LilSasquatchFriend

The one that freaked me out the most, a middle-aged biker friend of mine and I went out on the yard (electric barbed wire fence, all that) and he introduced me to a man he had lived with in a past unit. The man was very bizarre, scrawny and spaced out, and my being a lady, he took my hand and kissed it and greeted me, it was bizarre but not unusual in that kind of place. Afterwards my friend told me the man he had introduced me to was a serial killer who ripped out his victim's nails and teeth. I later confirmed with staff that this was true, and that his father had died and he killed his victims so they would keep his father company in heaven. Staff also said he had an episode on a real crime show that he was proud of.

Severe mental illness is different in person than what is seen on tv. There were a lot of schizophrenics, and you find yourself feeling sorry for them. A lot of them are very sweet. In the hospital I was at, the only abuse came from the patients. The staff had such restricted ability to restrain or seclude patients that often we were left feeling endangered being out on the floor with someone in a rage while staff stayed in the office behind unbreakable glass. Patients rights have gone too far and mentally ill patients are not held accountable for their actions, even ones who are fully aware of what they are doing and that it is wrong. There is also a lot less freedom in mental hospitals than you see in tv, less freedom than in prisons even. No cigarettes, absolutely no caffeine, no privacy.... there are group showers and the bathroom stalls are only separated by curtains. There were about 20 beds in a unit and each bedsection (containing four beds) was separated only by a 4' wall for monitering and so staff could jump over them. We were not allowed to have pencils or pens, if we needed to use a writing utensil we could check out a "pen" from the nurses station that was just a flexible ink tube with pen tip, no hard plastic casing.

I was court ordered to be there, I had a criminal case and got some good lawyers who got me acquitted for insanity because of my bipolar disorder. But I was one of the, if not THE, highest functioning patient/s there.

My favorite moments were conversations I had with some of the staff members, who were great. Any time family or my boyfriend visited was wonderful, and they came up pretty often considering it was a 6 hour drive. I made a friend there, a 60 year old bipolar woman who was in a severe dissociative and paranoid state when I arrived. She didn't talk or move or eat, had to be escorted and forced to shower because she was afraid of showering, and just laid in bed and got bed sores. A while after I was there one night she came in the day room and opened up and was very friendly, told me I reminded her of her daughter and that she had thought I was her daughter planted in the unit with her when I first arrived. She laughed and told stories and told me about her family for a couple of hours. Then the next day she switched back to how she was, like the night before had never happened. Over the next 10 months she started coming out of her dissociative paranoid state more and more and I helped her and she helped me, her progress was slow and she often regressed but by the time 10 months was over she was eating in the cafeteria, had put on weight she needed, and was socializing very much like a normal person. She always credited me with her recovery.

Armed burglary and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

The craziest person with the most wild behavior was Pinkie, although it's hard to choose just one because there were different kinds of crazy. Pinkie was mentally retarded in addition to being schizophrenic, and was a crackwhore. I don't think anyone knew her real name, when the police picked her up she insisted her name was Pinkie and I don't think she had any identification. She drooled a lot, and liked to talk to my boyfriend on the phone (and drool into the phone). She was lactating because of her medication and one time while we were watching tv she said, "hey watch this", Ilook over and her breast is out and she squirts breast milk on me. She would spend hours in the bathroom every day yelling at her reflection in the mirror, threatening it and cussing it out. Often she would yell at it as if it were a person in her past, angry about something in her past and would sometimes would squirt breastmilk at her reflection. She was also convinced she was pregnant and had a pseudopregnancy so that her body began acting pregnant. She seemed to always have vaginal infections and would call people over to look at a clod of something that came out of her that she insisted was her baby. She would also fly off the handle and attack various people, flying over anything or anyone in her way.