A Beautiful Mind...

It was another great day in my mental health rotation. Today my patient picked me.

Our picnic at the park was cancelled do to the storms last night. Some of the patients were upset about this while others were relieved. To be honest I was slightly relieved, but I would have gone and enjoyed myself.

Today I played basketball against a man around my age. Well, at first I stood back and watched. He was good. I approached him and he seemed highly disinterested in my interrupting his shooting. After I ‘proved’ myself worthy of shooting hoops—he started having fun. Yes, I can shoot a basketball—and pretty darn good too! He invited me to play again tomorrow. I accepted. He is not my patient. My patient is a middle-age woman. She is very shy, and seems like she has no self worth. I enjoyed the conversations that she and I had. She let me right into her life and made me feel welcome in the process.

We only get to talk to our patients about 15-20 minutes a day. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? It’s not. We make an appointment with them and than the rest of the day we join activities or go to group therapies, etc. Today I went shopping with a handful of patients. To be honest you would not have known that these individuals have psychiatric problems; the majority of them are fairly controlled. It was a fun experience.

Have you ever seen A Beautiful Mind? There is an amazing patient at the facility that reminds me of that movie. Some of these patients live in their own little worlds some live in two different worlds, but whatever world it is I am enjoying this.

A lot of the patients have drug induced psychiatric problems. Using too many drugs can rewire your brain and honestly make you have a mental illness. I think they call it something like drug induce schizophrenia. Most of them realize that they have failed society and now have such low self esteem that they fear that nobody will give them a second chance. They thrive on seeing us, the nursing students, making fools out of ourselves. This I do well and I don’t even have to try.

I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t know that there is a bad side to mental health nursing—the episodes. I have seen a few of those too. I have seen some bizarre things to be honest. I have even heard some pretty violent and strange things come out of these patients’ mouths. Anything from wanting to slit a person’s throat to seeing someone burns themselves with the flame of a lighter.

It is kind of funny to see how the majority of the nursing group doesn’t like this rotation; in fact, they are counting down the days to be out of there. They are out of their element. Not me, I think I found what I was looking for in nursing.

I’m strange.