Most of the people who work in community mental health are completely insane…..that includes almost all of the people working on the master’s level, especially in counselling and social work. It was because of these people that I abandoned my career in Clinical Psychology and went for the doctorate in Chiropractic instead.
Some examples of the behavior I saw among staff working inpatient community mental health:
First off, the main offices were located in the worst, most dangerous urban environment I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been to a lot of shitholes in my time). I kept my Glock on me at all times there.
One male staffer got caught on three separate occasions, getting blowjobs from male patients. All three were HIV positive.
Another male staffer, had sex with a number of female drug addicts who were slated for release into rehab (they were prostitutes).
A female staffer had a former patient living with her as her lover. He was an ex-con (for murder), heavy drug user (also HIV positive), incredibly violent, and had been inpatient for a psychotic break, with a long history of violence during his psychotic episodes.
I caught this same staffer dispensing meds to patients that they had no prescription for (a felony). When I told her to stop, she screamed for over an hour about how I dare tell her how to do her job. Supervisor did nothing.
Another staffer traded bourbon with patients for crack cocaine. Although I brought this to the attention of the highest levels of management (all women), they did nothing and eventually promoted this woman to run the entire inpatient system (a very high level, highly paid government job). Although all government jobs require mandatory drug testing in the city, ours was mysteriously overlooked in the testing system.
My immediate superior had been caught several times, having sex with employees under her, on the physical plant grounds.
Two female staffers told me this bizarre story one day (one was the drug user….go figure) about how they saw a flying saucer that whizzed all around the facility grounds (nightshift) until stopping barely a few feet from them and whizzing away…..I shit you not.
Once, I had to escort one of the female staffers home because her ex-husband was threatening to kill her.
Lastly, the entire system was, in my opinion, a scam. Very few of our patients were of the legitimate, mental illness variety (even though we were the centralized mental health facility for a major metropolitan area). Some of the patients had mental illness like symptoms that were completely the result of crack cocaine use (ie, after a couple of weeks of rehab, they became symptom free, even in serious cases). But most of the patients were simple crack addicts who were homeless. At the cost of thousands and thousands of dollars, we warehoused these yahoos for a bit before moving them in and out of rehab and trying fruitlessly to place them in outpatients systems (drug use makes you ineligible you see……means you are out on the street). They were in no way interested in anything except doing crack and just running the system to get a roof over their head (you aren’t allowed in the shelters if you are using drugs…they test). A typical example would be one of these yahoos being picked up by the cops. An ambulance (at least $2 thousand dollars each trip) would transport them to our facility where they would stay inpatient (about a grand a day) until they were “stable” enough to be placed outpatient or they decompensated and had to be hospitalized ($2-3 grand a day). All for someone who isn’t mentally ill. As far as I could see, these wastes of life completely pushed out all the legitimate patients. Which tells me that the people designing the system are the most insane of all.
The system is insane and any person who tells you they work in that system is probably insane too. If not, they soon will be.
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