That word pretty much sums up everything about school right now (which I only have four semesters of until I'm done!!)... Our focus this semester is mental health and psychiatry. So our patients will be mental, the unit will be mental, all of our research/theory is based on mental health, the people in the library books I'm reading for clinical prep are mental, and I'll probably be mental by the end of the semester. Now I don't want to be irreverent about mental health/illness or offend anyone if they don't like what I say. Despite what some may believe, they are very real illnesses that very real people suffer with, some silently, and for which there exists very real help. At the onset, in my opinion some of these illnesses are over medicated or medication is given without any complimentary therapy, but in many instances the medication is necessary and helps the individual comply with treatment. I'm kind of just presenting my point of view so that I can do a post at the end of the semester and see how my opinion's changed. It's definitely going to be a very different, very intense clinical. With a patient suffering from a physical illness, you have the condition and in my mind I know many of the things I have to watch for. For example if I was given a patient with diabetes, I know I would be doing probably be checking blood sugar levels, I would be monitoring their food/snack intake and signs of high blood sugar, and signs of low blood sufar with their medication. And although physical illness is never 100% predictable, 99% of the time it's got a protocol, or set of general rules it follows. With mental illness, everything gets a lot trickier, because although the same condition may affect 5 different people, there are infinite ways the brain can influence their perception and cognition and thus make every person's illness very unique from the next's. With the body if you can't see what's going, you usually have values from blood work, diagnostic tests etc. that you can review to know what's going on. With a mental illness the biggest way you're going to get information about what's going on in their head, is their telling you. It's so much more subjective, and knowing what to do with that information, how to treat it, how to guide a conversation, is something essential we'll need to know, but be hard pressed to learn in six weeks. The other thing is, not having been through mental illness myself, it's hard to understand why a person would think the way they do. For example, why they would want to commit suicide, or think they're God/Satan, or wash their hands 30 times a day... Because it's not logical, and doesn't make sense to most of us, or even scare us, we ignore it or shun it. People with open mental illnesses are stigmatized, judged and often abused, and I feel like changing that, is a very big part of what I'm there for. I may not gain enough experience to really help these people the way they need to be helped, but I can certainly help them by defending their rights and by helping raise awareness that these people are not their illness. When we have a family member with cancer, or diabetes, or high blood pressure we don't usually look at them and see their disease. It's not how we define them, and we don't usually hold it against them. It seems like sometimes we act as if mental illness is someone's fault. I'm pretty sure these people would tell you they'd much rather diabetes or high blood pressure over what they have. I'm not going to lie. I've felt all those things at one point or another, but I'm doing my best to put all those thoughts and feelings aside now. Patients know when you're judging them, and if the people responsible for taking care of them are judging them, it would look like a pretty hopeless world out there. 1 in 5 people in Canada will experience mental illness in their lifetime, and it really can happen to anyone. Think about that for a minute and how you would want to be treated if it were you...I know I have been. Please stay posted (no pun intended!) and follow me as I learn about mental health and then as I do my best to care for these people who could be me or you one day.
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