Mental Cases

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I've been working for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the Department of Mental Health, for over 36 years.  I was 21 years old when I stated just before Labor Day 1976.  I hope to retire in January of 2014, I will be 59 years old.

I have seen and done a lot of stuff during that time.  Stuff that goes from tragic to hilarity, with many stops in between.  Some of the stuff has been disgusting.  I have cried like a baby, and laughed like an idiot.  I got scars to prove a few things.  Some stuff ya had to be there to appreciate.  I may change a few names to protect the innocent, guilty, and those who would not be pleased if I mentioned their names.

Believe it or not mental health practices have advanced beyond the halcyon days of Dorthea Dix.  The days of warehousing the slightly off center are over. The days of rock 'em, sock'em mental health are dead and gone.  The days of community based mental health treatment are at hand.

When I started at Danvers in 1976, the community based model for mental ilness treatment was in it's infancy.  The units at DSH were broken up along community lines. There was Danvers-Salem, Cape Ann-Eastern Middlesex, Lawrence-Haverhill, and the Lynn Unit. When I began I worked the Lawrence-Haverhill unit, on J-3 in the Kirkbride Building. J-3 was a ward I was familiar with from my father,( who worked there when it was the violent ward. ) The time was before there was an official split between DMH, and Department of Developmental Services (DDS) formerly Department of Retardation (DMR).

Anyway I ended up spending a few years on J-3 with those merry fellows from Lawrence. It was a dangerous place to work.  The DDS people we housed were the most volatile, and assaultive kind.  The mentally ill were a mixed lot, some quite passive, some were actively and floridly psychotic.  Medication was by todays standards basic Thorazine, Haldol, Lithium, and a few others, and Cogentin for the side effects of all the other stuff.  I worked the night shift, theoretically the quiet time, but not always.

The main point to this is that a lot of you saw some of the paintings on the walls at DSH, they were by and large done by a patient who was a pretty fair artist.  The rehabilitation effort that stressed therapy over restraint, seclusion and la-la land medications was beginning to become effective.  It gave the patients more options, that to sit in their own minds. To do stuff, occasionally get off the ward, and maybe find outlets for their ilness rather than punching the shit out of someone, or cutting themselves. Now what was once in it's infancy has become the norm, and even that is evolving to different avenues, and theories.  Mental health care is a slowly evolving process.

The type of patient we get these days is a far cry from the ones we used to get.
When I stated at Danvers we got all kinds, and frequently we'd get them with fresh stitches from  suicide attempts.
We'd get 'em right off the street we'd occasionally get detoxing junkies. 
Now we have a screening system in place.  Today a person will spend 6 weeks in an interim bed, and now if they absolutely need us then they may be admitted. Our patients are a lot younger than they used to be.  As always the the courts send us people.

We once upon a time had a patient who I'll call Norm.  Norm was a manic depressive.  He had extended periods where he was functional, but when his cycles hit they were Lulu's.  Norm was about 65 years old.  When he was down he was nearly catatonic, and also prone to soiling him self in a spectacular manner.  When he was up he was combative as hell. Well one morning Norm came up t the Nurses station spoiling for a fight.  He was 65 and skinny as a rail, but he had been a gold gloves boxer in his day. He challenged me, I guess because I was handy.  There were others nearby but I guess he didn't care for the cut of my jib.

Anyway I was inside the Nurse's station, and Norm took a poke at me.  I was about two feet beyond the reach of his longest possible reach.  Well Norm after trying to punch me stated to punch like he was working the little punching bag, and he was singing  "Be kind to your Web footed friends..."

I lost it.  I was laughing so hard I couldn't do anything about it.

I once had a patients that was out to get me.  Me personally. His mother was a big shot in the mental health family community, and her son was an aggressive loon.  For the longest time there was something about me, he hated. He would walk around people so he could take a poke at me.  He didn't know why, but I was a target.  We nick named him Rocky.  When ever we would see him coming someone would would whistle the first few notes of the Rock movies theme song.  Just to warn everyone else.  Rocky  didn't put up a fight often when we caught him and stuffed him in a quiet room.  There was never a warning from him he'd just punch out. Rocky and I had a few meetings which didn't go well for him.  He was slow, and if you expected it, easy to block, and easily pushed away.

This continued for over two years .  Until we finally sussed out why he did it. He was a man with long hair and a beard, I at the time had long hair, and a full beard.  I cut my beard off, because it was going greyer faster than I was. Rocky stopped hitting me, and went after the new guy who wore a full beard.  It was the beard that set him off , he only hit people with beards.

If you go to the DSIA site and look at some of the news articles posted about Danvers, there's one there about a kid who stabbed his mother to death. The hospital took a bad rap for releasing the kid to his mom in the first place.  Strictly speaking it was the Juvenile Justice folks who let the little bastard go, they just had a place at Danvers as they do at Tewksbury.

He wasn't an ugly kid, he was a sociopath, he could be charming one moment and trying to choke you the next.  Most of the time he was just a punk kid, who never should have been with the state hospital system. That's another story.

He'd been on my unit for about a year, when we wrangled a transfer to the Juvie Justice people, one floor up. I was on the fifth floor they were on the sixth. One night We heard this horrible crash and the sound of glass breaking, we looked up and the door to the roof had been smashed in. Nearly simeltaneously someone saw something big fly past the window, on the sunporch This was the Bonner buiding btw. Instant oh fuck a duck time. We hollered for security on the phone, and they came bustin' up to the fifth floor in a hurry.  We went up to investigate on the roof.  There was an aluminum ladder out there laying on the roof, and nothing else.  I remember one of the security guys was a neighbor of mine.  We're looking out into the darkness, basically looking for a body. This would be looking into the bushes at the back near the loading dock.  The Danvers PD was called, I think the staties got into it, and nothing at all was found.

The next night we all found out.  This punk kid had climbed out of a 6th floor window onto the roof, of the sunporch wing.  He's taken the ladder and smashed the door window with it, and reached through to try and unlock the door from the inside. All the doors in the Bonner building locked from both sides. You needed a key to get out and a key to get in.  He was trying to escape. He was too big to fit through the door window, so he climbed back through the 6th floor window and went back to bed.  There was a blanket found draped over the bushes the next morning.

I remember my moms ex husband, who was a fire fighter. Had told me a couple of times he had calls up at the Hospital for people jumping out windows, not often.I know of two times he was called for that.Alot of suicide atemps though.

I remember my moms ex husband, who was a fire fighter. Had told me a couple of times he had calls up at the Hospital for people jumping out windows, not often.I know of two times he was called for that.Alot of suicide atemps though.

Oh yeah we had a few jumpers, and a few attempts we got most of them I found one we missed.

weather you think so or not, it takes a unique individual to do what you have to help these people or help others by quarantine those that are dangerous. I tip my hat to you sir.
On the other hand your friends with us wack jobs so maybe your just crazy too....well played    *hail*   lol

I think hes a plant by the system to do a study on us ,.... Soylent Green is made of people!