nurses, doctors, social workers oh my

(source)

I work on a psychiatric hospital/therapeutic treatment unit. I realize that every day the nurses, doctors, and social workers are essentially working together to keep people alive. Emotionally, physically, mentally and perhaps even spiritually alive.

Many of my patients have been suicidal or are currently suicidal. They are psychotic or they are battling mood disorders. They are struggling to form thoughts or they are plagued by the on going racing thoughts in their head. They are occupied with delusions or voices or their own spinning wheels. And through it all they want to love, they want to be loved, they want to live, they want to taste possibility, they want to feel free, they want to excel, they want to function, they want opportunity.

Sometimes I wonder what their reasons are for not wanting to die. Whatever those reasons are, I want them to clutch them.

It is often that I look around at the long corridors of the various units. This is their home....this is their home? I understand that hospitals aren't meant to look and feel like hotels but do they have to feel so much like...well, hospitals?

I work at a psychiatric hospital as a clinical social worker. Although, I interact with patients every day, I know that I do not really, truly know what hospital life is like. I don't wake in the morning to a roommate that may be more or less psychotic than I. I don't drag myself to therapeutic groups attempting to get something out of them or ignoring the content altogether. I don't have to wonder what is going to be served to me for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I don't have to attempt to pass the time with minimal dread.

Patients have minimal exercise and their life often seems to be reduced to coffee and cigarettes. I see patients attempt to make the best of it, and I see patients rebel with all they've got. And who wouldn't rebel? Who's skin and pulse and eyes and words wouldn't want out?

Every day seems to be filled with questions for my patients. When am I getting out? Can I make a phone call? When's the doctor coming in? Can they change my meds? When's smoke break? Where will I go? Do I have money coming in? Can I get a day pass? Did I get any privileges? When am I getting out? When am I getting out? When am I getting out?

For so many their life seems to be a revolving door in and out of hospitals. What an existence.

I am not at all saying that their fate is sealed. I am speaking from empathy. Their issues are like ours but they are amplified. They yearn like we do, they laugh and cry and strive. My point is that I could never pretend to know what they know and to face the struggles that they do.

I can do my job, I can go beyond, but I often think that "beyond" is too minimal. What is the life of a psychiatric patient? I really don't know. I work with these human beings day after day and I still don't know. I will never know.