I have said it before, I have experienced quite a few things while working in mental health some are good things and some of them are a little unnerving. The thing is after a time you could become a little unfazed by certain situations. What I do find frustrating is when you are in the public with a patient/s the amount of looks the patients get from the public if they look a little different or they have scares on visible body parts like arms, neck, face or legs. I think the public need a little more understanding in mental health whether it is with adult or adolescent mental health. People staring at the patients can and sometimes does have an emotional effect on the patient. Working in this line of work takes a special caring sort of person, someone that will take the shouting in your face and the aggression towards you and the threats at times and then keep your cool in these situations. Then you sit down with the patient/ client and talk to them what is getting them into this state and helping them out to bring the anxiety or aggression down to an acceptable level. Don’t get me wrong it can be hard to do this and not every one can keep cool all the time, this is why it is ok to take time out off the ward to bring yourself back.

One situation I have come across while working in different in mental health was the time I met a young patient in an admissions unit. She was a young adult around her twenties, She had come from a good home so it appeared at the time, she appeared to suffer from Schizophrenia and was a big self harmer. With this patient she would hear a voice in her head and see a demon as she put it which told her she was worthless, a whore and needed to kill herself. This would set her off to cutting her arms with anything that could cut her skin on her arms and legs, not just to scratch the skin but at times she would cut right down to the bone. To most people this would make them feel sick or horrify them. As for myself I have come across these  situations a lot so it did not faze me to much. When the patient had been admitted and she was settled in and we was about to sort her belongings out to what she could and could not have the alarms were activated. We stopped with the belongings and ran down to were the alarms are going off, it was the new patients room. She had smuggled in a piece of metal, we found out that she had hidden the metal in her underwear. What we found was that she had cut her fore arm open down to the bone and her blood was all over the place. Her arm was covered in blood and it had covered her torso and legs, Staff gloved up and took hold of her and relocated her to the treatment room. By the time we had moved her with her being resistive with us moving her staff got covered in blood, but this was a regular thing on the ward I was on at the time. The patient was distressed and crying as we had stopped her trying to hurt herself due to the voices demanding that she did this. What you have to understand in these cases is that these voices are there only and best friends and so  convincing to them and this is the only person they will listen too.

Whilst in the treatment room the patient was sat in holds with her cut arm out in front of her and the nurse in charge was cleaning up her arm. We had cleaned her up and found out that she had cut to deep for a basic clean up and she had cut through the muscle and down to the bone. I left the treatment room and called for an ambulance and explained to them the situation and they sent a paramedic to the ward to take the patient to A&E at the local hospital. I can say when she came back with her escorting staff she was in a better frame of mind and her night was a lot better.

With what I blog I don’t mean to offend anyone , but it is what I experience and what happens but names and some experiences have been changed a little.

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