Echolalia

As someone else said in another thread about sitting with patients who are on 1:1 precautions, it can be reaaaaaaally boring. I would much rather be up, making rounds and providing care for patients than sit and watch a patient sleep. I feel more worn out after a night of sitting with a 1:1 patient than I do being up & about on a busy night.

I was sitting with Bob, a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia who is psychotic and can be a behavior problem, on one particular night. Bob was awake, yet resting quietly in bed when I took over the 1:1.

Bob acknowledged me when I came into the room: "Daaaaaave!", I smiled and nodded to him and said nothing more. So I sat there, feeling sleep-deprived, ready to hit the wall, when Bob again said "Daaaaaave!" So I said, "Boooooob!" and Bob repeated, "Boooooob!" I said, "No, you're Boooooob, and I'm Daaaaaave!" Bob repeated, "No, you're Boooooob, and I'm Daaaaaave!"

I soon found out that Bob would repeat anything I said, indicating he was manifesting a symptom of psychosis called echolalia.

So, from memory, I began reciting The Berenstains B Book, a book I had read perhaps a hundred times to Head Start children when I worked as a teacher's aid back in 1981. Bob repeated each portion:

"Big Brown Bear" "Big Brown Bear"... "Blue Bull" "Blue Bull" .... "Beauuuuuutiful Baboon" "Beauuuuuutiful Baboon"... "Blowing Bubbles"... all the way through the the Berenstain Bears "biking backwards, bumping Black Bugs banna boxes, Billy Bunny's bread baskets, Brother Bob's baseball bus, and Buster Beagle's Bagpipe bugle band (which) busted Baby Bird's balloon"!

For 45 minutes we repeated The Berenstains B Book, sometimes backwards, starting with Baby Bird's busted balloon and ending with Big Brown Bear. Bob seemed to enjoy echoing each portion, but he could not echo more than three words at a time. So, for example, I broke down Buster Beagle's bagpipe.... bugle band into two portions.

I mentioned that Bob was my echo and Bob said, "Bob is my echo", which eventually went to a "mellow echo" and then to a "cello echo".

I wondered aloud if a cello said "celllllo!" instead of "helllllo!" and kept repeating it, if that cello wasn't also manifesting a specialized symptom of psychosis:

Being sleep-deprived and sitting with a 1:1 psych patient on a MN shift will cause one to do and think such things.