Hi
golden I fully agree that diet has a massive impact on health both physical and mental and I particularly think so in children (even though I never met a paed who agreed) but I agree with
Hip that we can't simply say diet solves stuff - it could help a great deal - especially if we cut out refined sugars and corn sugars, but a lot of really sick people need drugs as well or while the slow grinding decisions are made.
I hope one day diet can be sorted out properly if for no other reason than antipychotic meds are so horrible and many of them (Clozaril springs to mind not to mention ECT which is still going on) are downright dangerous.
And also because quite a few patients I've worked with seem to literally crave high sugar food.
On UTI's. I have seen them cause confusion, aggression, aggitation and a sort of apparent delusional state. In all the cases I nursed the patient was elderly female. In one case the poor woman was admitted and interviewed by a doctor who, how shall I put this? Ok he was a twit.
She came and sat with me afterwards while I gave her a cuppa and made me laugh out loud. "That doctor thinks I'm stupid," she said, "So I told him not so be so silly, of course I knew my own name. Did he know his?" LOL . She was discharged with antibiotics having become suddenly sane within a couple of days of taking them. Some Doctors! Honestly!
A friend of mine was admitted with "confusion" which also turned out to be a UTI. She does have dementia as well sadly but at least the aggitation stopped once the infection was treated.
Same for my friend's mum. UTI treated and lots of dementia symptoms improved.- especially aggression in her case.
The other one is having a hypo. Sugar can improve mental health too. One patient (not mine, a friend's) had her life saved after a major cock up. She had collapsed and was obviously confused and out of it. She was taken to A&E where some bright spark noted she had a dx of Schizophrenia and sent her by ambulance to us.
By the time she arrived she was unconscious. My friend did her blood glucose, and it was 0. She refused to admit her and sent her back the general where IV glucose made her perfectly well.
Oh and Hip don't start me on BPD. I really think that's another "Psychiatry tries to take power" thing. There's no evidence that such a thing really exists.
On whether patients can find admission onto an acute ward shocking. I would say probably if they are well enough to notice. The way we dealt with this was community meetings. With the children we had them every day. On adult Rehab they were once a week and on acute we had them once a month or more often if something had happened that needed discussing with all the patients. In these meetings patients could ask questions, share ideas and bring up issues from food and the buscuits running out too quickly to something serious like a violent incident that had occured. We were especially careful to have meetings when a violent incident had meant the patient had been moved to ICU as, obviously this was upsetting and sometimes scary for other patients.
While I'm on a roll can I just tell two stories about patients caring for fellow patients.
On the children's unit we had a lad who was so badly abused and had another issue, that he was mute when we got him.
On the ward next door was a girl with some pretty serious issues of her own. She often came over to our ward just to chat and she and our mute lad became friends. She used to sing to him and get him to dance with her down the corridor. He was 14 she was 16. Gradually he would hum along. Then one day I arrived at work and there they were both singing the words together! After that he began to talk a little more. It was one of those amazing things.
The second story.Adult acute. I had a patient I have to admit being especially fond of. He was huge and when ill he was dangerous but when he was on the mend he was one of those truly lovely people.
We had a very unusual admission. A young girl who had a rare genetic disorder that not only took her mental health but was killing her.
She loved Chinese food, but as she got sicker she couldn't manage what passed for "chinese" hospital food.
The big man would get his benefit check and usually he went shopping and came back with bags of junk food which he loved. But one day he came back with far less junk food. Instead he had gone to the local Chinese takaway and bought three huge spring rolls for the girl.
He did this a few times for her before she died.
Even writing this makes me want to cry. He had a bit of a learning difficulty as well as seriously uncontrolled bi-polar and schizophrenia. And yet he took the time to care for someone who wasn't even able to speak to him or understand that someone was being kind to her.
Working in psychi can be soul destroying, but there are times when true humanity shows through and it's beautiful.
