Emergency Room Series: Mental ISH

Oh Dear!!!

In the previous post I shared a story about how a guy passed out after taking hard drugs, he's better now, but he has memory loss and blurry vision. He is now being managed by the neurological team because he has brain damage.


Anyways, to the post of the day. I would like to talk about mental illness. The way people with mental illnesses are seen and treated in this part of world is quite unfair. There is very little public awareness on mental illness, its causes and how it can be effective managed. 

Contrary to what the media portrays, mentally ill people don't strip naked and dance around in dustbins with ridiculous paintings on the body all the time. 

Mental illness is not as a result of a curse from 'gods' or a punishment for sins.


While in nursing school, psychiatry posting was an eye-opener for me. I once met this lady who thought she was a vampire of some sort. I learnt she killed and ate her baby on the naming ceremony night. Apparently she had been mentally ill and she was poorly managed. Ever since she killed the baby, she began to crave human blood and would cut herself and lick the blood. It was an obsession for her, it was called the Vampire Disease or Porphyria. She was often restricted and not allowed to touch herself or anyone, always had low nail cuts and was fed only by the nurses till she stopped hurting herself


There was a patient also who was HIV-positive and a paranoid schizophrenic. She thought that the nurses wanted to kill her so she would bite her tongue and skin and spit HIV-positive blood into the air. Although student nurses like me were not allowed to attend to her, the staff nurses had to always use a face mask, gloves and eye google when attending to her


One man even had a behavior or standing still for many hours. He would suddenly stand up from bed, raise one leg and could remain in that position for 1 to 2 hours. Even if you touch him and beg him to sit, he wouldnt act like he heard us.


Not all who are mentally ill are dullards like people think. During the psychiatry posting, we were always given a patient to sit with for that day, one man who was allocated to me taught me a lot about quantum physics, the solar system and astronomy. I think that was what he studied in the university. He spoke good English. I would listen to him even though I didn't have any idea of what he was talking about. He was very good at drawing and would always win scrabble when it was time for games.


There I also met alcohol addicts, drug addicts and prisoners who had committed murder but were mentally ill to stay in prison. We had a lot of students in the unit from various universities across the country who were admitted because of substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms. Those ones were usually s§xually abusive and would often use s§xual words when talking. We had a few student doctors who had failed MB and thought all hope was lost and became depressed, they were treated in a separate unit and only head nurses were allowed to attend to them on instructions of their VC.


I remember one young girl who always had a strange urge to shove things into her privates. Mehn, I never understood what that kind of mental illness was. She would put her spoon, toothbrush, anything really inside herself. In her casefile, it was written that her mother died at childbirth and she claimed to have been raped by all the males in her family, brothers, father, and grandfather (I'm surprised as to how that's even possible)

I think the creepiest was a man who would make snake sounds and roll his eyes most times. He didn't like getting out of bed. He would sit at the edge of the bed and place his ear on the wall and would talk and smile as if someone was speaking in the wall. He had a radio that didn't work, he usually placed it on his ear and would nod as if he was enjoying hip-hop.


I'm sharing this experience to let you know that mental illness is like a cage that terribly clouds people's freedom to live right. They are often neglected and poorly managed by family members. They are usually taken to the psychiatry unit when things are getting out of hand.

Some are not even taken to psychiatry hospitals but are thrown out to the streets where they have little or nothing to feed on and are vulnerable to all kinds of unimaginable things. 

Society has this notion that people who are mentally ill are very aggressive and wild. It is not in all cases. Depression is a mental illness, but wouldn't make you wild and aggressive, unless of course if the person is manic-depressive, in which case the person will be wild and become very sad after sometime. 

We live among people with mental illness and most people are guilty of laughing and mocking them, especially the ones on the streets. It will take many years for our society to embrace and learn to love mentally ill people, because culturally, they are seen as outcasts or cursed. 

Some of you have friends who abuse hard substances and you do nothing about it because you feel its cool to do drugs. Later when the person breaks down, you flee. 

There's a special place for people like that.

Nobody deserves to be neglected or abandoned because they are not mentally healthy. A lot of mental stress that people go through in marriages, at work, school and even as a Nigerian is enough to destabilize your mental health but its important you always find stability and happiness no matter what the situation is.


Do you know any mentally ill person around you, kindly share how they were managed.

Have a beautiful day and Happy Easter in advance everyone.

*WOW..what an eye opener...thank you and happy Easter Babe.

wait oh,so that guy has memory loss?is it temporary or permanent?Brain damage as in thats it for him?