One of the most interesting jobs I have ever done...

was working for a month in a psychiatry. This was 5 years ago.
I had to deal with people in suicidal mood, a woman with the delusion of getting poisend by her family or by other people, borderline diagnosed people, a person diagnosted by Huntington´s chorea disease, schizophrenic patients who hear voices in their mind which gives orders to them or schizophrenic patients thinking they are a different person then they actually are and diverse other people with "unusual" symptoms.

The attendants told me already in the beginning that there is some phenomena that most of these people can be extremely sensitive towards the (inner) moods of the staff. So very often when an attendant is not balanced him- or herself the patient might easy react to that too, like suddenly changing his/her mood. Additionally one needs to have his eyes everywhere because you never know what some patients might do or act within the next second. During the time I was there it happened twice that a patients suddenly attacked an attendant. In one case a patient knocked out a doctor with a vase on his head after not getting what she wanted to have. Another time a patient knocked down a female attendant with the head on the tiles on the floor so that the attendant was seriously hurt and it took weeks to recover from the backbone injuries. So this can be a pretty dangouros job sometimes...

I found that working in a psychiatry lets one get to know the own flexibility in dealing will so much different kinds of people quite at the same time. Everybody needs to be treated with a different communication style.
Some of the patients tried to test out borders like teenagers, some need to be encouraged to have more selfconfidence, someone with a delusion of getting poisoned needs to gain trust while a person within suicidal mood needs understanding and also distraction etc. In my opinion a lot of the communication is actually trying to sense the vibration of the person to be able to communicate properly. Although there is one thing all people have in common. :-)

And another important thing I have learned is that a lot of problems/issues arise out of the environment of a person. Sometimes it´s really difficult to tell if the sickness is only because of the problem of the patient or if it´s at least triggered if not caused by a person or more people/family around a patient.

This might also be something to think about when dealing with astrology/horoscopes. What influence do have people around a client?
According to my experience a person can change a lot his/her natural personality depending on the people around.


Antje