. Along with that, they suffer from delusions, which are fixed and false beliefs.

Some things seem humorous to us.. I remember on man who would touch the arm or the back of eveyone coming near him or passing him.. When we asked an orderly why, we were told he was just checking to see if we were real, or if we were just one of the people he was "seeing" that were not really there.

Many suffer from paranoid schizophrenia.. and believe they are being chased or tracked down... ususally by the government and that there have been antenas implanted in their heads.. which they can cover by wearing knit caps at all times. As long as the cap was on, they couldn't find him from his transmitting antenae.

One woman, whose bed was placed under a heating vent was convinced they were using that vent to steal her inventions out of her brain, and to sell them to Radio Shack.

One wanted to be transferred to another hospital because the one she was in couldn't stop her from giving birth to Star Fish every night in her bed.

Funny? bizarre? Sure... but imagine living with those halucinations and delusions.. and believing without a doubt they are real.. Then having to deal with all those people telling you that you are not really hearing or seeing the things you absolutely KNOW you see and hear.. Imagine that life.

These are the people that fall into the gallows humor catagory of "crazy"... and the word INSANE truely describes them.. It's definately not descriptive of the woman who is feeling a little blue because her husband is cheating on her. ... or the man who is grieving his deceased wife and is having trouble sleeping..
 
Isn't it controlled with medication, although patients have to be diligent to take them, if they miss they suffer a relapse. The movie A Beautiful Mind comes to mind.
A terrible thing for patients and extremely heartbreaking for their family too. I know of someone (family friend) who was recently diagnosed, missed his medication, attacked someone on a train and is presently stuck in jail in the US, with his family in Canada and not allowed to visit, only to speak on the phone.
 
I think that's probably one of the biggest problems with mental patients, they don't take their meds for one reason or another.
 
Cookie said:
Isn't it controlled with medication, although patients have to be diligent to take them, if they miss they suffer a relapse. The movie A Beautiful Mind comes to mind.
A terrible thing for patients and extremely heartbreaking for their family too. I know of someone (family friend) who was recently diagnosed, missed his medication, attacked someone on a train and is presently stuck in jail in the US, with his family in Canada and not allowed to visit, only to speak on the phone.
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What is unfortunate, is that the available medication has horrible side effects.. It makes people unable to function and puts them is a sedated state.. Patients don't like that feeling and don't want to take their medicine for that reason. I've seen medicated schizophrenics sitting in day rooms almost catatonic and drooling..

Sometimes I think it just best to give them a safe place to be... where they cannot hurt anyone, nor can they be preyed upon. However, budget cuts to mental health have closed nearly all State run facilities, and private facilities are impossible to patients and families to afford. Many are out on the streets... So the next time you see someone dressed in multiple layers of clothing, pushing a shopping cart full of garbage and talking to someone who is not there.. you know what the deal is.
 
Cookie, there are many levels of pathology in Schizophrenia, as in other mental disorders. Many individuals live independently, pursuing various levels of a semi normal life, providing they take their meds. Only a small number are violent, most tend more towards the shy introverted areas of the spectrum. Of course, it is the extreme cases that one remembers the most vividly.
 

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