My first site on Psychiatry was at the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center. It's a locked facility. You go there because you legally have to go there.
5150 - danger to self, danger to others, or gravely disabled. 7-day hold.
I had some seriously schizophrenic and bipolar patients. But I was never really afraid of them, even the ones that yelled a lot. I would try half-heartedly to gather information from them, then leave them be. Even when they were yelling, I could just run into the medical student office on the other side of a locked door. No sweat. The culture of SCMHTC wasn't really set up to get to know your patients well, the person they were before they were mentally ill. I just documented if they were acting crazy or saying crazy things. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are fascinating, but actually working with these patients is hard for a sane person to do.
What I realized about myself was how drawn I was to the depressed, suicidal patients. They were just regular people who happened to be really sad and having a hard time coping. I would spend way more time talking to them and getting to know them than my schizophrenic or manic patients. That was a good thing to learn about myself.
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