Article created by: Austėja Akavickaitė
Mental health continues to be a topic that many people ignore entirely. Some think it’s taboo to speak about it openly. Others might rush to judge those with mental health issues without digging deeper. While still others choose to ignore their problems instead of tackling them with the help of licensed professionals.
Most people’s experience of psychiatric hospitals, for example, comes from movies and TV shows. However, reality can be more gruesome, brutal, and bizarre than fiction. Redditor u/N3SSDOGG sparked a very open discussion after asking the people who have either worked at or been admitted to mental health units to share the strangest things they’ve witnessed. You’ll find their candid stories below.
Bored Panda reached out to the author of the thread, redditor u/N3SSDOGG, who is currently working in a psychiatric hospital as a mental health technician. They shared their thoughts on why there's still so much stigma surrounding mental health and revealed some of the signs of a great mental institution employee.
Warning: keep in mind that some of these stories are rather unsettling and might not be for all of you Pandas.
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I was supervising a patient overnight on a snowy December night. This guy *loved* Christmas. I mean, *loved* it. In the early morning hours, we got some calls from other units saying they were missing their Christmas trees. We wondered why they thought we knew where they went, until we saw trails in the snow of ornaments and artificial pine needles leading to his bedroom window. Upon opening his door, we discovered a forest of Christmas trees packed into his room, at least 6 or 7, with him giddily sitting in the middle of them. At some point he snuck out through his window and stole Christmas from everyone. How nobody including us heard him is still a mystery to me. Another time, we had a group of three patients all strip completely naked, elope from the complex, and run two miles away to the local Police Department. The leader of the group did this more than once, and the police officers all knew her name and if they saw her, they simply met her out front and took her back.
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Hoo boy.
There was this kid like 14 years old with Schizophrenia. He would take off his shirt, scream and throw things if the nurses wouldn't play for him a Red Hot Chilli Peppers' live concert DVD over and over again. It was honestly sad to see. Most of the people I was with were really chill actually, and hearing that music on the repeat made us only feel worse. One day, close to my release date, I sat to have lunch next to him and he had a sudden moment of lucidity. He told me I was a really good person and that I should go back to the real world, because my mom wouldn't want to see me sad like that. I was sent to the ward because I was deeply depressed as my mom died early that year. I stood up and gave him a hug.
Mario, wherever you are, I hope you are ok. I'm about to get my college degree and it's thanks to you and many other wonderful people I've met.
I had a patient remove his eye with a spork.
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 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.
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.”
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 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.
A doctor told me I was too fat to be in there and should come back when I actually look anorexic (I was already pretty underweight) and I was released hours after that.
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.
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.
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)
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 father's 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.
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.
I was in one with people who were mostly in for suicidal ideation. One patient was a nice young girl who did not eat anything the entire week I was there. A few months later I was at the grocery store and she was working there but was getting fired by what looked like a horrible bully of a manager. Watching her walk to her car absolutely defeated broke my heart. I hope she is doing better now.
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.
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.
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.
Not me, but a friend of mine that struggled earlier in life. He made a birdhouse for his mother and wanted to paint it red as it was her favorite color. But he never got to because one of the other patients would always drink the red paint before anyone could use it.
