didster7
02-03-2010, 03:21 AM
I work at a State Mental Health Hospital in Texas as a Peer Support Spec and I continually hear the same things from the patients. They state that they aren't getting the help they need. There is a patient I have been working with and this patient wants to be transfered to another hospital to get more intense treatment but this patient has no income, or insurance, so a private hospital is not an option that I know of. This patient exhibits self abusive behaviors and suicidal ideation and has shown no progress since being hospitalized by court order.
I had the luxury of insurance during my recovey process and was able to go to an awesome private hospital where I learned so many things that helped me. My question is how can I help the patients when the state run hospitals seem to be operating in the dark ages. There are so many different things that could be implemented to help the patients.
As one example, there are no anger management classes, which I found extremely helpful in my recovery. I had one patient who told me that they felt they were going to explode from all the pent up emotions and I explained that if they did it in a way that didn't hurt themself or anyone else that it was okay to vent, I told the patient to give the staff a heads up first and then go in the shower and scream and cry or to punch a pillow, etc.. Well one of the staff members said, "don't let the doctors hear you tell the patients to do that or they will get mad." It seems to me that the whole direction of this hospital is based on stabilizing the patients on meds and not much else. Well most of the patients don't have any kind of insurance and very little income and so they end up cycling in and out of here.
I don't know how to talk to the doctors about any of my concerns, and am afraid that they would take offense if I did. Please let me know what I can do to help.
Sincerely,
didster7
I had the luxury of insurance during my recovey process and was able to go to an awesome private hospital where I learned so many things that helped me. My question is how can I help the patients when the state run hospitals seem to be operating in the dark ages. There are so many different things that could be implemented to help the patients.
As one example, there are no anger management classes, which I found extremely helpful in my recovery. I had one patient who told me that they felt they were going to explode from all the pent up emotions and I explained that if they did it in a way that didn't hurt themself or anyone else that it was okay to vent, I told the patient to give the staff a heads up first and then go in the shower and scream and cry or to punch a pillow, etc.. Well one of the staff members said, "don't let the doctors hear you tell the patients to do that or they will get mad." It seems to me that the whole direction of this hospital is based on stabilizing the patients on meds and not much else. Well most of the patients don't have any kind of insurance and very little income and so they end up cycling in and out of here.
I don't know how to talk to the doctors about any of my concerns, and am afraid that they would take offense if I did. Please let me know what I can do to help.
Sincerely,
didster7