krymoree

To the first question: If you expect there to be an incident, know your exits. If you get cornered, make as much noise as you can to get attention. Learn some basic self-defence techniques especially breakaways. Have speed dial/favourites set up on your phone to people who can help you out.

If you're worried about "crazy people" randomly assaulting you, I can honestly say that its very unlikely that someone who is not drug-affected will assault random pedestrians. However, if someone who's suffering from Schizophrenia incorporate you into their delusions, there's not much left to do but avoid them as much as possible. If you're talking to that specific person, try to see if they can maintain eye contact. If you think something is wrong with them and they have trouble maintaining eye contact, it means they're receiving stimuli from another source. Time to back away from them.

2nd question: Was at a bar once and a security guard stood over me because I was smoking in a non-smoking area. Mind you this guy was about 6'5" and 120KGs, would have destroyed me. He seemed to no be happy with me saying I'll walk towards the smoking area, couple of metres away, with my cigarette in my hand and wanted me to put it out. When I refused and started walking he grabbed me by the shoulder and stood me in front of him. Started making threats to harm me if I don't put my cigarette out. Thinking that this guy was obviously getting way too worked up about the issue and definitely not being professional I put my cigarette out and tried to start a conversation with him which he did not want to take part in and walked away. 5 Minutes later he got a couple more of his colleagues to come and tried to throw me out. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his colleagues so I followed. Had a nice long chat with him right outside the door. Being respectful of him and his decision I questioned his intentions. Turns out he's been working since the morning and just snapped when I wouldn't do as he says. He then apologised and let me back in and even bought me a drink thanking me for listening.

All the time. Sometimes people come in with a very acute and severe episode of whatever illness they're suffering from, stay with us for longer than our usual turnover of 5~7-days and get transferred to a less acute ward. It feels at times that what we do is just make sure no one else gets hurt and miss out on the opportunity to build therapeutic relationships

Meth. Hands down. People who use methamphetamine regularly and end up using 5 or 6 points in one go are absolute beasts.

Right, didn't read the second question. Not on our ward, but we have someone in a recovery ward who believes himself to be Kurt Cobain.. Besides the similarity that they're both blond, they share nothing in common. He just sits there strumming a guitar on open strings and keeps talking about his new album being released.

Because I am a slave to addiction.