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.