Crazy…….

Something I neglected to mention in the last month is how I switched from being an evening shift nurse working on the children’s and adolescent unit,  to being a day nurse, working on the adult and geriatric rehabilitation service.

My motivation was primarily personal……I was getting too depressed, living in the eternal twilight world of the evening worker…..home at 1 a.m., and no one to talk to, up at 11 a.m., just in time to wash up, drink a pot of coffee, and go back to work.

I miss the kids alot, but the day shift, combined with the ongoing drama of the geriatric population’s medical problems, has kept me from being bored.

I used to work in adult service, on the acute ward. The adult units are interesting…..the folks are generally schizophrenic, so they’re either acutely psychotic, or profoundly withdrawn. You get alot of people who cycle through the system at intervals, so you have a glimpse of  how chronic mental illness works itself out……through the life stories of folks who attempt to make their way through the world with the scourge of schizophrenia.

But, on a personal level, I’m back to square one with the whole idea of involuntarily committing people to institutions, and medicating them against their will.

And I’m not talking about the ‘for profit’ places that folks go to when they’re having problems adjusting to a divorce, or dealing with the depressive sequelea of their earlier experiences, or managing their substance abuse problems…..

I’m talking ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ here.

And when I see the heavy handed way that psychiatrists prescribe medications, the poor results, and the damaging side effects, I find myself advocating for the ‘med holiday’, the coping skill teaching, the slow and easy experimentation with medication….

Because, while some of these medications can help some people, there is too little attention paid to how the forced incarceration,and inane rules of institutionalized living, damages these already impaired individuals….

there is too little individualized care…

there is too much paternalistic enforcement of schedules….

and there is too little kindness.

And hallucinations are traded for medication induced diabetes, immune deficiency , Parkinsonian tremors, and a benign delirium.

And a constrained peace governs the land…..

I may be trading personal comfort for psychic discomfort.

And that way lies madness.