Into the minds of many.

Alright, I admit I feel guilty for letting months pass without posting. Not guilty to anyone who would possibly read this but guilty to myself for not having anything to look back on about my current experiences.

Right now I'm in my community health and mental health rotations. For community, I'm at an inner-city type junior high school teaching health classes. It's definitely a challenge!

As for my mental health rotation, it's not what I expected to be AT ALL. For one, I thought patients would be at the facility, as a type of "mini get away". I figured it would be a place to be when life seemed overwhelming and you're feeling depressed and possibly suicidal. Uh -- NOPE, NADA. It is way more like the movies than I ever thought possible. My first patient was there for a variety of reasons, one being that he heard voices telling him to castrate himself (and yes he tried and no this is not the first patient I have seen this year with this situation). There are patients who truly believe they are the queen, married to the president, being poisoned in their water, their family members are cannibals (and as a result get violent defending themselves against their beliefs), pregnant with 10 babies, and that the government zapped their memory. There are also patients when you ask them why they are there who turn and say with a confused look "I have absolutely no idea". Screaming, yelling, pacing, pacing, pacing, standing in a corner all day, talking to themselves, mute, screaming. Not everyone is at such a low functioning level but it amazes me how many are. I can't even imagine if this is them on their medication what it might be like without the drugs.

Being with some of the patients at the mental health facility brings be back to when I taught Kindergarten. I remember one day early in the year, I was teaching about the letter "T". We had a "T' scavenger hunt, art project, tea party, "T" songs, photography station where kids took pictures of objects starting with the letter "T", we made "T"'s with our body in Phys Ed (alright I admit it was a bit ridiculous!!!!). But at the end of the day, I asked one of the students what letter we learned today -- guess what she said --- "K" !!!!!!!!!!! Many of my conversations with patients at the Mental Health facility feel very similar. It's like one minute I exist to them and the next minute, everything changes.

It saddens me when I read the charts and read about trauma's preceding their diagnosis. It could be anyone; it really could happen to anyone. Many don't have family support - lots have been physically abusive to family members and others have been very deceptive... this is their disorder. Family members have given up. I'd like to think if I had a son/daughter with a mental illness that I would be fully supportive & compassionate but honestly, if they're abusive towards me or other people in the household, I don't know that I could be. That saddens me.

It's hard. The majority of the world looks at mental illness as a dirty thing. Whereas, having cancer is something heroic. I would much rather die from cancer than have untreatable/poorly treated undifferentiated type schizophrenia. It's weird writing that but it's true.

Definitely, most people live normal lives with the help of medication but not everyone...