Mental health

Nurses Stress 101

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I'm a 4th year nursing student and I really love nursing however I have a concern. Do you think it's unethical to choose mental health just because it was funny as hell. when I did the rotation last semester I laugh my ass off everyday, the things that come out of patients mouth was just hysterical. I am sympathetic towards mental health patients and I personally thought I would hate it before I went but that was far from the truth. But now I am back in school and I'm missing those patients. So uhm do you think it's unethical to laugh at patients?

Specializes in ED, Medicine, Case Management.
I smell a troll.......

I think a troll would have responded to our comments. OP has not. Perhaps the OP would like to clarify his/her statements? I have a hard time believing that someone who is in their 4th year of a nursing program truly lacks that much empathy and just poorly articulated their question.

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Uhm sorry if I offended anybody, that was not my intent. I was very empathetic towards my patients i never undermine their conditions and I never found *the sad things they did funny, such as the insomnia, excessive crying, manic episodes etc. What I did find amusing and whether you guys like it or not were some of the delusions particularly the grandiose delusions. When patients were telling me to bow to them because they were the queen of Naria I found that amusing, anybody would, I mean I'm 21. Not only that but some of the patients were just plain funny like I said some of the things that came out of their mouth was just funny, for example one morning when I was doing a MSE a patient told me she didn't ate breakfast because the meatballs was so hard you could of stone an ancient day prisoners with it. She had pressured speech so the way she said it was so funny, does this make me a bad person or an incompetent nurse? I never found someone going *manic funny, and I never found a Patient exhibiting hallucinations funny whether tactile, visual, or auditory. My patients loved me, maybe because I wasn't all stiff and serious like the other RN's and student nurses, I readily engaged in occupational therapy and group therapy everyday with them, I interacted with all the patients and I didn't take anything too serious even when a patient threaten to smite me because I didn't pray to her as she was God and could strike me down at any moment. But if finding some aspects of their condition amusing makes me a bad person then I guess I can live with that.

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Specializes in Leadership, Psych, HomeCare, Amb. Care.

Of course, sometimes patients say amusing things, and sometimes they say things revealing great psychic pain, but neither of your posts address that.

They are not in the hospital in order to create some 3 dimensional, theater in the round, sit-com for your entertainment.

They are sick people, hospitalized because they are unable to function outside the hospital. Sometimes at risk of death.

You're obviously amused....but are you therapeutic? :bored:

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I wish I could find something redeeming about this thread, but as someone who suffers from mental illness I just can't.

PLEASE don't go into psych nursing. Should I ever be hospitalized, I would hate to think something I said or did while manic would serve my nurse as entertainment.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

As you can see, Ackeem you have struck a nerve in many posters.

our pts regardless of the reason you encounter them, are to be provided compassionate care. They are not there for your enjoyment.

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Specializes in Pedi.

This is the kind of stuff I was talking about in the Robin Williams thread. NO ONE would ever come on here and say "I want to be an Oncology Nurse because I think cancer is funny" yet it's somehow acceptable to laugh at psychiatric patients? Are their illnesses any less real or severe than physical illness? It's not funny that someone believes that she is the Queen of Narnia, it is incredibly sad. Please do not go into psychiatric nursing.

ETA- I've seen my fair share of patients over the years who said things that could be perceived as "funny" if they weren't a sign of a serious illness. I once had a teenager with a severe head injury tell me he was in "some sort of Chinese restaurant" when I asked him if he knew where he was. When the CNA was washing him up, he said "Michael Jackson is washing my back." We did not laugh at him. He had a severe injury, his friend was dead and he didn't know it. Later that same day, his Dad came to visit and he didn't know who he was. He demanded his father show identification and even after he did, wouldn't acknowledge that it was his father. He punched his mother in the face one day. Nothing about his situation was funny.

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.
This is the kind of stuff I was talking about in the Robin Williams thread. NO ONE would ever come on here and say "I want to be an Oncology Nurse because I think cancer is funny" yet it's somehow acceptable to laugh at psychiatric patients? Are their illnesses any less real or severe than physical illness? It's not funny that someone believes that she is the Queen of Narnia, it is incredibly sad. Please do not go into psychiatric nursing.

Exactly. This just perpetuates the misunderstandings and stigma of the difficulties that are mental illness.

It's not funny when a patient has a complex delusion where they think they are the queen of Narnia and demand you bow. This is an illness, a biochemical imbalance that is often inconsistent with independently functioning in society necessitating inpatient or partial outpatient hospitalization.

This is not a preschooler role playing. This is someone's reality.

Bad person, no misinformed person that is essentially making fun of the manifestation of a patient's illness. It's rude & unprofessional. Patients are not there for your entertainment.

It's time to educate and erase the stigma of mental illnesses. Much of the stigma associated with mental illness is due to misunderstanding and lack of information about mental illness. Wishing to enter psychiatric/mental illness because patients' delusions and statements cause you to laugh your ass off...is just wrong.

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.
What I did find amusing and whether you guys like it or not were some of the delusions particularly the grandiose delusions. When patients were telling me to bow to them because they were the queen of Naria I found that amusing, anybody would, I mean I'm 21. Not only that but some of the patients were just plain funny like I said some of the things that came out of their mouth was just funny, for example one morning when I was doing a MSE a patient told me she didn't ate breakfast because the meatballs was so hard you could of stone an ancient day prisoners with it. She had pressured speech so the way she said it was so funny, does this make me a bad person or an incompetent nurse?My patients loved me, maybe because I wasn't all stiff and serious like the other RN's and student nurses, I readily engaged in occupational therapy and group therapy everyday with them, I interacted with all the patients and I didn't take anything too serious even when a patient threaten to smite me because I didn't pray to her as she was God and could strike me down at any moment. But if finding some aspects of their condition amusing makes me a bad person then I guess I can live with that.

This does make you an incompetent potential nurse. Participating in occupational and group therapy is not the typical role of nursing students or staff nurses. Perhaps the patients didn't realize that you were there as a student to learn since you were such an active participant?

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I have a feeling that the OP is young, immature, and therefore misguided in what he/she sees as compassion. I am hoping that the OP is reading these comments, and criticisms, and really doing some soul searching and introspection, and not just brushing these comments aside. Finding comedy in the presentation of a grandiose mental illness is not a reason to specialize in psychiatric nursing... I really hope that at the very least the OP can come to understand this very important, basic piece. Let me try to put this in perspective for you. When my Mom called me one day, she said, "I really wish people at church would stop asking me why I'm bald." Mind you, I had no idea my Mom was bald, so I had to ask, "Mom, why are you bald?" She responded matter-of-factly, "I was having a bad hair day and decided to start from scratch." I shared this story with my nursing cohort during our mental health theory class (among other, not so amusing stories), and everyone laughed, but it wasn't "laughing our asses off" kind of laughing, it was more of a respectful, finding humor in something that is really actually quite serious, and at it's heart, not funny at all kind of laugh. At its heart, my mother was mentally unstable, most likely because she wasn't taking her meds (because they made her brain feel dull), so a shaved head today might be horribly disturbing hallucinations tomorrow, and intractable depression the day after that can only be relived by her hurting herself. There have been some very great, thought-provoking posts on this subject, so the silver lining I see here is that this discussion is even being had. I am hoping that these posts not only give the OP another perspective on the seriousness of mental illness, but the casual reader as well.

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This does make you an incompetent potential nurse. Participating in occupational and group therapy is not the typical role of nursing students or staff nurses. Perhaps the patients didn't realize that you were there as a student to learn since you were such an active participant?

Dx: Ignorantitis? :whistling:

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But if finding some aspects of their condition amusing makes me a bad person then I guess I can live with that.

Yuck.

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Specializes in Forensic Psych.

I don't believe for one second that you truly empathize with these patients.

Sure, maybe you feel sorry for them, but if you truly invested emotional energy into walking for a day, a moment, in their shoes you surely wouldn't laugh. And if you did laugh, it wouldn't be a moment of pride worth announcing to the entire AN world.

I work in psych and it's a population that's truly in need. But what they don't need is pity mixed with mockery.

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