Mental illness sucks

[akainagi]

I just spent the last two days on in a locked psychiatric unit. As a student nurse, not as a patient. @_@
God, that was depressing. I still think it's a field that I might want to work in, but to see twenty-something kids who have completely lost grip with reality is so ... unsettling. To know that a lot of these people will never get to have a normal life, and will spent their lives never knowing an education or the fulfillment of making a living for themselves. To know that the best they can hope for is *not* to kill themselves in a fit of paranoid terror, and the worst they can hope for is suicide or permenant incarceration in a state hospital. That's frankly pretty f*cking depressing.

Comments

[leissel.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I can't begin to imagine how depressing that must have been. I know it's not something I could do, I've been left feeling unsettled after spending an afternoon in an elderly nursing home let alone a psychiatric ward. The only experience I've had there was being sent to pick up some medication for a lady and I can remember feeling sick when they locked the doors behind me. Talk about heavy atmosphere.

I've always thought it takes a person with a very special outlook to be able to do something like that.

[akainagi.livejournal.com]

*squeeze*
Thanks. It has it's good points too. It's great to see someone get their meds and therapy straightened out and get on their feet. Some can be so highly functional when they get the right treatment. But some will never get any better, and that's the depressing part. And health care is so political, especially when it comes to trying to get people into long-term or state psych facilities.

[elsie21.livejournal.com]

The saddest thing is when mental and physical health care is treated like any business, where profits (long and short term) come before the well-being of those who need the care.

I read, about a month or two ago, an article in the NYTimes (online) about how insurance companies will deny coverage for simple routine preventive care for patients with diabetes, such as a $100-150 routine checkup with a podiatrist, but will shell out literally tens of thousands of dollars for the cost of an amputation that could have been avoided.

The worst part was reading that the hospitals preferred this as well since it means a much larger reimbursement from the insurance companies.

I can't even imagine the amount of jumping through hoops required to obtain care for people with less tangible problems.

[akainagi.livejournal.com]

A big hell yeah to everthing you just said. And a big hell no to Medicare Part D that pulled all the poor old folks off their perfectly effective psych meds and put them on cheaper alternatives that didn't do sh*t.
I'd like Bush and all his buddies to live through a psychotic episode or a manic phase or two and THEN rethink the effectiveness of their wonderful prescription drug plan.