It takes a specific type of person to work in an intense environment like a psychiatric institution. One must have empathy, understanding, and crisis intervention skills to effectively deal with people with varying degrees of mental conditions.
Not everyone is equipped for such a job, and those who are shared their experiences in a Reddit thread from years ago. Their stories were a mix of fascinating, shocking, and poignant, giving a glimpse into what life is like inside these facilities.
These anecdotes come from diverse perspectives, including those of security personnel, nurses, pharmacists, and counselors, among others.
#1
We had a gero psych floor. Crazy old people.
One night while passing through a little old lady popped her head out her doorway and said to me
“I could sure use the company of a good looking young man tonight!”
“sorry I’m not that good looking.”
Quick as snot on a doorknob she said “That’s ok, I can’t see too well”
I didn’t join her, but her charisma was on point.
#2
Probably the saddest was a resident I had a Long time ago. This gentleman was a ww 2 vet with alzheimers and dementia, probably once or twice a month he would relive some battle he was in. He would litterally RUN up the hallway and grab you and yell at you to get down behind the sandbags. He would then tell you take take his thomson because it was too heavy for him he would just use his pistol. Then he would get up and run back down the hallway… This guy was OLD and seeing him run fullsprint like that up and down the hallway during one of his episodes was surreal.
I cant imagine having to constantly relive the worst moments of your life where you witnessed and survived the unspeakable horrors of war….
#3
Going to go a different route here as all of the stories seem to focus on the shocking and negative/challenging behaviours.
I’m not a nurse but am a support worker.
We currently have a patient who, when he was admitted, was extremely aggressive (not physically) and impatient, he was unable to wait for anything for longer than 2 seconds, barely spoke to anybody unless it was on a needs basis and wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything for himself.
Fast forward 6 weeks and he has stopped me in my tracks multiple times. The first time he said please when he asked for something, the first time he agreed to make his breakfast himself, the first time he asked how I was when he saw me and probably the most rewarding of all was when he smiled at me and said good morning.
#4
I was a CNA for about 4 years and the saddest ever was my client/resident constantly thought I was her daughter. She went to Harvard and was an extremely brilliant lady in her time. She was non verbal but every time I walked into her room she would exclaim “Elizabeth you came”. I loved this lady so much, she would only eat when I fed her she was extremely combative with everyone but me. I ended up quitting my job there but visited her every single day. To the point that her family kind of accepted me as their family. I finally found out that Elizabeth took her own life at 21 and the fact that she thought I was her gave her extreme joy. I never corrected her and I like to think I gave her peace when she passed holding my hand. She was an amazing lady and I miss her to this day.
#5
This might not fit perfect, but I love this story.
How about in an inpatient a*******n clinic? The first one that comes to mind was something I witnessed between a patient and another floor tech. We had a man who was in serious detox, d**g if choice was m**h. He was throwing a huge tantrum, not uncommon in DTs, people will do just about anything to get a fix. We weren’t a locked facility, so it wasn’t like he was stuck there. He genuinely wanted help, that’s why he stuck around, and we were there to listen and help him through the shakes, hallucinations, and other symptoms.
He was slamming his fists on the desk at this point, and he had started just yelling “I just want some f*****g ice!” (Slang for crystal m**h) Well, the tech with me was inexperienced, although much older than me, and while I talked to him and tried to calm him down, she went back to our staff kitchen and got him a glass of ice. Like, frozen water. She brought it out to him and put it in his hand like, Problem Solved!, and the guys just froze with confusion, staring at it. The patient and I both realized at the same time she thought he wanted ice and we just started at eachother and started laughing. He was in for a rough couple of days, but I’ve never seen someone jump from near psychotic episode to giggling so fast.
#6
This was actually in a state hospital that is part of the prison system for mentally ill offenders.
Patient asked for Vaseline. Which is fine. They can have Vaseline, whatever.
But this patient was given a whole tub, so of course he stripped completely naked, covered himself in Vaseline, and ran. It was a secure unit, and he didn’t escape, but we couldn’t get him back into his cell all shift because he was too f*****g slippery.
No more tubs.
#7
Had a catatonic guy who could play the piano like a pro, classic, jazz, ragtime, but otherwise just sat in his chair and stared.
#8
One of our patients escaped the ward and managed to hitchhike all the way to Sydney (about 900km).
#9
When I was in nursing school I had a clinical in the state funded psyc ward downtown. I was assigned to sit with this one girl to “monitor” her behavior. She spent about thirty minutes doing nothing but eating pudding cups with a plastic spoon. She ate like 6 of them in half an hour. Then out of nowhere she very calmly licked her spoon completely clean and pulled her shirt sleeve up before shoving the entire spoon into an incision in her arm near her bicep… then very calmly said, “Ohps.”
The nurses that worked there didn’t believe me. They kept saying I was making it up and that I couldn’t have seen what I saw.
Only later on, like four hours later (it was a 12 hr clinical), the orderly notice the girl had some blood on her shirt. He took her into her room to change her clothes and noticed that an incision on her arm had dehisced and had been bleeding.
Then eventually agreed to send her to the hospital for testing.
The X-ray showed the entire spoon, sucked into the fat of her upper arm, through an incision where they’d removed a birth control implant in the week before…
Apparently the girl had slowly been picking at the sutures and opening it bit by bit until it was deep enough to fit an entire plastic spoon….
The girl admitted that the “ohps” was because it had gotten sucked in and couldn’t be pulled out, not because she’s stuck a spoon in her arm….
Totally bizarre.
#10
Was interviewing a guy in psych ward and he was complaining about how he couldn’t have any “white out”, a liquid eraser for typewriters becasue he was on s*****e watch. Claimed it was stupid becasue if he wanted to k**l himself, as he pointed out, he could use the drawstring from the blinds to hang himself or he could use his pencil to s**b himself or use a typewriter metal bar to off himself. I agreed it was silly to hold back the small bottle of liquid white out. When I relayed the convo to my instructor about how silly it seemed due to him having several other ways, she replied that he proved to me that he had been considering ways to k**l himself and that’s why he was able to come up with so many so quickly. He never did get his white out.
#11
My ex and I saw a marriage counselor who did part of her psychiatry residency at a hospital for people with severe mental conditions. Apparently, the grounds had a lovely, enclosed greenhouse. One day, one of their schizophrenic patients was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette, as a heron frantically flew around. It had found its way in and not being able to escape it was smashing into the large panes of glass. The man just sat there watching. Finally, my counselor asked him if the bird was bothering him and he kind of sighed and said, “Thank god, I thought I was the only one seeing that.”.
#12
Psych ward counselor here. Early in my career I had a teenage girl with s******l ideations and severe depression. The year before, on thanksgiving, her dad pulled a gun from under the dinner table and blew his brains out in front of everyone. I normally form a response pretty quickly, even a “wow,” but when she told me I got quiet, leaned back, exhaled, and had to gather my thoughts.
#13
Not a nurse, but I was a patient in a psych ward. The ward was sectioned into two sides based on case severity. I was on the less severe side. One night, an incredibly tall, somewhat muscular man escaped his room on the severe side, got through a door that was supposed to be locked, got into the less severe side, and into my room. I woke up, sat up, and saw him standing in my doorway. He asked in a shakey voice if I was alright. I hesitantly said yes, to which he responded by getting a look of terrified horror and screamed “I knew it! You can see them too! Don’t let them get you!” before he was dragged away screaming by security.
#14
When I was a student doing a placement in a max. security unit a serial r*pist was getting meds, made a silly joke, the nurse said “Oh, stop that” his response was “I’ve heard that before”.
#15
I’m an RN in boston in a psych hospital and I’ve seen some s**t. One of the things I’ll never ever forget was we had this manic guy thst had been transfered from another unit cause he kept getting in fights over there and all the other patients were trying to attack him. I was still working nights back then and at about 3am he came up to me and said his tooth hurt and he needed to see a dentist right away. I said I don’t have a dentist for him to see but when the doctor comes in the morning we can take a look. Gave him some tylenol and sent him back to bed. About 5 minutes later he came out saying it really hurt and he needed to see a dentist to pull his tooth. Again I told him theres no dentist but maybe I can get some more pain meds. In the middle of me explaining this to him he sticks his hand in his mouth and rips his molar out of his head and handed it to me. Blood starts pouring out of his mouth but he did even to seem to notice. After I clean him up and get the bleeding to stop and call the doctor to get him some ativan he goes “make sure you give me that tooth back when I leave, that’s MY tooth don’t try and steal it”. F*****g wild s**t.
#16
I visited a prison for a warden job and went to see the constant surveillance guys (for their own safety etc). There was a fella there who had used a razor to slice his stomach open and started pulling chunks of himself out for fun, he also started using the hole, which wouldn’t heal as a hiding place, a towel was found stuffed in there which his body had started fusing too. Apparently he was quite nice but the whole thing wasnt for me and I didn’t go ahead with applying.
Edit: for those posting /r/thathappened I suggest reading this topic and doing research on what seriously ill patients can do to themselves if you think I’d make this up.
#17
I’m a tech at a psych hospital, but I start nursing school in August so I hope this counts!
We had a very tall, heavyset man who swung at a nurse and a fellow tech when they asked him to not stand naked in the door and flash the whole unit, so we put him in a hold and escorted him to the seclusion room.
From there he tried to strangle himself with his underwear (he had them on his head like a bandana) so we opened the door and took those away…then he peed all over the floor, did pushups and every time he came down he would slurp it up. Eventually he got bored of that and began writing on the wall in his pee, and then masturbated onto the door and said it would be “better if [he] could f**k my dead corpse.”
Eventually his IM-B52 kicked in and he contacted for safety/good behaviour so we opened the door again, and he bit me on the hand and drew blood. From there I got permission to not be involved in the code and a peer swapped me out.
I’m assaulted on a weekly basis, and we aren’t even an acute care facility. I’m VERY excited to go PRN in August…$15.38/hr is not worth it.
#18
I watched a guy try to remove ” rats ” from his [behind]. Stated that his ex-girlfriend summoned them there. He ended up tearing his rectal walls to shreds.
#19
Not a nurse, pharmacist.
Had one of our Clozapine patients miss a monthly meeting to discuss their medication. Called around, found out she was in the ICU having eaten two of her own fingers then visited her mother for coffee, still bleeding.
Had a friend tell me of another patient, made a cut in his thigh and reopened it regularly until the whole thing was a scar tissue cavern, by some miracle avoiding infection. Started using his “meat pocket” to hold pens and coins and anything he could collect in his ward. Nobody knew until a paperclip pierced the side and he finally wound up with an infection that took him to ICU where they found his stash.
#20
Not a nurse but I used to be a security guard in a hospital and we had a patient who self harmed and cut a hole into themselves around their belly button and then stuck a bunch of paper clips and buttons and things like that into it.
#21
My sister was actually sectioned earlier this year for her eating disorder (she shouldn’t have been but that’s a story for another time) and she was right next to the PICU (psychiatric intensive care unit), one of the nights she heard multiple screams coming specifically from that ward. One of the patients had bit a chunk out of a nurses leg as they were trying to detain them, they then started eating said chunk. It’s crazy to think these types of things happen
Edit (sorry guys, I typed psychiatric instead of paediatric ! She was only 15 so it was PICU, I just had a bit of a brain confusion).
#22
I was a tech at 3 different ‘psych wards.’ I could tell you stories for days. But you asked what a patient did that left me speechless, so here’s speechless.
Despite being a psychiatric center, occasionally we’d get a medication management intake, which was basically someone with intellectual impairment (politically correct term for mentally r******d) who needed a safe place to transition through a change in their medication.
Our newest patient was severely intellectually impaired. He was unable to communicate verbally, didn’t hear very well, and also had severe visual impairment. His was one of the most severe cases I’d seen.
Anyway, one of the things he did constantly was cross one arm across his waste, stick the fingers of his other hand into his mouth, and rock aggressively forward and backwards while standing. And he’d sucked his fingers so frequently that it’d affected his teeth, and with such duration that his arm was always glazed in saliva, which would froth up at the elbow and just sort of dangle there waiting for enough rocking to send it flying to the floor.
This guy had spent his entire life in institutions, and he was about 18 or so when we got him. So it goes without saying that thumb-sucking liquid preventatives had all been tried on him, but our charge nurse went ahead and wasted her time attempting it. The truth of the matter from my perspective was he wasn’t harming anyone and had very few comforts other than standing there rocking and sucking his thumb, so why make the poor guy’s day any harder.
Alas, he kept on slurping, even with his hand doused in that nasty stuff.
Brace yourself.
So he was on 1 on 1 observation during his time with us, which meant a staff member had to follow him around (pretty easy since he just stood there rocking) and keep him safe 24/7. But you were allowed to give the 1 on 1’s a little bit of privacy under certain conditions if they had to use the bathroom.
For this guy we actually put him on the toilet so he could use the bathroom, and you guessed it, that meant cleaning him up. Oh…and I was his 1 on 1 that shift. Lucky me.
Given his condition, it was okay to let him have moderate privacy, which entailed me standing by his bathroom door and the door being open just a crack. If it sounded like anything other than pissing or s******g was happening in there, I was only a few feet away.
So I’m doing the mental math for how long I think a #2 takes, and I’m timing the process. Okay. Now I can smell s**t, so that means he’s started. Another few minutes and I’ll peak in to see……… he’s eating all of his s**t. Completely hand over fist, shoving it in his mouth. Smeared on his clothes, arm, hands, the toilet seat.
I told the charge nurse later, “pretty sure I know why he didn’t mind the taste of the thumb sucker stuff.”
Anyway, I have other stories. A close runner-up to most perplexing was the patient who was in the quiet room/timeout room (think padded room), naked because he’d torn his clothing up and we confiscated it and he refused to put on the tearproof clothing we offered. Anyway, he pealed off his fingernails and shoved them in his urethra, and had to receive medical assistance removing them.
#23
I’m a patient at a mental health private hospital at the moment and one patient that was here brought everyone that had helped him on his journey to get better a rose on his last day and it was the nicest thing that has happened to me here.
#24
We had a psych patient on our floor that wasn’t really “crazy” crazy, just really confused and unpleasant in general.
One night I was mixing his drink with some thickener, and per usual he started yelling about me poisoning him. I explained what it was and that we’re all here to help him, not hurt him, and he responds with, “I’m just going to die.” His vitals were fine, he was alert, no red flags, and like I said, he was always pretty unpleasant so I didn’t think much of it.
Sure as s**t, he coded an hour later and we never got him back.
Edit: coded is slang for “code blue” which is what they call over intercom/pagers when someone’s stopped breathing, or their heart has stopped.
#25
I’m not a nurse but was a patient once. Giant dude got upset one dude changed the channel from a football game he was watching and smashed his skull with his fists. Not fully, but enough that when they brought him back a few days later he started seizing and had to be removed again. Didn’t see him again.
Also, there was one lady who was straight out of the movies. Walking around preaching the end of days loudly and sweating like crazy.
#26
Not me, but someone I knew was in a ward with a girl who wanted to be a vampire and drank blood from her own tampons.
It’s as atrocious as it sounds. She was around 16 and schizophrenic.
#27
Not a nurse but have had several stays on psychiatric wards for bipolar.
To be fair, on most occasions, I didn’t enter the wards in the most rational and stable state myself but what has tended to happen is that even when they bring you back down to earth, you can end up staying for an extra month or two before they let you go. So I have spent some time on psychiatric wards completely sane if not maybe firing on all cylinders.
Anyway, I have seen a few shocking things, like a guy c*****g open his wrists with broken glass and bleeding out pretty severely but tbh, you quickly become desensitised.
What tended to leave me speechless was the abruptness of certain behaviour and its total incrogruence with facial expressions etc. For example sitting watching a TV when a 5 foot tall 7 stone woman calmly walks over suddenly lifts the TV up and throws it into the wall with great force smashing it to bits and then calmly sits back down in an armchair declaring that the TV was ruining her painting (she wasnt painting) by making the armchair give her an orgasm. She never even raised her voice. She then immediately asked me, as if it was somehow related, if I liked Lisa Stansfield.
#28
Not me, but a friend is a behavioral consultant for a psyche ward and once told me a story about a patient that casually approached another patient and proceeded to pin him against the wall and bite his eyelid off.
#29
Not me, but my dad used to work in Aradale and J-Ward (Australian insane asylum and prison for the criminally insane, respectively) in the 70’s.
He used to talk about “sunny days” in J-Ward where they’d bring out all the inmates during a sunny day and they’d promptly line up and start jacking off.
In Aradale they’d deal with the jacking off problem by strapping you into cotton mittens, but a lot of the inmates would chew a hole through them just to get a finger out to jack off with.
His worst story was about a psychotic woman in Aradale.
She had self inflicted scars all over her face from scratching herself, self imposed bite marks all over her body from trying to eat herself, and she had the nasty habit of chewing the inside of her mouth and spitting blood at your eyes and mouth hoping you’d catch one of the myriad of diseases she carried.
#30
60 something old woman would come out of her room every so often at night topless and holding out her saggy breasts saying in broken English, “My nipples (neepulls), my nipples, please, for the children”
40 something woman would sneak the shower mat out of the bathroom to put under her bed because she was “God” and we were stealing her power by electrocuting her v****a every night. The floor mat apparently stopped this from happening.
A severely schizophrenic woman used to tell me that my name was “the worst fairy tale lie that she ever wrote in the two Bibles for her daddy”. When she was angry with me she would yell at me and say “get out of here fairy tail book, I wish I never wrote you”
That same woman attacked some nursing students who were attempting to use tissues over lollipops to make ghost props for Halloween. She didn’t seem to like this and while trying to hit them was yelling “you idiots, you can’t make ghosts out of lollipops”
Again, same woman but different group of nursing students brought in several pizzas for an end of semester party. The woman then walked up and down the tables looking at the pizzas. Then out of nowhere she started throwing the pizza and yelling “what’s this supposed to be? Some kind of pizza test?”
#31
Years ago, I was a student nurse doing my psych rotation in a catholic facility. The nuns still wore habits and the building was like something out of the dark ages. I’ll skip talking about the line of patients waiting to undergo ECT treatment in the basement and instead tell you about Maggie. She was a tragic case. She had been on Lithium for years and it really kept her psychotic episodes in check until reached toxic levels and could no longer take it.
One hot summer afternoon, we heard this banshee screaming coming from Maggie’s room. We rushed in there to see what was going on. Entering the room, we are greeted by a scene I will never forget. This late seventies woman is standing on the window ledge, naked as a jay bird, screaming through the window screens at the nuns in the courtyard, “you f*****g penguins are going to burn in h**l”. The poor sisters are scrambling to and fro trying to get away from the ranting madwoman’s viscous verbal a*****t as we were trying desperately to pull her off the grating.
I knew then and there, that I would never become a psych nurse.
#32
We had an older black lady who would walk up and down the ward *constantly* mumbling. It never stopped. I think she would get something like Thorazine to calm her down but she would fight it and her eyes would be all droopy and she’d slow down but she kept going. Nobody understood a word she said and she was there for at least over 6 months. She was punched out once by a patient while he was on the phone because she kept walking by ranting. He just lost it.
Anyway I’m up there doing a patrol one day (I was security) and shes ranting and walking up and down the ward as usual and they call her to come get her meal. She sits down and opens her tray and stops ranting and states clear as day: *”I didn’t order no diabetic tray B***H.*”
Every last person turned to her and all of our mouths were wide open. That was the only thing she ever said clearly.
#33
Not a Nurse but a former Patient (On many occasions) who helped out … since i am suprisingly stable even if very weird and uncanny at times. And this one time a co-patient apariently came in with so many fleas, its amazing. Turns out he didnt wash his hair for the last few months so besides being oily and heck it was also full of fleas. When asked for why he didnt wash the hair he reasoned that he didnt want to drown the fleas.
I mean it is solid reasoning but kinda stupid. Because you dont wanna have fleas.
#34
As a former PCT who was swayed from the field after spending 3 months on the psych floors, I don’t have any stories to share, but do have a past history of MH issues I’ve overcome. Reading these stories just makes me realize how insanely f*****g lucky most of us are that our chemical firing doesn’t go haywire and the possibilities that exist for pour souls if it does. Life shattering and so insanely sad. I feel blessed beyond measure that I’ve walked that razors edge and managed to stay on the sane side this far. That line is so very thin and most of us are so unaware of it.
#35
I’ve posted this before, but here goes:
>I’m a trans man (female to male) and pass very well–almost none of my coworkers or patients know I’m trans. Sometimes I have to stop taking testosterone for a while; however, the physical effects of T are mostly permanent (and the ones are aren’t permanent take months to years to to wear off), so any changes during these periods are subtle behavioral stuff.
>
>Had a severely psychotic patient come in during the tail-end of a year-long break from T. Interacted with him a few times, we did okay together. Get assigned to another part of the building, don’t see him for a few weeks, start taking T again during this period.
>
>I had just taken my second dose of T when we crossed paths again. He immediately perked up with a big smile, “[NorthernHackberry], you became a man again!” Could have knocked me over with a feather. Has never said anything remotely like that to me before or since, except that he’s hung up on comparing facial hair.
#36
Not a nurse, but I worked in a group home for teens and one ended up in a psych ward. She was a sweet 15yo girl who had been there for about three weeks – plans for the future, would be staying with a relative she liked in a week, had friends, and had no history of issues whatsoever (aside from her mom kicking her out of the house for having a boyfriend, which she was understandably upset about). She went from sane to broken overnight.
It was about 1am when I found her awake during checks, sitting on her bed and looking upset. She had become convinced she was pregnant, in spite of tests saying otherwise. Then the “baby” had been “changed” by “chemicals.” She was terrified of the “baby” inside her and the “chemicals” everywhere “changing” everything. We couldn’t seem to get her to realize she wasn’t pregnant, couldn’t be pregnant. And she would go on rants about “chemicals” but it’s hard to exactly what she was talking about – cleaners? Pollution? Medication (which she wasn’t on)? She talked about “chemicals” getting in things the way some people talk about the devil. All strange, but still just borderline alarming.
Then the clock started talking to her and telling her what to do, some of which involved burning herself and knocking her head against the wall. This is when we called authorities. She then basically became incoherent, in a word salad way, and was unresponsive to us, even when we got between her and the wall she was thumping. It was like we weren’t there to her.
When she was hauled away, about four hours after initial weird statements about how she was suddenly pregnant, she was in a kind of manic but also oddly passive state – again, like we weren’t there – and was unable to walk. She had to be carried out on a stretcher. She was mentally somewhere else entirely…
It was terrifying watching her self collapse so quickly and completely.
#37
Not a nurse, but as a phlebotomist that would occasionly go to the psychiatric floors for blood draws. I had to be extremely careful with supplies that I took with me in the room and made sure I had to leave with every piece of plastic I left behind. Whether the patient was violent or not, I always wanted to have a staff member with me.
But anyway, I was drawing blood from an 8ish year old boy and he was asking me questions I wasn’t sure how to answer to a pediatric psych patient. So I would ask him questions about his favorite foods and he told me that he doesn’t sleep at night because it is too dangerous. (Not sure if the parents did anything violent to the boy at night)
He told me that his favorite food was peanut butter because he was a dog.
At the surface it might just seem like a kid playing around. But I have no idea what kind of a***e this kid has endured and I’m pretty sure he was f****d up because of his parents and that’s why he was there. Just the way he was acting and his mannerisms weren’t like a normal kid. I saw bite mark scars on him and he mentioned something about people biting him.
It was weird.
#38
My sister has been a psychiatric nurse for around 10 years or so and has told me all sorts of stories about her times. She is physically assaulted on an almost daily basis, has been threatened with everything you can imagine.
People have thrown, smeared or ingested pretty much every bodily fluid available on the wards.
She has just finished a degree re-training as a teacher because she no longer enjoys the profession.
*edit –
Man didn’t expect this to blow up. Just to answer some of the points people have raised.
She knows teaching a stressful career also we have family in education so they’ve pre-warned her on the pitfalls.
People suggesting changing nursing fields, she did consider it but then this training came up. In Scotland (maybe the entire UK idk) if you have certain degrees you can re-train for a teaching degree for free while you work. So it gave her a semi-easy out and freed her from night shifts and stuff with her own kids.
#39
Prison guard here: guy cut his s*****m open to let people know he was serious (dont know about what)
Guy 2 : cut off a b**t cheek (or a big part of) and threw it at me as i tried to stop him.
Guy 3: punched a wall 3 times really hard (bloody knuckles) and told me he punched the devil cos he was telling him to s**b me but im cool so he told the devil to f**k off.
Guy 4: pretended to drown himself in a toilet ( basically splashed pee on his face and rolled around crying
Guy 5: had s*x with a window air vent and was complient yet confused when i asked him to stop
Those were the days….
#40
All of her personalities claimed they got better after the treatment.
In their own, individual, distinct voices.
#41
My sister-in-law is finishing her nursing degree, and they had to spend a couple days working at some psych wards. She told me a story about these 2 guys there that were schizophrenic and violent. One was the skinny little white guy and the other was a medium build black guy. The black guy kept telling her that he wasn’t crazy, that he was actually the owner of the ward and just stayed there for fun. He also told her he had a record label. So then she goes and meets the white guy. According to him, he was an up-and-coming rapper who was such a threat to Eminem’s career that the deep state had him locked away, and that the psych ward owner was his new record label. Fun times.
#42
Had a guy come in with pictures of families pasted on his feet because “he wanted to be close to them”.
#43
A student, I was studying and well this guy began to f***k out and well carved out his intestines with bare hands. Never thought it was possible but well considering him being a former powerlifter maybe it’s possible. Guy was like 6’6 and has to be kept under constant supervision as he’d once tried to k**l the compounder with food plates then he was only given a paper plate and edible crockery.
#44
Nursing student here also not my story, a friend of mine that is a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.
Some context: some of the patients were outside sitting in the benches and walking around and She was walking with some othe patient. There was a patient standing by a door, dude is like 200kg (450ibs ?).
Actual story: A skinny guy was smoking and just mindind his own business when out of the blue he starts running and just Spears the 200kg guy into the door like a steel and glass door and then just walks out of there like he dos nothing.
Big dude got a broken skull a deslocated sholder and some minor injuries skinny dude got nothing. I dont know what triggered the dude to throw himself at a dude 3/4 Times larger than him.
Note: English is not my native language so sorry for grammar and spelling mistakes.
#45
We tazed a guy, he took it took it like a champ. Then pulled out the barbs, handed them back to the officer and told him that wasnt very nice.
Had a dude who liked to masturbate, then lick it up off the floor.
Another one liked to take a dump, play with it, then go around shaking hands with unsuspecting people.
A lady who put sandwiches up her vag.
One of my faves though was a guy who one time was walking down the hall, paused. Shook his right leg. A t**d rolled out onto the floor, then kept walking like nothing happened.
#46
Pharmacist here. Had a patient getting discharged from the ER when they found out 2 police officers were waiting outside to take them in on an outstanding warrant. Patient grabbed the doctors coffee mug, smashed it on a desk and then tried to slit their own throat with the broken mug. Caused lacerations needing stitches but luckily nothing serious.
#47
Not a nurse but used to be a police officer. We got called to a psych ward where a guy was smashing up his room. Ok fair enough.
We got there and the room was one where it had like plywood based furniture that was attached to the walls and floor. It had a **solid** door with an inch thick safety glass with wire in. He had ripped apart every bit of furniture apart from the bed with his bare hands, ripped the lights from the ceiling, ripped the sockets out of the walls (this is in the UK so proper old brick and plaster walls) and had smashed a hole in the door window. He had absolutely no weapons in the room and had done all this with his bare hands.
I got there and one of my colleagues was standing outside the door with a shield and the patient was crashing into the door so hard that plaster dust was falling from the ceiling. He then managed to break through his window that led outside (also an **inch thick**) and got out onto the roof. They had to talk him down and eventually got him in and a load of us escorted him to a room filled with only furniture and made from foam and padding, and the doctor gave him a powerful sedative and then quickly backed out the door whilst waiting for it to work.
They took him to a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit.
I’ll never forget the amount of damage he did. The room was sprayed with blood and looked like he’d smashed it up with a sledge hammer. He had only used his bare hands and the s****y furniture. That insane thing was he was about 5’6 max and looked about 140lbs max. He was a small man but his psychotic break gave him insane superhuman strength.
#48
Heres my perspective from the other end: i was speechless that in my entire 2 week stay there was not one smooth shift change, none of the medication was ready on time, food was often short, ward was over capacity, and no therapy was actually occuring. i was speechless that the orderlies and nurses would actually openly vent their animosity towards the patients, sometimes even directly to the patients. they would also bicker and whine about promotions, despite all of them being so bad at their job they couldnt even get the schedule in control or elicit any cooperation from the people they were supposed to be in charge of.
#49
Not me but when my sister was in a psych ward for a eating disorder, a girl tried to strangle someone with a bra. Last year my other sister was in there because she was s******l and a kid tore a water fountain off the wall. Another kid screamed for his shoes and personally my favorite was a kid whose mother told him he was going on a vacation but instead admitted him into a psych ward. Then he screamed to one of the staff “THAT B***H LIED TO ME!”
Thank you all for the comments you’ve been leaving. Keep the conversation brewing.
#50
I saw a crazy bipolar woman bring a man out of full catatonia with a b**w job. This was years ago, security wasn’t as tight as these days. Somehow this extremely manic woman gets into this guys room. Now the guy, let’s call him Gary, Gary has been full catatonic since we got him, couldn’t care for himself at all, he would just stare all day long. Well, I guess she must have sucked the depression right out of the guy, because he was right as rain afterward. We found them at the end of the session.
#51
My Aunt was a Pharmacist in a psych hospital in Iraq, she told me that a family brought their son in( he was previously detained and tortured by Saddam’s security), the young man was admitted as a sever case, he then started to hold imaginary trials and sentence people to death by hanging, one day they did find another patient hanged( dead ) and the young man was standing next to him shouting “justice was served”.
#52
Not a psych nurse but an emergency room tech. Saw a patient drink a mysterious yellow liquid out of a urinal bottle. Found out from a staff member that started their shift earlier in the day that he had poured his ginger ale into it a few hours ago. Those few minutes before we found out? Priceless.
#53
My aunt is an OT who works with a lot of brain trauma patients and, sadly, some of these cases are worse than most psych unit cases.
One kid had a motorcycle accident at 20 and was in her ward for over a year. In that time he developed hallucinations of a horse who walked the halls and who was antagonistic toward everyone except him.
He was sort of gleeful about it, too. Like they would be about to leave the room and he would just casually say “the horse is right outside. I wouldn’t go out there right now if I were you. He’s gong to hurt you” all with a smile on his face and a chuckle in his voice. Other times though, he’d act as though he were scared of it, too, which given the circumstances was a lot more terrifying.
He would also sometimes smear s**t around and blame it on the horse. Terrible, terrible story.
#54
I had a patient that was a 26 year old man. He was bipolar, schizoaffective with OCD and some mental delays come to the hospital. He also used h****n and m**h frequently. He came up to the neuro floor on the 7th floor already in hard restraints because He was pulling at lines, swinging punches, screaming and threatening us. He was hallucinating and tried to cut out his own tongue because he said “someone was making him say things he didn’t mean”. Absolutely no inhibition from this guy. I always prophylactically pulled haldol and zyprexa to have on hand just for this special guy. If he didn’t get what he wanted it even if he simply didn’t sleep well, he would literally go off. Each time we tried to bathe him, change him, give meds, he would thump against the bed frame or try to hit us. He was lewd and would try to masturbate all the time as well. He had endocarditis( infection of the heart valves) and had to have IV antibiotics. He would literally pull his IV like 3x a day. He finally got a central line in his neck and we also put padded mittens as well as restraint. His mother guilt tripped the doctor into telling me to remove his restraints one day. (He totally was still tripping while the meds were being built up in his bloodstream?). Of course, he took off down the hall screaming. He shoved people in the elevator and removed his central line in the elevator among MDs, RNs, and visitors. Security came and we had to literally apply pressure to his bleeding neck as the guards took each limb and carried him back to the room….He was there for like a 2 weeks. The nice thing is they discontinued his heart monitor (I wonder why) and he went to medsurg when the right pressures were applied.
Psyche patients are everywhere. I’ve worked I psyche and acute settings and it’s actually worse at the hospitals. They are usually off their meds, had just attempted s*****e, or harmed themselves , or are having a breakdown, or have medical problems on top of mental. It’s the hospital that has to stabilize them and get them medically stable. In psyche, I actually had a lot of down time and pretty lax days. When s**t the fan, there are always people around to help.
#55
Not a nurse, but I work in administration at a pediatric psychiatric acute stabilization hospital, basically a child psych hospital whose purpose is to stabilize psychiatric crises during a short stay. It always makes me sad when a parent reaches the point where they have to give up custody of their child in order for their child to get treatment. The mental health system in my state s***s and the only way for some of these families to get long term psychiatric treatment and care is to give up custody of their child. The system and reasoning is to complex to detail here in a comment though.
#56
Obligatory not me, but my former best friend told me the story.
She wasn’t a nurse but did an internship at a psych ward for adults and part of her internship was supervising the adults outside in the garden, making sure they didn’t harm themselves, others and/or run away and to talk to them.
She and about 5 patients were outside on a beautiful summer day, each relaxing and smoking in silence, basically just chilling like fully functioning adults. Until one woman, about early 70s (no alzheimers or something) took her chair, pulled it right next to my friend, stepped on it, clumsily climbed the stone wall surrounding the small outside area, yelled “Bye, b*****s!” and ran away.
My friend and the others just sat there, staring after her, not being able to believe what they’d just seen.
She was found 15 minutes later, just wandering through the city looking for booze.
I just can’t not laugh at the thought of this granny climbing the wall and yelling “Bye, b*****s” while fastly waddling away.
#57
As a patient the nurse took my details, while in the room a random quiet knocking could be heard. I was like its some old machine does some work in the other room. This nurse calmly writing my details, and then start screaming “Mary, fackin stop, i cant let you out til the tests run.” I was like well okey.
#58
Not a nurse but I had a job that lead me to a behavioral health unit of a nursing home. That’s what they call psyche wards now, I believe.
Some elderly lady skootched up onto the back of a couch almost standing on it (think of an old time cartoon lady seeing a mouse) pointing at me yelling that’s him, that’s the one. I had that weird panic of being accused, knowing I was innocent, but wondering if I’d be in trouble anyway, despite this being my first time there and me having zero patient interaction other than potential peculiar stuff like this.
Then she cries “he beeeeeats me! My legs!!!!”
F**k. It was so sad. Then she said she’d give me a million dollars not to ever talk to her again.
I said “deal.” And kept moving.
Cool under pressure. That’s me. Gotsta get paid.
#59
Not a nurse but a former patient. My roommate seemed pretty normal but over all f*****g annoying as hell. I was quiet, refused to talk even to staff, and mostly kept my head down and out of trouble. She, however, stole my comb and said white girls don’t need it (I have curly hair, just fyi, she had cornrows) and I found he sleeping with it.
I also could not get out of bed in the morning until I appeased Queen, the “ghost” beside my bed. One day I have enough of getting in trouble for not being ready in time, so I just jumped out. She screamed like a f*****g banshee. Apparently I stepped on “him” and had angered him. She told me I was going to die, I rolled my eyes and went to brush my teeth.
A guy serenaded me while we were stuck in the day room. We both got in trouble and had our privileges revoked. I could no longer walk outside, which wrecked me for a while. I got in trouble for not saying anything and just trying to get away from him. My crazy roommate rallied the troops and a majority of my hall on the ward defended me, one losing their privileges for cursing out a nurse over it. I did not start this but I felt invincible.
Little touching story: I was in for about 3 weeks and patients weren’t allowed to touch each other in anyway, this included handshakes to high-fives. The nurses were very cold to me, except one. She hugged me and for the first time in 2 weeks I felt human contact. I sobbed with happiness, literally.
Anyway that’s just a few stories from inpatient.
#60
There was this one person who elicited stories about vulnerable people so they could gawk at them.
#61
Not a nurse, but used to be a tech at a psych facility. It was my first job out of college.
I was left pretty speechless when a teenage girl patient reached over the desk, grabbed hold of the phone, and strangled me with the cord.
After several similar incidents the hospital switched to cordless.
#62
Oh my goodness. I’m a PCT at a mental facility. I have SO many stories.
Once, we had to put a guy in seclusion, and there is a small inset window to observe them through when in seclusion, and they are on constant observation. The man we put in seclusion was psychotic and targetting me. He stripped naked, violently masturbated towards me staring through the window, then spreads his cheeks and presses his ENTIRE a*****e against the INSET window. It was impressive. I have seen into the all-seeing eye.
Had a patient once get a picture off the wall (I don’t know how they are bolted to a brick wall) and run down the hallway screaming “I’m a cat burglar. I’m the joker!” Another patient abruptly stood up and gave chase screaming “I’m Batman, b***h!”
Once had a patient s**t in his sink because his bathroom door was locked. Someone was on their way to unlock his door, but since it wasn’t immediate, he proceeded to s**t in his sink. I was doing room checks and saw a pair of legs with pants at their ankles hanging off the edge of the sink.
I’ll try to add more as I remember lol.
#63
Not me, but my mother who worked at a psychiatric hospital in southern Illinois in the 60s.
She was in her 20s at the time, and had to wear the whites and little white hat while on duty. She had long, black hair that she’d let down during her breaks. She was sitting at a table, hair down, smoking a cigarette (as nurses did on breaks in hospitals in the 1960s) when she felt someone running their fingers through her hair behind her.
Then she heard a deep male voice say “Pretty….pretty…” as he pulled his fingers through her hair. She realized a patient had somehow made it into the breakroom. She said she kinda froze and he spent a few more seconds petting her hair, muttering “Pretty…pretty….” before someone got him and gently took him back to his room.
(I know this story because as a child she would come up behind me, run her fingers through my hair, and mutter “Pretty…pretty….” in a voice that predated Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs.”).
#64
Got assigned to child’s psych ward in a hospital where I worked, easy gig… wear street clothes, not much to do but pass out meds and observe. 15 year old black kid, overweight, is sitting beside me casually discussing his day when he jumps up, begins screaming like a banshee, flailing around, looks like a seizure on roids and I’m befuddled as to how to control him or the situation when after a few minutes of twisting my nerves into a tight ball, he stops, sits back down and begins talking casually again. Had one of his “spells”. not sure if anyone has ever been that close to a raving m****c while he’s having a fit but it’s disarming to say the least.
#65
My ex’s mum used to work at broadmoor hospital for years, for those unaware broadmoor is a very famous asylum for the criminally insane in the UK.
she said the strangest thing is how ‘normal’ the patients were because of all the meds they were on. they’re like children eager to please.
she met peter sutcliffe aka the yorkshire ripper numerous times and just said he was nice to everyone although he was attacked a few times.
her scariest moment for sure though involved this huge fat black guy who’d k****d animals and eventually a person by sitting on their chests whilst he’d try his best to watch their faces as they died. anyway, he was very nice and helpfuk to everyone and eventually my ex’s mum let her guard down around him. he came with her to get something and as they went into a room he closed the door behind him and just stood there.
my ex’s mum pressed her panic button that all staff kept with them and then used her training to try and keep him calm and stall for security but it was no luck as he attacked her.
luckily for her though though as part of her training at broadmoor also included some self defence techniques that even the most smallest woman could employ. basically she used her finger knuckles to press into the sides of his ribs and he let go of her long enough for her to escape. she did it to me once and i’ll side with the crazy fat black guy on this, its incredibly painful.
#66
I had a patient named Moses that would wake up every morning, whip out his d**k into his cheerios, p**s, then eat.
#67
Patently waiting for the nurses from my psych ward to respond.