Four protagonists, all workers at a psychiatric institution—a male ‘elder care’ intern, a female chief psychologist, a male nurse in the high-threat ward, and a female nurse among those on suicide watch. They deal with patients that are addicted, depressed, psychotic, self-harming, villainous, grotesque, unpredictable, troglodytic, and that suffer from degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's; they put-up with a lot of shit (often literally) and it's hard for them to cope with the things they see, but doctor-patient confidentiality keeps them from talking about it with anyone except other coworkers.
One night (climax of the story) there's a power failure and the back-up generators fail, and all the cells unlock, and the patients exit in the halls, at their leisure; the psychotic ward is the worst-off, and the nurses cower in locked offices and try to hide elsewhere; in one case, a female doctor hiding in a closet is found and raped by a full-blown maniac. After the guards subdue and corral all the patients, by the end of the film, one of the orderlies has snapped and himself needs to be institutionalized; some quit the profession altogether, such as the raped doctor. An unhappy ending for all involved—because, best case scenario, they get back to the stasis of sedating loons and anxiously waiting for something to go wrong, all while the patients (and the nurses, too) slowly rot in the horrid doldrums of the asylum… a place so sickeningly-sanitary that the only residue accumulating on the grout between the walls’ pale green tiles is time itself.
Research/aspects to include:
Clinical psychologist here. Please, please get it into your heads: lack of empathy ≠ sociopath. // Lack of empathy is associated with a myriad of mental health issues and is only one of numerous criteria present in the clinical portrait of antisocial personality disorder. // The diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder is very rare. The defining characteristics of a sociopath from my point of view are impulsivity and emotional immaturity. Sociopaths are not these sly, calculating human predators the media makes them out to be. Most are emotionally crippled fuck-ups without any regard for other people's feelings. // Also, APD is not a "disease". Personality disorders are constructs designed by people that work in mental health to better describe maladaptive patterns of behavior. They are ways of interracting with society which are dysfunctional.
Many decades ago, my mother's friend had a severely incapacitated adult child in a mental home. He always complained that the orderlies were out to get him, but his parents dismissed his complaints because, well, he was crazy. Turns out the son died and the autopsy found dirt in his lungs. An investigation followed, and he was killed when an orderly "restrained" him by pushing his face into a potted plant, and he sucked dirt into his lungs as he was suffocating. // His father wrote a letter to a local paper in which he libeled the shit out of the mental home. They sued him, he lost everything, and he committed suicide within days of the verdict. His wife died years later alone.
I worked at a hospital, an inpatient psychiatric hospital. There was this boy, I think he was about 15. He originally came to our hospital in the wintertime. He had been aggressive and really depressed, but other than that, he was your average teen. A couple months later he was rehospitalized. this time, he had a completely different presentation. His affect was all wrong. He was cold, distant, and he hardly remembered me. One night, after I had gone home, he went to use the bathroom. After being in there for like 20 minutes, the staff went looking for him. With some verbal prodding, he reluctantly opened the door to the bathroom. there he stood, completely nude, save for the feces, which painted him from head to toe. Oh, and the two Payday sized turds he ferociously gripped in each hand. He then gestured all "matrix" style to the staff, with a sort of a Neo/Morpheus "come hither" gesture. The staff donned the hazard suits and then bull charged him. He had smeared poop all over the walls. And in the light switch. They sedated and restrained him that night. When i came in the next day, the nurses told me what had happened. I went to go check in on him, since I'd had previously established a relationship and real rapport with him. He proceeded to ask me if I had ever been raped, had sex with a man, or seen God. Yeah. That was when I really understood the power of psychosis. And I now have more empathy, understanding, and respect for all of my majorly mentally ill clients.
Edit 2: TL;DR: Working at a hospitlal, meet a kid, he's cool. 2 months later, comes back, very different. One night, smears poop all over the walls/himself. Staff dons HAZMAT suits, tackles the kid, as he swings poop at them. Next day, he is religious, and asked me about being sodomized.
Edit: I'm not sure if the people voicing complaints work in the mental health field, because if you don't, there is something you should know. The work? Helping people, carrying pain, hearing terrible stories, being responsible for someone's life...it wears on you. So, we each have a "funny" story, or an interesting one. I love my clients. And, I help people. But, I am also human. I self deprecate in my sessions all the time. Humor is a healthy coping mechanism. So, if the stories make you uncomfortable, stop reading them. For everyone else, please take something from these stories. Appreciate what you have. And be kind to those you don't understand. You never know what they're going through.
Edit 3: I really appreciate all of the love, and gold, whoa! But, what I'd really like, is that everyone takes a minute to remember that we all have our "stuff". No one is perfect. We all struggle, we all have pain, scars, and some self-hatred. So, when you see someone talking to themselves, when you hear about a teenage girl, "Just doing it for attention", or a guy, "drinking himself to death." Just remember, that could be any of us. We're all in this together. So have some empathy, and don't let that little voice inside your head jump to classify someone as something. Let's just all be. Agreed? Thank you, I'm out! (Drops microphone).
My mom worked in a mental hospital during the big 2011 blackout in Cali. When the power went out in the mental hospital the back up generators didnt kick in, the result was every single patient door opening letting every single patient free. My mom said she locked herself in her office and the only light was a red emergency light which made everything sinister. She said all she could hear was the patients screaming until security finally got things under control. Pretty creepy stuff
My grandmother used to work at an asylum, and she told me this story: It was one of her first days there, and she was just making the rounds. She came across a patient who was repeatedly banging his head against a wall. She asked him why he was doing it, and he replied " because it will feel good when i stop..."
I did medical clearances for a psychward at a county E.R. in Sonoma County CA. I worked there for a year and a half. One time we had a guy who went on a meth bender for days on end and did nothing but play World of Warcraft during this days long bender. He was also schizophrenic or something. I can't remember what the nurse said. Anyway he was living in the video game. Screaming about Azeroth ect. Thought the nurses were bad guys. We had to restrain him. // Another good one was a woman who came in to the E.R. to say she was suicidal. She saw the line and went back out to her car and commited suicide by taking a bunch of pills. A few days later her sister turned up looking for her. I found her dead in the back of her car. No one had noticed. // After a long time in places like this you do become desensitized. Sorry if I sound callous.
Guy in his early 30s who was a gifted mathemetician. Often thought he was Elvis, and would walk around at great speed mumbling to himself, or singing elvis numbers under his breath. Totally burnt out by his own mind. // A social group of heroin addicts who variously got admitted due to the pychiatric consequences of AIDS. Only one of them was HIV negative, and he would come to visit their friends. The reason why he was negative? His dad was diabetic so he obtained and got first use of the needle.
I work in the mental health field in a psych hospital but I have also been on the receiving end. I think my personal favorite story was when I was admitted my first time. We were all in Rec Therapy and I was still having a hard time being in the hospital (suicidal ideation), so the social workers asked if we wanted to listen to some music. Lo and behold, Prince's Purple Rain was the album. It was all fun and game until "Let's Go Crazy" started. We all sat in silence and looked at each other for a good half a minute then just busted up laughing. Seriously one of my favorite memories to this day.
I don't work at a psychiatric hospital anymore, but I used to work at a large state hospital.
1) A guy on another unit pried his eye partially out with a plastic spork. I did not witness this, but it happened while I worked there.
2) This one guy would pry his turds out with a pen and stack them in geometric sculptures in his room. He also filled his drawer with pee.
3) I once helped this woman get cleaned up in the shower - she came in all covered in shit and piss and vomit. She was there for a few weeks, so I got to know her a little. Then, I myself had a nervous breakdown a few months later and had to be hospitalized (different hospital.) She was in there too, and remembered me, and helped me get used to being on the inside. Was weird.
EDIT. I have read some comments where people are saying it's fucked up to share this stuff, that it violates confidentiality, etc. As someone who has both worked at and been a patient in psychiatric hospital, I say bullshit. YOU try working that job. Rewarding? Hell yes. But even when you are no longer there, that shit weighs on you, and it's cathartic to speak of it anonymously on Reddit. No one is acting like it's funny or cute. So chill out.
My mother worked in a mental hospital as a nurse shortly after receiving her degree. One of the patients to which she attended was a large black man. She asked him one day how he was doing, and he responded: "Sometimes voices tell me to kill white women." To which she responded, "Are they talking to you now?"
My best friends grandma used to be an orderly she told me the following story: patient is sent to the mental hospital for murdering someone but he was criminally insane. Fast forward a year she knows him pretty well and he is a generally nice person. A few months later his mom and dad come to visit crazy guy they bring stuff for a picnic. Bread, meat, cheese, knife, spoons, forks, chips, and other goodies. They are eating for awhile in the grass area in front of the hospital not much attention being paid to them. Orderlies see one of the parents lying on the floor the other one with the murderer on top of them. He puts the knife down and sits back down. The parents had both their throats slit. She never found out what happened to him. I know it sounds far fetched but i will try to see if i can find an article TL;DR: murderer sent to asylum , murders mom and dad when they visit EDIT: i was talking to my best friends grandma today and she said the kid murdered his grandparents when they were cutting the salami but i still cant find an article ya'll :(
Not an insane asylum, but I frequently visit the Alzheimer's ward of a nursing home, which is close enough: First, you have to know that they put everyone into a big room to eat with about four people at each table. I am also a male, which is important to the story. I was feeding one of the women there and the woman across the table kept talking to me, which was normal. Alzheimer's patients are usually able to carry on a conversation until they are in the late stages, and this woman was in her early stages and still physically healthy. She kept complimenting me on how handsome I was (which is for sure a sign of a mental disability; I have one fat ugly mug). She also kept offering me a piece of her pimento cheese sandwich. I kept refusing and saying "no thank you" to her offers. Apparently, she wouldn't take no for an answer. I don't remember exactly what she said but it was along the lines of "I'm going to feed this to you NOW!" She got up and sprinted toward me trying to grab me and force the pimento cheese sandwich in my mouth. Luckily, the Caribbean nurse assistants were able to grab her and say things like "NO! This is my husband. You can't do that" (for anyone who has never been into a nursing home, the nurse assistants are always Caribbean. It's a lot like Gullah Gullah Island, except more depressing). I darted for the hallway and left as soon as I could that day. I know it's kind of petty, but it was one of the scarier moments of my life.
Also, there is the woman who screams "OH LORD JESUS! MY TITS! MY TITTIES HURT!"
TL;DR I was almost sexually assaulted by a horny female Alzheimer's patient with a pimento cheese sandwich.
In the past year... // A man with severe schizophrenia and a degenerative spine CLEARING a 3-4 foot counter just to sit on the floor in the middle of the nursing station because "Arthur Saladin the supreme being told me to" // Same guy trying to bite off his own fingers because we wouldn't let him climb the counter so he needed to appease Arthur some other way. // Having to remove plastic cups from the adolescent unit because one of the worst borderline girls I've ever worked with kept trying to cut herself with them // A bipolar patient presenting with psychotic features accusing me if being Cthulu trying to steal his soul. (Later became his favorite staff member after the mania) // Schizophrenic 13 year old that looked like Chuckie. For real, that was the knick name staff gave her. Her parents didn't believe in medication, so I got to watcher her laugh manically and respond to nonexistent stimuli for extended periods of time.
My first day on the job I met a 400 pound woman who gave me the most innocent, childlike smile I have ever seen. She then proceeded to scratch between her behemoth bosoms and produced a chicken leg. She finished that in two bites and while I'm stammering to ask what I just saw she reaches between her legs and pulls out a chicken wing from her hoochie snapper and ate it. I found out from staff the last time they had chicken was a week ago. // Later in the day I heard moaning that sounded like a cat dying. I went to investigate and found a patient with their fist inserted into their rectum. They then proceeded to pull it out and flung a turd across the room like a monkey. I later learned that she could anally fist herself with either arm. // Welcome to your first day on the job!
My ex BF and I spent our fair share of time out our own respective psychiatric wards. // My ex met this boy who completely and utterly believed that he was invisible, if you looked at him he would look back really weird at you and run away. He spent most of his days standing in the hallways staring at people.
Over four summers, I worked with six to ten residents of a nearby rural psychiatric hospital. They came every day for work therapy to a small, isolated government poultry lab / farm where I earned my tuition between semesters. The patients were all reasonably functioning individuals, though some were slow-moving and slow-thinking. It was the early 70's, a much less litigious time, so although my fellow poultry technicians and I had had no training in handling people with issues like theirs, we were expected, as part of our regular duties, to supervise them while they worked. Their work therapy consisted of helping us with simple, routine tasks like sweeping up, distributing feed, gathering and counting eggs, removing dead birds, and of course, shovelling lots and lots of chicken shit. Most of them had been working there for years, and had the rest of us ever simultaneously booked a sick day, could undoubtedly have carried on perfectly well on their own, // So I never considered any of them a physical threat - the biggest dangers they ever presented were trying to sneak a verboten smoke in the poultry barns, and a marked tendency to goof off the moment they thought nobody was watching. // Some of the test birds were kept in large screened pens, containing up to a thousand fowl each. One day late in my fourth and last summer there, Bob, one of our slowest movers, was in just such a pen gathering eggs, when he suddenly and without warning had what a layman like myself would call a severe panic attack, perhaps even a full-out psychotic episode. Now, Bob was a very big guy, about 6'6" and maybe 300 lbs, an ex-Mountie who had been brain damaged when he had tried to break up a bar fight solo, and was cold-cocked with a whiskey bottle. Me, I was just 5'8", a third string wrestler in the varsity squad's 137 lb class, who never had to worry much about making weight. Although I was in very good shape, "average build" would have been kind. // I was in another pen, three over and around a corner, when Bob had his episode. When I heard the ruckus, it took me a few seconds to extract myself from the cage without squashing anything, button it up, dash down the corridor, locate the disturbance and enter the pen - where normally passive, terrified-of-mice, quiet old genial giant Bob was now screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing around mightily, as if battling biblical demons. In response, the three thousand birds housed in that cage and its two neighbours were simultaneously sounding their rape alarms and striving mightily to recapture their ancestral capacity for flight. The resulting chaos, cacophony and dust cloud made it hard to see, hear, and evaluate, but it was unmistakable that there was blood and broken eggs everywhere. In just the few seconds it had taken me to arrive, Bob had already pulled the heads off nearly two dozen hens, and was clearly going for the record, whatever it was. Around my feet, their headless corpses energetically danced, jumped and spurted gore. (Yes, they really do do that.) // Not knowing what else to do, I took a wild and foolish chance: I put a hand on his forearm (which was as big around as my calf) and said, "Bob! Bob, you're hurting them." To my astonishment he stopped immediately, put his arms down by his sides, and hung his head. A few moments later, when I suggested that maybe we should go get a coffee, he allowed me to lead him gently by the shoulder away from the mass of still-panicking birds, out of the barn, across the yard and into the coffee room, the "human" space closest to the scene of slaughter. The other patients just picked up their brooms and carried on, as if nothing had happened. I image they were seeking comfort in their routines, and I cannot blame them. // Bob didn't attempt to explain, or apologize, or even to speak. He just hung his head and stared at the linoleum.The farm supervisor was out on an errand, so I had to open up the office and call the hospital myself. Being just a seasonal drone and therefore an unfamiliar name to them, I had a bit of trouble making them understand what had just happened; there was some initial disbelief that Bob was capable of such behaviour. But two equally large ward attendants came to pick up Bob perhaps 15 minutes later, in a very Ghostbusters - looking, '60s hearse-y thing. They brought along medical restraints, but didn't use them. Poor old Bob just sat quietly until the attendants led him to their Ectomobile and took him away to God-knows-what. // Bob never came back. I returned to school three weeks later, and I never saw him or the research station again; it was shut down a few years later. But I've often wondered, supping a scotch in the wee, quiet, thoughtful hours, about exactly what malevolent vision had set Bob off, and about how those few, brief seconds of un-clarity had affected the rest of his life, and any opportunity he might otherwise have had for rehabilitation and release.
Violent, gross, weird, or sad? That's the question. I've worked on an inpatient unit for a year. I'll give one of each I guess.
Violent: Patient comes in and is psychotic. Breaks one of our staff member's legs. So he is on a strict protocol (he must stay in his room and a staff member is assigned to him around the clock until it is determined that he is safe). Well, he broke a grown man's leg so the logical thing to do is make is 1:1 staff be a a short skinny girl like me! It ended up being fine, but I always questioned that decision. That guy could have broken me in half faster than I'd be able to call for help.
Gross: Woman admitted from ER had maggots in her vagina. Also, kid kicked shit on me a few days ago. Still recovering from that one.
Weird: Woman told me I looked like the Virgin Mary. Later told me I look like Katy Perry. I guess they look similar? I've talked to Poseidon's wife, Jesus Christ, and one guy who was the son of Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk.
Sad: Little girl sexually abused many times. She was a horror when she was admitted but I really took a liking to her. She is just a sweet kid. Went in to work one day and was told she could not be in the shower alone. She was fingering her asshole and from what I observed in the aftermath, she did some damage to herself. Pissed me off because she learned those behaviors from some sick fuck. She also perp'ed a two year old before coming to us. That shit makes me so infuriated. She is a good girl and she never deserved that. And now she has to deal with it forever. UGH.
I wish I had more fun and hilarious stories but most of the stuff I see just makes me very sad...... But I have to admit, when that kid kicked shit on me, it was kind of funny.
EDIT: Someone else commented on morbid humor in the field, so I'll throw this gem out. It still makes me laugh. Since we see so much horrible shit we get a little desensitized by it. So I'm sitting in report, listening to the nurse talk about a new admission, "Patient has plan to commit suicide with a gun, patient has no access to a gun." In that one half moment of silence one of my coworkers goes, "....Well maybe she should make another plan." The way he said it and the timing was so perfect. We all laughed so hard. Ahhh..... yeah. Some of the suicide attempts are actually the funniest stories. Now I KNOW that suicide isn't funny. And we give good treatment to these kids. We care for them very much. But when I hear that a girl tried to OD on folic acid because her dad wouldn't let her have more ice cream, I'm starting to think that depression isn't her big issue.
Not a worker, but i've been in one(for a suicide attempt). there was this one guy who would just stare at his hand. all day, every day. There was 2 people to a room and I had to share a room with him the last night. I didn't get any sleep because I just thought what the fuck did you do with that hand that makes you stare at it all the fucking time?!?
Not me, but my mom who used to work as a fleubotomist (SP? Medical blood sucker) at a hospital with a psych ward. Come Halloween, they were told that all nurses were required to wear costumes. Whether they wanted to or not. // One of the patients started talking about seeing a giant bunny wandering around the ward. The doctors were getting worried about the guy, and were getting ready to up the dosage of his meds. As they were getting ready to administer the new drugs, one of the nurses walked up... dressed like a rabbit. // No one, especially those going into the psych ward, were required to dress up anymore.
I want to share mine. During nursing school we did a standard psych rotation. Another female classmate and I were in a group session in the men's unit. We sit down and then a violent sexual predator who makes it a point to make any and all females feel like victims, sits down next to me. He proceeds to invade my space and I'm not exactly sure what else he was doing back there because I was attempting to remain focused on the group leads speech, but he received many verbal warnings about his actions. After a few minutes he interrupts to inform everyone that he needed to take a trip to the bathroom, wink at me and exit the room.
At which point a patient on the other side of the room, who has refused to speak to anybody about anything, and up till this point has for all intents and purposes been completely in his own world,gets up. He politely scoots the chair, which had ended up touching me, away from me and sits down in it. He sits for a few seconds and then gets up, grabs his empty chair and throws it into the room across the hall.
He sits down again, he received a warning for throwing things and a thank you from me. When the VSP came back and saw no available seat he decided to go watch TV and wait for the nurse to open the med room.
Also, all of the female patients ranging from 17-73 were "pregnant". There were other things, but I really appreciated the help I received.
TL:DR - As a student in group another patient intervenes when a violent sexual predator makes me the object of his attention.
My dad has worked in a special needs prison for about 15 years. he has seen cannibalism, self castration and manipulation just for medical attention. More shit thrown and smeared than a zoo.
Not quite what you asked but semi-related. I work in an adult day health care program and we have a lot of registrants with severe mental illness that come to us for the day and we monitor and help with to help them stay living in the community. // One morning, about a year into working there. It was about 8am and I realized, I was alone in a room with about 7 registrants with schizophrenia. I remember thinking how different each of them were affected by this illness. One gentleman, Richard, came in, he was almost 70 and had a small cut above his eye. I asked him, what happened and he sighed and said "Well, I'll tell ya, about 4 o'clock this morning, I got in a fight with a kangaroo." I was too dumbfounded to speak, but that instant another individual with "delusional disorder" and weighs about 450lbs wheels up to Richard and says, "Richard! That's ridiculous! Stop telling stories. You did NOT get in a fight with a kangaroo!" I thought to myself, "Wow that was bold but good job trying to keep him from telling tall tales". No sooner did I finish thinking that, she finishes her sentence..."you did NOT get in a fight with a kangaroo....because I've BEEN in a fight with a kangaroo and you get beat up worse than a cut on your eye. What color was the kangaroo that hit you?" He said "I don't know, I didn't get a good look at him". // Long story, short: Schizophrenic patient comes in with a cut on his eye and says he got into a fight with a kangaroo in the middle of the night. Delusional patient corrects him and just when I think she's providing a dose of sanity, she tries to top his story with something even more incredible.
I worked at a hospital that had a Psych Unit. One time I had to do an EKG on a 250 lbs 60 year old woman. When you do an ekg the patient has to open up their top. But this one proceeded to take off her pants too, completely naked. then looked me in the eyes and asked me "Roger (my name is not Roger), why did you leave me and Ma? Do you want some of this? Will it make you stay?" her look still haunts me.
Former patient here. Probably the strangest thing I saw was a patient sit down and eat an entire 2kg (4 pound) tin of powdered chocolate drink Milo. I can't eat more than three mouthfuls, it's yummy but very dry. Much nicer with milk. It was an impressive effort.
I heard a story from a family friend who once did plumbing work in an asylum. The reason he had to keep coming back was because one of the patients had a habit of breaking toilet bowls with his head. Also he said there was another patient who constantly pulled nails from the floorboard with his bare hands. Its now abandoned so me and some friends snuck in there at night and found old electric shock treatment stuff and a massive ouija board carved into the floor. we didnt go back.
I had a patient tell me once that he wanted to peel every inch of skin off my face and eat it. I said "Ok. Well, that's all I needed to know. Thank you." and ended the interview.
I can't go into a ton of detail, but my family has a backround in mental health, grandpa was psychiatrist, brothers a phd in pysch, and mom has master in pysch. The craziest story I've heard from them is when my mom was younger about 20 years ago or so she had a patient who claimed the cia was after him and that they were coming to get him, not an unusual claim by her patients so not taken to seriously. A few days later 5 men in black suites showed up had this man released into there custody and she never saw that man again. Another one i enjoy is the first time she had a Born Again Christian she had to evaluate, again it was early 90' before it was as huge as it is now. She was doing her evaluation and the person just kept talking about hearing God, and talking to God on a daily bassis as if its a normal thing everyone does. She was convinced oo this person must be hearing voices we'll definitly need to get this checked out. She then asked about the person religon and was told what it was. She was not familiar with it and went and talked to another person she works with and found out it was just apart of the religon and to be careful with that one. She to this day is convinced anyone who hears the voice of God is not right in the head anyway.
I was doing some work for the regional health authority rolling out new printers and PCs to every hospital, including the big mental hospital just outside the city. It was mostly low-security wards, but there was one building where they housed the criminally insane, basically a prison. Security was tight, and we had to be escorted at all times, even though they made sure we were never anywhere near a patient in there. // All the buildings out there were simply numbered, and this one was ominously referred to as "building 3".
Anyhow one day I'm having lunch in the cafeteria with the other guys on my team. It was a public cafeteria, mostly employees, but if a patient had their walking papers they could go in there as well. I'm eating lunch one day and I hear someone calling my name across the cafeteria, and there is "that crazy girl" I went to school with. I'm not talking "quirky kid" crazy, I'm talking serious issues crazy. The kind of crazy that is horrible to make fun of, but kids don't know any better and I can't exactly say I was as nice to her as I should have been.
Yeah. Running across the cafeteria to me dragging along some guy who is clearly heavily medicated. "Please be working here, ohgod please be working here" I think to myself.
"Heyyy Wanda" (not real name)
At which point I was bombarded with information. It was a gushing torrent of words and unrelated facts about Wanda's life since I last saw her in high school. The bullet points were:
She's "better than she was in high school". (Yay?)
She's engaged to the heavily medicated gentleman on her arm. (Guess where they met?)
She's at the hospital today for some required sessions. (Uh oh)
She "spent some time in building 3". (Where are the exits, and why are there no guards in here? Why am I sweating so much?)
In a completely flat, matter-of-fact tone. "I killed 3 people."
"Oh... That's... Unfortunate."
I am fucking terrified, and I am not hiding it well. It's the middle of winter and I am dripping sweat, I am clearly looking for the exits, I am recalling every horrible thing I ever did to this woman during my childhood. I am supremely aware of the fact that we are in the cafeteria of a mental institution and surrounded by pointy objects. She continues through her stream of info for another minute or two while I stare at her in terror when she abruptly says "Ok it was great catching up I've gottagobye!" And leaves with her fiancée in tow.
I turn to my coworkers and very quietly say "We have to go. Now." Two of them, who clearly were not paying attention to the conversation that just happened, go "ooOOOooohh! Got a date with your new girlfriend?" To which I reply "did you not fucking hear the part where she killed three people?" They pause for a second, before launching into a round of "oh yeah right" and "fuck off".
At this point my third, quiet, attentive, and equally terrified coworker pipes up and says. "Yes, she just said she killed three people and was locked up in building three."
We got the fuck out of there like no one had ever gotten the fuck out of anywhere before. From that day on we ate our lunch at the shipping/receiving building where we were based on the other side of the property, and I always checked my back seat and trunk before I got into my car to leave after work.
Bonus shorter story: on another trip out there with a different team there was a guy who hit on all the nurses, but was usually working at regular hospitals. Well he found a bunch of nurses out smoking and ended up giving one of them his number. // Shortly afterwards an actual nurse came out and called in all the patients from their smoke break. // He was terrified, and we never let him live that one down.
Ooooo! Ooooo! Pick me! Ok so I didn't necessarily work in an insane asylum, but more of was a patient in one before. I have told this story before so I am just going to copy and paste: There was one kid who claimed he saw his mom in the walls, he would talk to the walls all day. He even sometimes acted like he got hit by his mother while saying "Mom stop, I'm not retarded." // Multiple times I had a gay guy grab my ass but deny it. // Multiple suicide attempts occurred in one bathroom. It was called the dark bathroom, while I was there at least 4 people attempted suicide in there. That was the only place that anyone attempted suicide.
2012, Guy with Alzheimers we will nickname Gary. Gary was ~70 something, had a wife (who was fine), and some kids that never visited him. We know this, because his wife visited him every day, and every day when she left he would go into a violent fit of rage.
Every night I would come in (I work night shift), Gary was shitting himself like it was going out of style. 99% of the time, day shift wouldn't clean his ass and his shit would get so hard it was like trying to pull quick drying cement out of steel wool. Did I mention we had to get 5 staff (one on each arm + one on his head) to hold him down while we cleaned him? This is because he spent all day trying to dig shit out of his ass with his bare hands. His shit covered talon-life fingernails would randomly flail out at nurses every time they tried to do so much as take his blood pressure. One time, he chased a nurse into the hallway, and I had to jump out of the nurse's station (I'm a CNA), tackle him, pull a jagged shard of plastic out of his hands that he'd ripped off a brochure dispenser on the wall. Somehow, even though he was old as shit and had a huge hunch in his back, he had the retarded strength of a body-building baboon.
We had a new nursing director that wouldn't let us put him in restraints because she was trying to keep the number of "incidents" down that quarter to make her look good. By "incidents", I mean number of times we had to put patients in restraints. She didn't give two shits how hard the guy was to deal with. This had the effect of getting every staff member punched, splattered in the face with feces, or scratched AT LEAST two times.
I had this to look forward to every night for two months while Gary stayed with us. Every. Single. Night. His wife would come to talk with us sometimes and cry etc. I heard Gary passed away shortly after (finally) leaving the hospital. Gary, you will be missed.
By your wife, not me. Fuck you Gary.
TL;DR - Had to clean the diapers of a violent demented manimal with shit covered claw-talons for over two months.
I was in an Asylum, younger piece, less serious mind you. But I have a few funny stories. I was 16 or so, I stayed in there for three months, it was actually fairly nice. The kids had problems but most were okay. Except for one kid. // He had anger problems. But it was so odd, because he was such a nice kid in general. He was one of my room-mates. But when he got angry, it was Hulk type shit. The weirdest time was when one of the trouble makers cheated in a game of Blackjack with him. Kid flipped over the table he was playing at in the middle of the day room, and started beating the kid senseless. The Tech's got him fast, dragged him out of the room, and took him down to the end of the hall to the "Quite Room". Which was a room with nothing in it. Padded walls, all that lot. Didn't even have a mirror or running water in the bathroom so that kid couldn't kill themselves. Me and two of the other kids went out into the hall to play our game, but, mostly so we could listen. They had problems with this kid before, and they normally just gave him a shot to knock him out. In the ass. This time apparently he was upset about it. He started calling them gay pedophiles, who wanted to prick his "tight little ass". We were trying not to laugh, but it was hard, listening to him screaming at the top of his lungs. The last thing he got out before he passed out was "Why don't you shove it in my dick and then fuck me." // The weirdest thing I ever heard a 15 year old boy yell.
A nurse that I worked with was an older gentleman that told me when he was in nursing school they had a rotation at an asylum for the criminally insane and this girl followed him around all day. He said that she kept telling him that he reminded her of her father. Before he left for the day, he asked one of the nurses what happened to the girl's father, they told him that she had slit his throat almost to the point of decapitation.
Sort of relevant: As a child I took an art class at an abandoned insane asylum. Part of it had been converted into a studio. The rest was just a creepy old insane asylum. I'm not sure why I took lessons there, but I asked my mom and she verified, so I guess it wasn't just a weird nightmare. // There are parts of it I remember very distinctly. // Down this one hall (the doors to it were locked) there were gurneys, and a few wheel chairs. It would have been so stark white if it hasn't been for peeling paint and dust everywhere. The only light came through the open doors to rooms with windows- you could see the particles suspended in the beams of light. // Outside there was an old swing set. It was rusted and one of the two seats was swaying back and forth. If I had been outside, I knew there would be an eery creaking sound. Near the swing set was a tree. It was either dead or leafless for winter, I'm not see. And there were a bunch of crows or ravens sitting in its branches. // There were rooms, too, lined with what would have been beds. I remember peeking through a door briefly. The frames were there, but not the mattresses. Again, everything was really dirty. Walls were peeling and there was writing above one bed. I can't remember what it said but I wondered if it was from a patient, or if it was graffiti. Of course, I hoped it wasn't from a ghost. I knew that place was haunted. It made the hairs on my neck prick up, like they do when you hear nails scratching. // There were strange noises in that place, most likely just the pipes and air conditioning, but my imagination was very vivid, and again, I believed it was a ghost attempting to contact me. // So I never went back. I took lessons with a different person, who was way cooler anyway.
This thread can't reasonably get any honest responses due to the stringency of confidentiality laws. Even if you don't disclose names and places it's still frowned upon to discuss such things, and honestly it's unprofessional. I've spent 4 accumulative years in psychiatric wards and treatment centers as a patient (for depression, defiance issues, etc) and I could tell a lot of stories but ultimately the most important thing to remember is that these are real people with real health issues and their behavior, while perhaps disturbing, isn't for your entertainment. So while I'm not going to pass any judgment on the posters of this thread, I really do urge you all to consider the seriousness of mental illness, and the legitimacy of worth a human life has, even if it's a bit damaged.
One patient thinks he's Jesus, and another Napoleon Bonaparte.
“5 Things Movies Don't Tell You About Mental Institutions” (Cracked.com)
Original document created 08/27/2013.