Hoo boy.

There was this kid like 14 years old with Schizophrenia. He would take off his shirt, scream and throw things if the nurses wouldn't play for him a Red Hot Chilli Peppers' live concert DVD over and over again. It was honestly sad to see. Most of the people I was with were really chill actually, and hearing that music on the repeat made us only feel worse. One day, close to my release date, I sat to have lunch next to him and he had a sudden moment of lucidity. He told me I was a really good person and that I should go back to the real world, because my mom wouldn't want to see me sad like that. I was sent to the ward because I was deeply depressed as my mom died early that year. I stood up and gave him a hug.

Mario, wherever you are, I hope you are ok. I'm about to get my college degree and it's thanks to you and many other wonderful people I've met.

Ptony_oliver Report

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I had a patient remove his eye with a spork.

JacksEmptyWallet , Jason L. Gohlke Report

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I was in an adolescent inpatient facility for 30 days. Two people come to mind.
One kid named David who was very tall for his age, I think he was only 13. He insisted on watching Friday the 13th movies on movie nights and everyone was afraid to disagree with him because of his violent nature and frequent homicidal fantasies. He hated taking his meds, and probably 2 or 3 times a week he'd brawl with the psych nurses over it. No joke, it took 5 to 6 large grown men to overcome this kid. He was scary.

The other one was just sad, a girl named Wendy. She was 13, really nice. But she always wore the same clothes and she stank really really bad. Apparently this is a common defense for kids who have been repeatedly assaulted by family. They don't clean themselves or they'll even soil themselves to make themselves undesirable to their abuser. I gave her a big hug every night in the common area when it was time to go to our cells.

better-off-ted , Ivonne Lecou Report

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Someone I knew said there were two people who thought without a doubt they were Jesus on his floor and he was ACHING for them to meet. One day, it finally happened because the nurses couldn’t keep them apart. They had a long, intense conversation and walked away deciding that Jesus A was Jesus before the Crucification and Jesus B was post-death Jesus. “Altogether what I would have expected Jesus to do and say.”

Beth_Harmons_Bulova , Manuel Rheinschmidt Report

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My mother worked in an asylum in Ireland when she was about 15. This was in the early 60s. She loved working there, despite the fact that some of the patients would physically try and kill her. One patient always stuck out to her, every day he would tell my mum he was going to kill her when she finished work. She knew he loved music, so would tell him she was out dancing that night, and could he wait until the next day, which he agreed to. The next day he would forget what he had said, and would threaten her again, and she'd say the say thing again. This went on for a couple of years that she worked there.

tiredandstupid82 , Alex Green Report

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I was brand new and was eating in the day room alone. an NA Meeting came in , even though ive never had addiction before I was too shy to leave. at the end of the Meeting an old man handed me a drawing of me he had just done. It was beautiful. He told me I caught his eye because I was the only person in the room who had any sunshine left. Tripped me out in a curious way.

Unlikely-Town-4333 Report

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The saddest thing ever. They had brought this lady with dementia in for a while. Her husband had just died and she was not doing well. We would be sitting in group and she would look up and say "I need to call Bob. He doesn't know where I am." Then they would ask her where Bob was, but she didn't know. And then they would tell her that he had died. She would break down and they would take her back to her room to rest.

And this happened like 10 times a day. I had to watch this lady learn that her husband had died over and over again. It was brutal.

amdaly10 , Kampus Production Report

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Not super crazy.
Just.. odd.

Was with a bunch of teens on a pediatric ward but we all had special rooms by the nurses desk with shatterproof, wired glass so the nurses could always look in on us easily, and the bathrooms had no locks.

Myself and another girl were in for anorexia. Another guy was suicidal to the point where he couldn't have any cutlery but a plastic spoon for meals, no blankets, special pyjamas, etc. And then there was a young homeless guy who' d been hit by a car while squeegee-ing for change, so his leg was in a full cast...yet he still had a habit of sneaking around (in his wheel chair) and hoarding extra supplies from the kitchen, the kids' playroom, the nurses station, etc., so they kept him in one of the "psych" rooms.

We formed a weird little club, and would often play cards in a lounge area together. Conversations would go something like this:

Me: "Hey does anyone want this cheese? I snuck it into my pocket so Nurse thought I ate it."

Homeless Kid: "Mine! Dibs! Here, you can have these beads I swiped from Craft Time."

Other Anorexic: "I'll get you some ice cream and saltines if you find me some sewing gear. I'm gonna sew some batteries into my hair scrunchie for my next weigh-in day."

Suicidal Kid: "Do you think I'd die if could scoop my eyeball out with a spoon?"

And so on.
It was a very bizarro time in my life.

ZookeepergameSea3890 , Andres Ayrton Report

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Alright a little late to this but we’ll see, I spent time in a female mental hospital in Florida.

I was committed after attempting to kill myself. It was the right decision but holy f**k was that place horrible.

We had 2 wings. One was for violent people. And one was more like a daycare. I was initially put in the violent one, I stayed in it for months. Even though I should’ve been transferred. This is because my roommate. Who spoke tongue. Peed on me and I hit her. That move meant I spent months in the violent wing. It also meant I was to be restrained. And since they thought I peed myself, I also had to wear an adult diaper.

The craziest part about a mental hospital? How much power they have over you. One of the nurses was a f*****g psycho. She clearly enjoyed tormenting us. But guess what, no one believes the crazy girl who attacked another patient. There was one time I was getting my blood taken, the medical tech noticed I was in a clearly soiled diaper. He mentioned it to my nurse. And she says “I have 20 minutes after discovering a soiled diaper to change it”. He left, and she winked at me and left.

I was also sexually abused. By my roommate, by the nurses, by some random security guy. Once again, no one f*****g believes anything you say.

If you don’t have an advocate. A parent, spouse, even a therapist. They have complete control over you.

Onlyfansnanny Report

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A doctor told me I was too fat to be in there and should come back when I actually look anorexic (I was already pretty underweight) and I was released hours after that.

katcomesback , SHVETS production Report

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Inner city resident psychiatrist. Seen a lot of s**t!
-woman on meth brought into ED by police. Kept saying there was a devil in her vagina. It turned out to be a small (unplugged) hair straightener.
-old homeless dude who was convinced that the street cats were telling him to kill people
-young software engineer who became convinced that a girl he met at church camp was trying to communicate that she loved him thru a microchip he was convinced was implanted in his head. Had tried to stalk her and enter her house.
-big black dude who was convinced he was Bruce Lee. Would only talk to us if we called him Bruce and he would loudly be doing Kung fu moves in his room when not chatting with himself
-400lb dude smashed through the locked doors around 4am and was chased by staff thru the hospital, was only stopped when security barricaded the front doors of the hospital, he wanted to escape bc the Popeyes down the street had that new chicken sandwich
-guy addicted to smoking PCP literally ripped out his eyeball, believing something was behind it. We saw him in the medical hospital, dude was so chill about it too
-woman w no psych hx became convinced over time that someone was living inside the walls of her house. She would make cracks and holes in her walls trying to convince her family. Ended up drinking bleach.
-woman who was on the long-term unit decided to go on a hunger strike to kill herself bc she lost hope in getting better. We can't force foods on her, and the medical decision making fell onto her mom who hadn't spoken to her in 10 years. She refused placing a feeding tube to force food. Ultimately we had to place her into palliative care.
-guy who was stockpiling cogentin in his room, then always asking about it, bc he convinced it made his penis larger.
-woman who held staff in a standoff using a shower rod she ripped off the walls to use as nunchucks
-woman who would s**t into cups
-people with psychogenic polydipsia who would drink out of toilet bowls. We had to shut off their shower and toilet water.


THERE are just hundreds of more things we see everyday. It's hard to remember them all! It's never a dull day in the psych ward. It's a shame for the higher functioning depressed patients who are like "wtf have I gotten myself into".

mrmcspicy , Docudos Report

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Did psych rounds as part of my nurse training. The story I'm gonna talk is about my friend's experience when she had psych rotations a month before mine.

Apparently, she had a patient who was sexually attracted to the Sun. The star of our system. Literally. She would lie on the floor, spread her legs, and get railed by the sun rays.

theguyfromeuropa , Krišjānis Kazaks Report

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There was a lady who thought she was an egg. She’d only eat small packets of Vegemite and would sleep in front of the nurses station.

She would growl if anyone talked to her.

notsohdc , cottonbro studio Report

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My brother-in-law had a stint in a psych ward a little over a year ago, and on a particularly manic day they were in the middle of the community room and started singing

“I have a structured settlement and I need cash now”

This was then met by about 40-50 psych patients shouting back

“CALL J.G. WENTWORTH!!! 877-CASH-NOW!!!”

After getting a few verses in the orderlies stepped in and kindly requested they stop, which was kinda a shame since it sounded like they were all having a good time.

MikeMars1225 Report

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Spent some time in a juvenile psych ward when I was in my teens. I saw a kid rip off their own fingernails. And I don't mean like bite their nails and then rip the hangers off. It was full on grab the tip of their nail, then except force and peel the entire nail backwards, taking the whole nail off. They got the left thumb, left index, and left pinky off before an orderly stopped them. They were 14ish and did it all clinically and with not a wince of pain. Creepy as f**k.

***Why was I there? Because at the time people didn't know what to do with someone with autism.***

Jasole37 , Angela Roma Report

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Most amazing: for some reason a piano was in the psych ward, a patient who never spoke started playing, she knew every piece by heart. The entire ward of psychotics, manics, and even staff went and sat in that room. Not a word was spoken for a good half hour.

Craziest: family members choking a patient because his sister gave another patient a blow job. A guy who thought he was Jesus convincing the entire ward to meet on the balcony to discuss ways of breaking out. A guy would run away every day, steal a car and drive back to the ward. People speaking in tongues- scary.

carrot_bunny_dildo , Mikhail Nilov Report

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When I was 19 and admitted the first time. I was anxious already, and could barely sleep the first night. My roommate was quiet, which didn't alarm me at first. The next day I went I to the common room, and talked to some people, and then later went back to my room, and found that my roommate had scribbled "find them" all over the walls, and was talking to herself. I was terrified and grabbed a nurse who tried to talk to her, but couldn't make any sense out of what she said, and I asked to stay in another room. I stayed in the restraint room that night by myself, and woke up the next morning to a fight in the hallway, and nurses running past my room. Apparently one guy pulled out his d**k infront of the wrong patient, and got punched. Then later that week, I was cornered by the same guy who pulled out his d**k, and asked if I wanted to have sex in the bathroom. I literally cried after that and was f*****g terrified, so I would say my whole first trip there.

bitchchips , Jimmy Chan Report

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My best friend's mom was in temporarily we went to visit and there were 2 dudes, one thought he was Jesus one thought he was the devil they had major beef for serious. (Not a joke)

chefjake420 , Ivan Samkov Report

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I was a security guard at one for about a month while I was in college. There was a really big dude in there, used to play amateur football. I'm not a doctor, I never asked what exactly he had going on that required him to be living full time in a mental health facility, but I did get a warning that he's had a few violent episodes.

All the exits between wings had magnetic locking doors. The magnets were STRONG. Three of us couldn't open the locked door if we tried.

One day *John* (not his real name) had a violent episode. Threw some stuff around a hallway and then went for the exit. I hit the door lock button and heard it clunk locked. John peeled that m**********r open like it was a windy day and walked outside. Turned himself back in the next day, no problems. That place did not pay me enough to try and stop a guy who could open a magnetic door, so I quit

JBOYCE35239 , Erkan Utu Report

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It was a temporary thing for an incident I don’t care to explain right now, but in the psych ward there was this kid, like, an actual kid. And he would always cry really loud late at night. During the day he started touching himself inappropriately and screaming his father's name. I guess he was r@ped for days straight and it messed up this kids head. I wish I could see how that kid is doing now, god bless his poor soul.

Uniqueusername878 Report

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I was a social worker at an institution that had a hall for what we called “lifers,” it was essentially for people who had no hopes of ever being released due to their conditions.

Anyway, my hall had 14 beds and it was full.
There was this one guy who was huge. He was 6’7 and about 350. His name was Simon. He suffered from drug-induced schizophrenia and had bipolar disorder.
He talked to himself all day, but never talked to others. All the other men in the ward were scared of him.

It was my day to do first shift. I got there early to start on some paperwork I needed to finish. When I got my keys in the door, I heard Simon hit the door with his fists. I looked through the tiny window on the door and he and the hall was covered in blood.
I panicked and called security for backup because I thought he had killed somebody.

Turns out, Simon was in the throes of an extreme manic episode and had managed to walk the literal soles of his feet off. Other medication he was on thinned his blood and led to him bleeding all over the place.

We checked the camera footage and he had walked and talked all night. The orderly (who was fired that day) had slept through his whole shift and never heard Simon walking back and forth.

CamillaCream02 , cottonbro studio Report

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I visited the psych ward as a psychology student (part of a mandatory course) and spent a couple of days there practising interviewing patients. My personal worst memories are the old man who was catatonic and who could have died without anyone noticing for I don't know how long (he looked dead all the time); and the lady who kept picking the worms she hallucinated off her skin. I can’t imagine what it must be living like that, but it's heartbraking to watch.

I knew some of them could / had been violent, I knew the ward was locked for a good reason, but these two haunted me the most.

Mental health matters. Please take it seriously.

Ok-Painting4168 , NIAID Report

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I was in one with people who were mostly in for suicidal ideation. One patient was a nice young girl who did not eat anything the entire week I was there. A few months later I was at the grocery store and she was working there but was getting fired by what looked like a horrible bully of a manager. Watching her walk to her car absolutely defeated broke my heart. I hope she is doing better now.

SmoggyHoggard , Eric Ward Report

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I did my internship (master's degree in clinical psych) in the psych ward.

The thing that shocked me was nothing the patients did. It was the staff counselors and doctors. Fwiw, the nurses were great.

Talked about their patients' sexual attractiveness, guessed about sexual attributes, fantasized about them, etc. Mostly about the male patients, but both.

Gossiped about the famous patients and told me who they were and how many times they'd been in.

Denigrated and made fun of the eating disorder patients in particular, behind their backs.

Instead of making an effort to understand, they'd say things like "he's just a sad sack" "she's a spoiled brat" or whatever. These things were true sometimes, but I don't talk about my patients that way. There's a clinical term for "sad sack", and there's a reason I use it.

The environment was so unprofessional. I couldn't wait to be done.

Extreme-Nuance Report

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Not my story. My wife works as a nurse and spent some time in mental health units. A 60yo lady came in because she stopped taking her meds while travelling with her husband. She came out of her room, stood in front of the nurses station and started announcing to every person around her that she was the devil and also Jesus and that they needed to bow down and worship her. She proceeded to remove her hospital gown, wrapped it around her head in some kind of shawl and started bowing and chanting on the floor butt naked. Multiple visitors, including her husband were watching the whole thing. Nurses, including my wife, and her husband were trying to redirect her back to her room or put a blanket around her and she was just fighting everyone off. Her husband was so embarrassed he just stopped trying to redirect her and left.

Another one is a guy who was recently admitted was coming down off something and was constantly pestering the nurses to go out for a cigarette. You can’t smoke in a secure unit. He got sick of the nurses saying no, flew into a rage and in the process bit off his own finger. When the nurses came to help he was yelling at them “look what you made me do, you c*nts should’ve let me out for a smoke”. My wife had to pick his finger up off of the floor.

sentienceandstardust , lucigerma Report

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I work in a hospital that has a psychiatric unit and I am in the float pool so I get sent to that unit occasionally. Few months ago I was there a patient attacked one of the counselors, detached his eye from the socket and he is now blind on that side. 2nd craziest was someone eating their poop straight from the tap

dontbuyaharley , christopher lemercier Report

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I've worked in one for about 2 years now. The staff are just as crazy.

Here's some highlights

Patient got into the ceiling, couldn't get them down for a while.

Patient milked themself into their coffee. Did you know some anti-psychotics make you lactate?

The entire adolescent unit escaping because maintenence forgot to lock the gate. Don't worry they all came back eventually.

And myself getting a concussion from a patient trying to escape, they weren't successful but at least I didn't work for 6 weeks.

NeverlandEnding , solod_sha Report

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Was admitted December 3 years ago.

Before that I had a sibling who was in and out of the care system for years prior.

She had ward mates, one of them was convinced he was the terminator, talked like him, dressed like him, carried round a banana for a shotgun.

Another lady was dancing around the room, sticking to the walls, then taking her clothes off, she tried touching several of the males on ward, before it was discovered her husband had just died a few days prior.

There was an old fella with super bad anxiety, but he was really nice, and at the hospital I was at they had an ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) ward. After his first session, he was unquestionable changed by the experience, no longer nice, but not horrible, he said he "just felt empty."

Strangest thing that happened to me, was probably making a person up, I was friends with a person called Chris, who apparently didn't exist. I'm not psychotic, which made it all the more odd. I think it was a coping mechanism.

Mostly though, what stuck with me, I met so many creative people, painters, poets, musicians, sculpters, dancers. People who I may never come across again, but we shared a few weeks of life together.

Onasixx , Orion Pictures Report

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Worked security for an emergency behavioral health.

I saw many, many crazy things. Many sad things, many confusing things.

The one I shall share today is the woman who started throwing rocks at the window of the staff area.

Why do you let the patients have rocks, you ask?

We don’t. She smuggled them in. Inside herself. A substantial number of rocks, approximately golf ball sized.

Salami__Tsunami , Simon Schmitt Report

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Not me, but a friend of mine that struggled earlier in life. He made a birdhouse for his mother and wanted to paint it red as it was her favorite color. But he never got to because one of the other patients would always drink the red paint before anyone could use it.

YellowSn0man , Марта Тюзова Report

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One girl bit her own nipple off and swallowed it.

CommonArmadillo5 , cottonbro studio Report

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I was supervising a patient overnight on a snowy December night. This guy *loved* Christmas. I mean, *loved* it. In the early morning hours, we got some calls from other units saying they were missing their Christmas trees. We wondered why they thought we knew where they went, until we saw trails in the snow of ornaments and artificial pine needles leading to his bedroom window. Upon opening his door, we discovered a forest of Christmas trees packed into his room, at least 6 or 7, with him giddily sitting in the middle of them. At some point he snuck out through his window and stole Christmas from everyone. How nobody including us heard him is still a mystery to me.

Another time, we had a group of three patients all strip completely naked, elope from the complex, and run two miles away to the local Police Department. The leader of the group did this more than once, and the police officers all knew her name and if they saw her, they simply met her out front and took her back.

theshizirl , Irina Iriser Report

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I used to work in a psych unit. I have two stories. The first was a gentleman that was diagnosed schizophrenic and was medicated. He decided to go camping without his meds and was found a couple weeks later completely detached from reality. He kept screaming that he was Jesus and that he was dead and he had to wait three days to rise. He refused to stand and walk because he was dead. We had to lift him on to a gurney and put him in four point restraints. A week or so later after being on his medication he was like any other person, completely normal.

The other, I don't know the backstory, they call "Code Armstrong" overhead if they need muscle. I heard the xall and me and five other guys were being coordinated to tackle and restrain this young 100 lb girl. Basically you take her legs, you take her torso, you go for arms, you go for head. We tackle her and she still managed to get her head loose and started just smashing her head on the wall until we could chemically sedate her. She nearly fought off 5 full grown men, I'll never forget that.

Groggamog Report

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Guy had a "tattoo" carved into his neck. Apparently he took a pen in his fist and repeatedly carved it into his skin right on his neck. It looked very scratchy and was still red despite it apparently being pretty old.

You know how really young kids grip a crayon in their fist and grind it against the paper really hard? If you made a fist with your left hand and put it below the left ear, that was exactly how he must have done it.

kmn493 , Karolina Grabowska Report

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I saw a man smear his s**t on the window of the room he was in with a dead eyed stare. Never gonna forget that sight.

girlfriendclothes , Clement percheron Report

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